Stairway to U-SQL Level 4: U-SQL and Data Lake Tooling with Visual Studio
A guide to using Visual Studio to create U-SQL projects and scripts.
The Relentless Cloud
The march to the cloud is ongoing and Steve Jones says you should prepare yourself. Even if your company doesn't move.
Number of Rows Read / Actual Rows Read warnings in Plan Explorer
Rob Farley looks at information exposed in query plans about residual predicates and actual rows read, showing how Plan Explorer helps identify the issue.
Databases in Azure: Copy and Exports
Toady we are going to make a copy and export your DB to Azure Storage. Lets get started.
Scary Deployments
Today Steve Jones talks about the problem of having code that people are afraid to change or deploy.
Planning for a Successful Database Lifecycle
Although it is well-known that the best efforts of a development team can be derailed by mistakes in the architecture, design and general governance of a development project, few attempts have been made to describe what needs to be done to increase the chances of success in the development of a database application. William Brewer steps into the breach to itemise what a delivery team needs to succeed.
Delivering Rapid Improvements to SSMS
SSMS has spent years being neglected, merely being kept compatible with SQL Server and its features: But now we have, instead, the promise of monthly delivery of new functionality
Security is Getting Serious
Today Steve Jones notes that back doors could be inserted into chips, which would be a huge problem.
SQL Authentication Via AD Groups Part III: What About Orphaned Users?
With AD Authentication via groups, SQL Server is vulnerable to orphaned Windows users' logins being added to SQL Server at a later date. This article gives an improved user audit script that detects orphaned DB Users and also a delete script.
Encrypting and Decrypting SQL Server Stored Procedures, Views and User-Defined Functions
You work in a shop that puts business or application logic in SQL Server using stored procedures, views and functions to return values to the calling applications or perform tasks. This is not unusual for companies that use the SQL Server layer to perform
Blogs
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...
Setting PK Names in Redgate Data Modeler
By Steve Jones
A customer was testing Redgate Data Modeler and complained that it auto-generated PK names....
Forums
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...
Semantic Search in SQL Server 2025
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Semantic Search in SQL Server...
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