Citizen Scientists
More and more people are becoming citizen scientists, even in companies. Steve Jones thinks this is helpful, but we still need professionals.
Automated Database Provisioning for Development and Testing
If your development team needs to work on anonymised copies of the current production database, and if changes are being delivered rapidly as well, that could mean a lot of time and routine DevOps work copying databases. SQL Clone was designed for tasks like this. Grant Fritchey investigates whether you save time, effort and scripting over the more traditional approach, and at what point it makes sense to use it.
The Achilles Heel
In a long career in IT, Phil Factor cannot recall a 'major incident', where the failure or breach was due to a single 'Achilles Heel', or even a single team of people. They are always due to a whole plethora of slack and ignorant practices.
Indexing for Windowing Functions: WHERE vs. OVER
Erik Darling shows that if you take SQL Server's word when it asks for an index, things can go horribly awry.
8 Ways to Export SQL Results To a Text File
This tip will show eight ways to export the results of a query to a text file.
Why Don't You Unit Test Code?
This Friday Steve Jones wants to know what you think of testing code and why you don't do it.
SQL Server Integration Services SSIS 2016 Tutorial
SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) is the integration and ETL (extract – transform – load) tool in the Microsoft Data Platform stack. SSIS is typically used in data warehousing scenarios, but can also be used in common data integration use cases or just to move data around. SSIS is used behind the scenes in the Maintenance Plans of SQL Server and in the Import/Export wizard.
Teaching Quickly
Steve Jones talks about learning, teaching, and the need to not waste anyone's time.
The Basics of Good T-SQL Coding Style – Part 4: Performance
There are several obvious problems with poor SQL Coding habits. It can make code difficult to maintain, or can confuse your team colleagues. It can make refactoring a chore or make testing difficult. The most serious problem is poor performance. You can write SQL that looks beautiful but performs sluggishly, or interferes with other threads. A busy database developer adopts good habits so as to avoid staring at execution plans. Rob Sheldon gives some examples.
Blogs
“We love to debate minutiae”
By Brian Kelley
I am guilty as charged. The quote was in reference to how people argue...
Advice I Like: Knots
By Steve Jones
Learn how to tie a bowline knot. Practice in the dark. With one hand....
Shifting Mindsets: Why FinOps is Essential for Cloud Efficiency
By HeyMo0sh
As a DevOps practitioner, I’ve always focused on performance, scalability, and automation. But as...
Forums
Windows logins for users migrated from DomainA to DomainB
Hi, I have a SQL Server instance where users connect to via Windows Authentication,...
Multiple Deployment Processes
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Multiple Deployment Processes
How to Use sqlpackage to Detect Schema Drift Between Azure SQL Databases
Comments posted to this topic are about the item How to Use sqlpackage to...
Question of the Day
Upgrading Admin Queries
I have a query from a former DBA that we run on SQL Server 2025 to check on database metadata. This query references sys.sysaltfiles. I want to refactor this code to be more modern. Which DMV should I reference instead?
See possible answers