Short Names
Today Steve Jones talks about the short cuts that developers might take, many of which aren't necessarily helpful.
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.
Blogs
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...
March 2026 SQL Server Security Updates
By Brian Kelley
On Patch Tuesday, in addition to OS and Office security patches, Microsoft also released...
How Fabric Mirroring Transformed with SQL Server 2025
When mirroring was first released for Azure SQL Database, it used Change Data Capture...
Forums
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...
Upgrading Admin Queries
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Upgrading Admin Queries
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