When INSERTING or DELETING rows from a table, the OUTPUT clause can be used to return a dataset containing the changes made. Mat Richardson explains how.

The Best DBA Gifts

by Steve Jones

SQLServerCentral

Career Growth

Today Steve asks if there is anything you'd want as a gift that would make your job better.

Do You Have REFERENCES?

by Additional Articles

SimpleTalk

The logic for referential integrity can be implemented in application code, but to make sure that it is enforced, include foreign key constraints in the database design instead. In this article, Joe Celko talks about the history of references in SQL and the options available today.

A Dearth of Data

by Steve Jones

SQLServerCentral

A new technique developed by Microsoft is designed to help AI/ML models get trained with minimal data.

SSISDB Catalog Defaults Best Practices

by Steve Rezhener

SQLServerCentral

Integration Services (SSIS)

Introduction The SSISDB database (a.k.a. the SSISDB catalog) was introduced back in SQL Server 2012 to de-clutter the MSDB database and provide an in-house logging and reporting infrastructure. In a nutshell, SSISDB is an SSIS framework making SQL Server Integration Services more robust and enterprise-friendly by providing the following features: Database backup Database encryption Support […]

ASP.NET Core with GitOps: Deploying Infrastructure as Code

by Additional Articles

SimpleTalk

Automation of server builds minimizes human error, ensures that environments are identical, and saves time building servers. This article from Mircea Opera demonstrates provisioning one server or multiple load-balanced servers in AWS with code.

SQL Server Transparent Data Encryption vs. NetLib Encryptionizer

by Additional Articles

SQLServerCentral

Encryption

Between the legislation over the years (HIPAA, GLBA, GDPR, CCPA, etc.) and data breaches from large organizations that seem to pop-up in the news on a monthly basis, SQL Server database encryption is critical for our industry. SQL Server ships with a few options for a native encryption implementation (Column Level Encryption, Transparent Data Encryption, Data Masking, Always Encrypted), that all provide value in particular situations, but none of the options all seem to address all of the needs. What is the best way to encrypt our SQL Server data?