The one question about PowerShell that trips up almost everyone is about when and how to quote strings. Because PowerShell replaces the old command shell, it has to be able to work the way that it did with string parameters, but it also has to behave like a .NET scripting language to replace VBA. In this article, Michael Sorens explains the how and when of PowerShell quoting.
When cardinality estimates are incorrect, the parallel threads doing the query work are given uneven amounts of work to do. This problem can lead to a seeming explosion in CXPACKET waits occurring and is commonly called skewed parallelism; Paul Randal explains how to check for it.
Denzil Ribeiro looks at how SQL Server 2016's new Merge functionality in INDEX REORGANIZE simplifies Columnstore index maintenance significantly.
This week Steve Jones looks at the idea of combining some NoSQL concepts inside of SQL Server.
Are you a do-it-all DBA, or do you specialize in one aspect of database work?
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.
This Friday Steve Jones looks at the topic of defaults and whether you use the model database to adjust yours.
How to delete millions of rows with virtually no contention.
A nightly load into sales_fact fails. Ask an orchestrating agent to break down the...
By Steve Jones
It’s been some time since I provided a car update, so I decided to...
By James Serra
An architecture scenario Imagine separate Sales, Finance, Shared Data, and Executive Analytics workspaces. Sales...
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Managing Incidents and Fighting Fires
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Comments posted to this topic are about the item The Quiet Part
In SQL Server 2025, I have a database with a Database Masker Key (DMK). I want to back up this key and keep a copy offline. When do I have to open this key before running the backup?
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