Are your automated tests slowing you down?
Slow, unreliable tests prevent teams doing great work, and make continuous delivery impossible. So what can you do to improve your automated tests?
Getting Started with Azure SQL Data Warehouse - Part 6
Azure SQL Data Warehouse is Microsoft’s new enterprise-class, elastic petabyte-scale, data warehouse service that can scale according to organizational demands in just few minutes. In this installment, Arshad Ali covers the different ways to load data into SQL Data Warehouse.
Cool Projects
This week Steve Jones wants to know what type of really interesting projects you are working on. Is there something you really enjoy and look forward to building?
What do you do when you make a mistake?
We all make mistakes, what you do next is what is important.
Performance Myths: Oversizing string columns
Aaron Bertrand shows a quick demo that illustrates why you should be very careful about oversizing varchar / nvarchar columns.
SQL Server DBA On-Boarding Checklist
How can we be sure that the new DBAs are productive a soon as possible? How can we use highly qualified contractors in the most effective way from day one?
Batch SSIS pkg execution from Business Intelligence Development Studio
The Execute Package Task and a second instance of Business Intelligence Development Studio can be a satisfactory method of background execution of SSIS packages in batch mode when you don't have access to Integration Services.
How do you go about team building?
Team building isn't easy, but important for people to work together well.
Continuous Database Deployment with Confidence
To achieve gains from Database Lifecycle Management in general, and in Continuous Deployment in particular, it pays to aim for lightweight but consistent techniques and processes, refining them iteratively in the light of experience. Edward Elliott describes a Test-driven development process for developing SQL Server databases that worked for CD, based on a series of steps. Though the tools for CD may be necessary, they are not sufficient, without an effective structured process.
Blogs
ADF Pipeline Debugging Fails with BadRequest – The Sequel
A while ago I blogged about a use case where a pipeline fails during...
Why I stopped using MCP for AI coding stuff
By HeyMo0sh
Something has shifted quietly in 2026. The developers I know/respect—the ones actually shipping, not...
AI: Blog a Day – Day 5: Notebooks, Hugging face models and Fine Tuning
By Vinay Thakur
Continuing from Day 4 where we learned Encoder, Decoder, and Attention Mechanism, today we...
Forums
Dynamic Unpivot
I have a table I didn't design that has tons of repeating groups in...
Writing as an Art and a Job
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Writing as an Art and...
String Similarity II
Comments posted to this topic are about the item String Similarity II
Question of the Day
String Similarity II
What is the range for the result from the EDIT_DISTANCE_SIMILARITY() function in SQL Server 2025?
See possible answers