How Long Before You Upgrade?
This Friday Steve Jones wants to know about the lifetime of your instances. Do you have some idea on how long you'll run a particular version of a platform?
Mixing MongoDB and Relational Databases in the Enterprise
Your Agile developers want MongoDB, or a similar document database: your Ops people are concerned about security and backup, and Governance are muttering about transactionality and data transfer between systems. Do you restrict your developers from rapidly-evolving the data design for their domain or do you embrace the joys of NoSQL unconditionally? If you accept a polyglot database environment, where the NoSQL lambs coexist with the relational lions, how do you provide tools and common database concepts that everyone can use and understand?
Change Integer to BigInt on a Very Large Table
This article will show how to change the data type of a column when the table contains more than 1 billion records.
Introverted vs Extroverted
A lot of us are introverted, so is there anything that can be done about it?
How to Do a SQL Server Architecture Review
How do you get management to help you figure out if a cluster or an AG is right for you? In this post, Brent Ozar explains the steps involved when doing a review of your SQL Server architecture.
Should We Move to Azure?
This week Steve Jones asks about moving to the cloud and how interesting that might be to the community?
SQL Server R Services: Working with Data Frames
Although you can get started with R in SQL Server without understanding data frames, they are a key structure of the R language that are the equivalent of SQL Server table variables. They give you many ways of manipulating and analyzing data and passing it between R and SQL Server. For a database professional, they provide a clear and familiar concept when getting to grips with integrating R into the database.
Protecting SQL Server Data
This book holds the key to "encryption without fear". In it, John Magnabosco sweeps away some of the misconceptions surrounding SQL Server's encryption technologies, and demonstrates that, when properly planned and implemented, they are an essential tool in the DBA's fight to safeguard sensitive data.
What are you worth?
When negotiating your salary, it helps to know what the ranges are for your experience and area. Steve Jones gives a little advice today.
Dynamic Data Masking on Azure SQL Database
Azure SQL Database’s Dynamic Data Masking (DDM) feature limits the exposure of sensitive information to non-privileged users. DDM can mask either the full value or partial value in a column. This method can also mask Social Security and Credit Card Numbers without making any changes to the application. Read on to learn more.
Blogs
Car Update September 2026
By Steve Jones
Software is hard. While I love our Lucid Gravity, I realize that they are...
Microsoft Tools for Making Data AI-Ready
By James Serra
Making Data AI-Ready, Part 2 (This is the second article in a three-part series...
Local Models Using GPUs with Ollama
By Steve Jones
Can you use your GPUs when running a local model under Ollama? You can,...
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Moving Beyond the Reboot: Finding the Culprit Behind Memory Pressure
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