Building Databases: One Man’s Best Practice?
One man’s meat is often another man’s poison. In this editorial Tony Davis looks at why a migrations-based approach to database version control might not always be best practice.
Adjusting Model
This Friday Steve Jones looks at the topic of defaults and whether you use the model database to adjust yours.
Hidden Tricks To SQL Server Table Cleanup
How to delete millions of rows with virtually no contention.
An Introduction to the OpenPOWER Foundation
In a bid to challenge Intel's dominance of high performance computing environments, IBM have introduced OpenPOWER, a flexible open-source framework based on their POWER processor architecture. Robert Sheldon looks at the potential of this new platform.
The Case for Upgrading
When is it worth upgrading your SQL Server? It's a question Steve Jones explores today.
Understand the Limitations of SQL Server Dynamic Data Masking
Dynamic data masking provides a simple way to implement obfuscation of private data. However it's important to understand the limitations, and to keep in mind that it is not true encryption and that the data cannot be protected in all scenarios. Aaron Bertrand explains.
Creating Dashboards for Mobile Devices with Datazen – Part 3
With the recent acquisition of Datazen by Microsoft, if you have SQL Server 2008 Enterprise Edition or later with Software Assurance, you can download and use Datazen to create visually appealing dashboards for mobile devices across all the major platforms at no additional cost. In this article, Arshad Ali demonstrates creating data source, data views and then creating dashboards using them with Datazen Publisher.
Software Estimates
It seems the software industry doesn't do a good job of planning and estimating software development efforts.
Free Workshop: Microsoft Data Platform Modernisation - London, Sep 24
Are you an ISV and/or commercial software developer using SQL Server? Are you considering how to upgrade your application to take advantage of new SQL Server 2014 and would like to know more about how Microsoft can help your migration and sales/marketing efforts? Register using this invitation key 9ABED3
Blogs
Identity Columns Can’t Be Updated: #SQLNewBlogger
By Steve Jones
I’m not sure I knew identity column values could not be updated. I ran...
Rolling Back a Broken Release
By Steve Jones
We had an interesting discussion about deployments in databases and how you go forward...
A bespoke reporting solution doesn’t have to cost the earth
By ChrisJenkins
You could be tolerating limited reporting because there isn’t an off the shelf solution...
Forums
Can someone please explain what happens?
I have mentioned this several times over several years. Can someone please help me...
SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT) returns null when nothing is found instead of 0
SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT Component) AS Found FROM tblComponents WHERE(Component NOT LIKE '%[a-z]%') AND(LTRIM(RTRIM(Component)) = 'GM13622')...
Remotely Engineer Fabric Lakehouse objects: The Fabric Modern Data Platform
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Remotely Engineer Fabric Lakehouse objects:...
Question of the Day
Creating JSON III
In a SQL Server 2025 table, called Beer, I have this data:
BeerIDBeerName 1Becks 2Fat Tire 3Mac n Jacks 4Alaskan Amber 8KirinI run this code:
SELECT JSON_OBJECTAGG(
BeerID: BeerName )
FROM beer;
What are the results? See possible answers