Introduction of Azure SQL Hyperscale: Stairway to Azure SQL Hyperscale Level 1
In Level 1 of the Stairway to Azure SQL Hyperscale, we learn about the architecture and create a hyperscale instance.
How to Script Dimensions with data build tool (dbt) Macros
In this article, we’ll revisit the dimension models we created. We wrote the entire SQL statement for the dimension by hand, and the dimensions themselves were very rudimentary; they lacked a surrogate key and there were no audit columns (such as insert date and update date). We’ll show you how we can expand the dimensions using Jinja, but also how we can minimize development effort by baking reusable patterns into the Jinja code.
Advanced SQL Server Page Forensics: Detecting Page Splits and Allocations with DBCC PAGE
Page splits are an often-overlooked performance killer in SQL Server. In this article, we take a forensic look at how serial inserts differ from mid-table inserts, revealing why inserting rows out of order causes hidden page splits, increased IO, and fragmentation. Using a wide-column table, we demonstrate both scenarios and decode their impact with page-level analysis.
Deprecated but Forgotten: Why SQL Server’s Text, NText, and Image Data Types Still Haunt Your Systems
TEXT, NTEXT, and IMAGE columns have been deprecated for nearly two decades, yet they still silently haunt many SQL Server environments. This article explains their hidden limitations with practical demos and shows why migrating to VARCHAR(MAX), NVARCHAR(MAX), and VARBINARY(MAX) is critical for modern performance, maintainability, and future upgrades.
How to Access and Use Azure Key Vault Secrets in an Azure Devops Pipeline
When you run a CI/CD pipeline, you often need confidential values like passwords, authentication tokens, service principal secrets etc. when you want to deploy a certain artefact. You don’t want to store those secrets directly in your pipelines as this might pose a considerable security leak. Instead, you either store them as secret variables, or […]
How to safely and surgically restore filegroups
Most DBAs are familiar with full and differential ...
Model Context Protocol (MCP): A Developer’s Guide to Long-Context LLM Integration
Large Language Models (LLMs) like Anthropic’s Cl...
MongoDB and NodeJS in action
Overview MongoDB is a popular NoSQL database used for building modern, scalable applications. In this article, we’ll cover how to set up MongoDB on Windows and connect to it using Node.js. We will also perform some basic Create, Read, Update, and Delete (CRUD) operations to ensure we understand fully on how Node.js can be made […]
SQL Server Threats
Is your SQL Server truly secure? Here are the top cyber threats targeting it. Learn how you can stop them before it strikes.
Blogs
Wait… Could This Be the End of Index Maintenance?
While attending SQLCon and FabCon Europe in Barcelona, there were a lot of announcements...
Copilot on the Power BI Report Canvas vs. Modern Report Builder
By James Serra
(This is the second post in a three-part series on how AI is changing...
The #MS_DatabaseConnector## Role: #SQLNewBlogger
By Steve Jones
I had seen these roles in various instances, but never dug into the new...
Forums
Pay for Performance
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Pay for Performance, which is...
Packing and Decoding Device Status Codes with LEFT_SHIFT() and RIGHT_SHIFT() in SQL Server
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Packing and Decoding Device Status...
SQL Server Audit Failures
Comments posted to this topic are about the item SQL Server Audit Failures
Question of the Day
SQL Server Audit Failures
If I have a SQL Server Server Audit setup, what are my options for configuring the instance in the event it can't write to the audit log?
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