Back Yourself Up
Ever thought about yourself as a resource that should be backed up to minimize your loss?
Using MERGE in SQL Server to insert, update and delete at the same time
In a typical data warehousing application, quite often during the ETL cycle you need to perform INSERT, UPDATE and DELETE operations on a TARGET table by matching the records from the SOURCE table.
I Feel Like a Magician
Something sufficiently complex, in our eyes, may appear to be magic. Steve Jones feels some of his knowledge about SQL Server looks the same way to others.
Modern Data Warehouse Design Pattern – Part I
The modern data warehouse design helps in building a hub for all types of data to initiate integrated and transformative solutions. To achieve these goals and to support modern designs, Microsoft has introduced a set of fully managed, cloud-based services that not only support modern data warehouse design patterns but also provide the advantages of inbuilt scalability, high availability, good performance, and flexibility.
Changing Linked Server Properties
A quick guide on changing the linked server properties and settings.
Introduction to HIPAA and SOX
Despite the attention to data privacy and protection caused this year because of the GDPR, regulations governing how data is handled are nothing new. In this article, Robert Sheldon provides an overview of two US regulations, HIPAA and SOX, and explains how these regulations affect DBAs.
How to execute an SSIS package from the command line or a batch file
An SSIS package that is executed on an ad hoc basis can be run from Business Intelligence Development Studio easily enough, but a package that is going to be run on a regular schedule is best executed through a batch file using the DTExec.exe command line utility.
Blogs
Using Prompt AI for a Travel Data Analysis
By Steve Jones
I was looking back at my year and decided to see if SQL Prompt...
FinOps for Kubernetes: Leveraging OpenCost, KubeGreen, and Kubecost for Cost Efficiency
In the era of cloud-native applications, Kubernetes has become the default standard platform for...
2025 Wrapped for Steve
By Steve Jones
I’ve often done some analysis of my year in different ways. Last year I...
Forums
The North Star for the Year
Comments posted to this topic are about the item The North Star for the...
Multiple Escape Characters
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Multiple Escape Characters
reaching ftp thru winscp but erroring in ssis ftp task connection
Hi, below i show various results trying to reach our ftp site (a globalscape...
Question of the Day
Multiple Escape Characters
In SQL Server 2025, I run this code (in a database with the appropriate collation):
SELECT UNISTR('%*3041%*308A%*304C%*3068 and good night', '%*') AS 'A Classic';
What is returned? See possible answers