Detecting Data Breaches
Data breaches make the news on an almost daily basis. There is no turning back, however, as we are firmly entrenched in this digital way of life. Brian Kelley discusses some of the reasons data breaches occur and what we can do to prevent them.
Optimizing Your Query Plans with the SQL Server 2014 Cardinality Estimator
SQL Server 2014 introduces the first major redesign of the SQL Server Query Optimizer cardinality estimation process since version 7.0. The goal for the redesign was to improve accuracy, consistency and supportability of key areas within the cardinality estimation process, ultimately affecting average query execution plan quality and associated workload performance. This paper provides an overview of the primary changes made to the cardinality estimator functionality by the Microsoft query processor team, covering how to enable and disable the new cardinality estimator behavior, and showing how to troubleshoot plan-quality regressions if and when they occur.
Enable FIPS 140-2 Compliance in SQL Server
What is FIPS? How do I use it? What is going to break if I do use it?
Power BI Introduction: Working with Power BI Desktop — Part 2
Power BI Desktop is the free tool from Microsoft for developing in Power BI. In this article, Robert Sheldon walks you through importing and manipulating data with the Query Editor in Power BI Desktop.
Receive SQL Server Alerts through Slack
In this tip we look at how we can use Python and SQL Server 2017 to send alerts from SQL Server to Slack messaging service.
Common Mistakes
This week Steve Jones is wondering what the common mistakes that T-SQL developers make are.
SQL Server Restart or Cluster Failover Notification
How to create an automatic SQL restart or failover notification.
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