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Giving Thanks
My last two months have been packed full of activity. I’ve had the amazing opportunity to be with PostgreSQL friends in New York, Greece, and Seattle. In between, it was a treat to be back in Pittsburgh for the first SQL Saturday since before the pandemic. The strength of the database community at each event […]
Announcing SQL Server 2025
Bob Ward announces the next version of SQL Server, now in private preview.
New SQL Server 2022 Functions
There were a number of T-SQL functions added in SQL Server 2022. Today Steve asks if you are using any of these in your work.
Skipping Columns (& other tricks) Using BCP Format Files (SQL Spackle)
BULK INSERT and BCP are powerful, high performance tools for importing text files. SQL Server MVP Jeff Moden gives us several nifty tips in this introduction to BULK INSERT and BCP Format Files including "Skipping Columns" and the sequestration of bad rows while still loading all the good data.
Transactions
By now, pretty much everyone has heard the stories about the first computers. They were huge, cost a fortune, required incredible amounts of air conditioning, and perhaps more importantly, ran batch jobs submitted on punched cards and magnetic tape. But even before we had these dinosaurs, there were E.A.M (electric accounting machine) units.
Boring or Scripting
There is no shortage of mundane tasks at work. Steve Jones notes that you might not want to depend on those to fill your day in the future.
Should That Be One Update Statement or Multiple?
Let’s say we have a couple of update statements we need to run every 15 minutes in the Stack Overflow database, and we’ve built indexes to support them:
How Do You Patch 100 Database Servers?
The challenges of managing lots of system are significant and there aren't easy solutions, but Steve has a few thoughts on what you can do.
Microsoft SQL announcements at PASS Data Community Summit 2024
Read a summary of the data platform announcements from Microsoft at the PASS Data Community Summit 2024 last week.
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
Finding Motivation
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Finding Motivation
The Last Binary Value of the Year
Comments posted to this topic are about the item The Last Binary Value of...
SQL Art, Part 2: New Year Fireworks in SSMS
Comments posted to this topic are about the item SQL Art, Part 2: New...
Question of the Day
The Last Binary Value of the Year
What does this code return?
SELECT cast(0x2025 AS NVARCHAR(20))Image 1:
Image 2: 
Image 3: 
Image 4: 
See possible answers