Unlike some other industrial-strength database servers, SQL Server lacks a built-in mechanism for protecting individual data records, called row-level security. This stairway level explores why you might want to use such a low-level granularity of data access security and how you can implement row-level security.
One of the more confusing statistics in Oracle is one called the clustering factor. Associated with an index, it's actually dependent on the table data, more specifically the distance between 'jumps' for a given index key. Commonly, a 'jump' is the number of blocks between rows containing the given index key starting with the first block found containing that key. If that sounds confusing don't despair, David Fitzjarrell explains in detail.
An amazing visualization of basketball players has Steve Jones encouraging you to find your own pet project and showcase some skills.
MSDB is a system database used by SQL Server. MSDB stores all sorts of data, such as backup history, log shipping monitor history, SSIS packages and Service Broker queue data to name a few. Just like user databases, MSDB needs regular maintenance, including index optimizations and, more importantly, regular purging. In this article, Tim Radney looks at how neglecting your MSDB can negatively impact on your environment.
References and links to get you started in backing up your database to the Azure blob storage.
Can you deploy your database changes without any downtime? Steve Jones has a few notes.
The challenges of getting enough resources for our projects aren't always apparent.
Code must be checked, but how? Phil Factor shares his thoughts on automating SQL code reviews.
The poll this week looks to the future and artificial intelligence. Steve Jones wonders if we'll ever really see this.
Discusses the various SAN and NAS protocols (FC, iSCSI, NFS) and how choosing one over the other can impact your SQL Server Performance.
By Steve Jones
While wandering around the documentation looking for some Question of the Day topics, I...
By Arun Sirpal
Third part in my Ai series with databases. When building AI solutions within the...
By Steve Jones
This month we have a very interesting invitation from Koen Verbeeck. He has hosted...
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As of June 2026, what is the best version of TLS to use with SQL Server?
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