Impressive Accomplishments
What things impress you most about potential candidates. This week Steve Jones asks the question to try and understand what types of activities data professionals might consider.
How to tell what SQL Server version you are running
Gerg Robidoux demonstrates a couple of methods for determining which version of SQL Server you're running, as well as what service pack or hotfix is installed.
Azure SQL Database – How to Choose the Right Service Tier
So you've decided to use Azure SQL Database. You head for the portal and are suddenly faced with a number of questions. Sure, the choices you make have a number of repercussions, but what are they? Murilo Miranda provides a simple guide to get started.
Practicing Deployments
Amateurs practice until they can get something right. Professionals practice until they don't get things wrong. How should we handle our deployments?
Introduction to SQL Server Stretch Database
In many cases Azure SQL Database offers an economically and functionally viable alternative to SQL Server deployments. However, there are also scenarios where we might discover that rather than serving as a replacement, it provides synergy, working side by side with your on-premises databases. One of technologies that illustrate this paradigm is Stretch Database, introduced in SQL Server 2016. Marcin Polichtdescribes its basic characteristics and reviews its implementation steps in this article.
Resolving an Error When Creating an Availability Group Listener
In this post, I’m going to talk an issue that I found when creating an availability group listener by using SQL Server Management Studio's Add Listener. This article helps you to resolve the issue.
Minimizing impact of widening an IDENTITY column – part 4
Aaron Bertrand continues his series on widening an IDENTITY column, showing how he would attack the problem directly.
NCAs and NDAs
When accepting an offer of employment, what do you do about NCAs and NDAs that you might be asked to sign? Steve Jones offers some advice. (This editorial was originally published on Mar 12, 2008. It is being re-run as Steve is on holiday.)
Towards a Single Management Stack
Phil Factor argues that with both SQL Server and PowerShell now running on Linux, the latter becomes increasingly important in achieving the goal of a single management stack for databases across all hosting environments.
The Exploratory Testing Chrome Plugin
If all your application testing is done by test experts, who know how to record images, do screen-capture, write issue-reports to TFS more appropriate and consistent format and so on, you probably don't need the 'Exploratory Testing' chrome plug-in. Otherwise, it is worth checking out Ambily KK's walkthrough.
Blogs
Learn Better: Pause to Review More
By Brian Kelley
If you want to learn better, pause more in your learning to intentionally review.
Azure SQL Managed Instance Next-Gen: Bring on the IOPS
By John
If you’ve used Azure SQL Managed Instance General Purpose, you know the drill: to...
SQL, MDX, DAX – the languages of data
By DataOnWheels
Ramblings of a retired data architect Let me start by saying that I have...
Forums
Two foreign keys to the same table. Can't cascade deletes.
Not sure if this is really a relational theory question but it seems about...
Connecting Power BI to SSAS and effective user not working
Hi everyone, Below is a consolidated summary of what we validated Architecture & data...
High Availability setup - has anyone seen this method?
Hi all, I recently moved to a new employer who have their HA setup...
Question of the Day
Encoding URLs
I have this data in a SQL Server 2025 table:
CREATE TABLE Response ( ResponseID INT NOT NULL CONSTRAINT ResponsePK PRIMARY KEY , ResponseVal VARBINARY(5000) ) GOIf I want to get a value from this table that I can add to a URL in a browser, which of these code items produces a result I can use? See possible answers