Data Science Education
Data Science is a hot area and one to which quite a few people would like to move. Steve Jones has some thoughts on trying to get certified in this area.
Using SQL Compare with Row Level Security
Row Level Security is one of many new features in SQL Server 2016. It provides a much easier, consistent, and maintainable solution for row-based security rules. In this blog post, Data Platform MVP Steve Jones introduces this new feature, and walks through how Redgate SQL Compare can safely and reliably handle RLS changes.
Stairway to U-SQL Level 8: Joining Tables in U-SQL
U-SQL provides a number of ways to join data sources together. This articles introduces the joins available and how you can use them.
Best Practices For Building Alerts for Using APIs with SQL Server
Tim Smith shares some ideas about how to handle and alert on irregular data coming from APIs when loading your database.
Encryption Keys Matter
Protecting the keys used for encrypion can really matter for companies, and in today's complex world, that can be difficult. Monitoring becomes important to helping here.
Restore Gene Version 6 - User Guide
Read about the Restore Genie and the new support for fork points, Azure and Multiple Concurrent Restores.
Direct Query with Power BI
Power BI allows you to connect directly to the data just as if it were a “standard” connection, and modify and extend the data to support analytics. By using DirectQuery, you can build reports based on extremely large datasets where re-importing data not a practical solution. It also allows you to do data aggregations on the server. There are, of course, restrictions as well but it is nevertheless a worthwhile technique to use where appropriate. Adam Aspin explains all.
Creating Partition on Existing tables and Rolling Partitions
this article describes about creating partitions on our existing Tables and also gives details about how to create rolling partition to support new data
Ignoring Database Version Control
Steve Jones thinks version control is important, even for databases.
Blogs
Who Are You Doing It For?
By Brian Kelley
But as I've matured over the years, I came to realize that I needed...
Presenting Twice in May 2026
By alevyinroc
I will be presenting my latest session, Documenting Your Work for Worry-Free Vacations, in-person...
Finding the Next Sequence Value: #SQLNewBlogger
By Steve Jones
I saw a question asking about the next sequence value and decided to try...
Forums
DB Design Methods
I've read a few posts regarding what we use to design DB models and...
Auto Update Statistics not triggering on filtered indexes
I've got a table with 186,703,969 rows, about 300GB of data. There are several...
What is the difference between SQL Server and SQL Database?
I created a SQL Database in Azure Portal but I've just noticed it also...
Question of the Day
An Unusual Identity
What values are returned when I run this code?
CREATE TABLE dbo.IdentityTest2
(
id NUMERIC(10,0) IDENTITY(10,10) PRIMARY KEY,
somevalue VARCHAR(20)
)
GO
INSERT dbo.IdentityTest2
(
somevalue
)
VALUES
( 'Steve')
, ('Bill')
GO
SELECT top 10
id
FROM dbo.IdentityTest2 See possible answers