Would You Pay To Wear Jeans?
For this Friday, Andy Warren asks if you would pay to change your wardrobe for work.
Azure SQL Database Security Features
The Microsoft Azure platform is evolving fast. Azure SQL Database is riding high on the cloud wave with new features enabled at a fast pace. In this article, Kun Cheng shares a few Azure SQL Database security features that could help developers and DBAs develop and manage a secure SQL Database solution.
Survey: What are your plans to upgrade SQL Server?
The Microsoft SQL Server product group are evaluating how to better assist with your SQL Server upgrades. With the upcoming SQL Server 2005 extended support deadline fast approaching, they want to understand how to help you migrate to a modern, supported version of SQL Server, and how to provide support and upgrades in future.
10 SQL Snippets For Faster, More Effective Code
How many hours per week do you spend writing the same SQL again and again?
Continuous Delivery In Real Life
Everyone wants to know who is actually using Continuous Deliver for their software. Today Steve Jones has a prominent example.
Resolution for SSIS Package Catastrophic Failure
Solution to overcome SSIS Package Catastrophic Failure Error
PowerShell Day-to-Day Admin Tasks: Monitoring Performance
By reading performance counters from services such as SQL Server or Exchange, you can get a wealth of performance information. By automating the process of gathering and storing appropriate counters, you can routinely check a range of devices quickly using visual tools such as PerfMon. By then creating your own counters, you can add counter-based metrics to anything that can be measured programmatically, such as services, applications, processes such as ETL, or deployments. Nicolas Prigent shows you how.
MS15-058: Vulnerabilities in SQL Server could allow remote code execution
A vulnerability has been released that can affect SQL Server 2008, 208 R2, 2012, and 2014.
Use Dynamic Data Masking in SQL Server 2016 CTP 2.1
SQL Server 2016 introduces a new security feature called Dynamic Data Masking (DDM). This tip describes its purpose, shows a brief example of how it works, lists some limitations, and notes how the feature has already changed since CTP 2.0 was first released in May.
Blogs
Narrow Task Decomposition in AI Pipeline Agents
A nightly load into sales_fact fails. Ask an orchestrating agent to break down the...
Car Update: August 2026
By Steve Jones
It’s been some time since I provided a car update, so I decided to...
Microsoft Fabric OneLake Shortcuts: When to Use Them and When Not To
By James Serra
An architecture scenario Imagine separate Sales, Finance, Shared Data, and Executive Analytics workspaces. Sales...
Forums
Managing Incidents and Fighting Fires
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Managing Incidents and Fighting Fires
Backing Up a DMK
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Backing Up a DMK
The Quiet Part
Comments posted to this topic are about the item The Quiet Part
Question of the Day
Backing Up a DMK
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?
See possible answers