Helping Students with a Data Professional Career
Steve has advice for students looking to become data professionals.
DMV Comparison for SQL Server 2019 vs Azure SQL Database
What DMVs were added to Azure SQL Databases, and which DMVs are missing from Azure SQL Databases but still exist on SQL Server 2019 or other versions?
Deleting a Database
Who among us hasn't deleted a production data file? Steve hopes most of us have not.
Sentiment Analysis & Key Phrase Detection
Learn how you can conduct a sentiment analysis on data loaded into an Excel spreadsheet.
Power BI Mistakes to Avoid – Part 2
What advice would you give to someone new to Power BI? What are common Power BI mistakes to avoid? In this article, we will discuss several Power BI mistakes to avoid to help you navigate this powerful tool effectively.
Changing the Paradigm of Work
AI is changing work, sometimes for the better, sometimes not. Steve continues to examine and evaluate how GenAI systems might be used in today's world and asks if there is work that might help you.
Stairway to Transaction Log Management in SQL Server, Level 3: Transaction Logs, Backup and Recovery
This article discusses the different types of backup and recovery models and gives the essential facts that will guide you to being able to achieve a recovery of a database to a point in time.
How to Load a Date Dimension in Microsoft Fabric using Macros in dbt?
With the popular data transformation tool dbt (data build tool), we have a bunch of interesting features at our disposal to write SQL more efficiently. One of those features is macros, which we’ll introduce in this article
How to Forecast Data in Power BI
Learn how you can use Power BI to forecase the future trends of data.
More Linux than Windows
Microsoft announced that Linux runs on more machines in Azure than Windows. Steve isn't surprised and thinks that Linux use will continue to grow.
Blogs
PlanTrace: Stop Reading Redshift EXPLAIN Plans. Start Seeing Them
PlanTrace: Stop Reading Redshift EXPLAIN Plans. Start Seeing Them Introducing PlanTrace — a free, browser-based...
A Cloud Dependency Failure from Amazon
By Steve Jones
I went to sleep while reading a Kindle book on my phone. I know...
Deploying AI in logistics (the unfiltered version)
A conversation with Jan Laš, CIO at HOPI, about what deploying a data agent...
Forums
SPAM Issues May 2026
We suffered a SPAM attack from May 1-6, which unfortunately corresponded with time off...
SQL Password enforcing
Hi to all We have situation at a client where someone is illegally changing...
SQL Password enforcing
Hi to all We have situation at a client where someone is illegally changing...
Question of the Day
Creating a JSON Document III
I have this data in a table called dbo.NFLTeams
TeamID TeamName City YearEstablished ------ -------- ---- --------------- 1 Cowboys Dallas 1960 2 Eagles Philadelphia 1933 3 Packers Green Bay 1919 4 Chiefs Kansas City 1960 5 49ers San Francisco 1946 6 Broncos Denver 1960 7 Seahawks Seattle 1976 8 Patriots New England 1960If I run this code, how many rows are returned?
SELECT TOP 2
json_objectagg('Team' : TeamName)
FROM dbo.NFLTeams;
See possible answers