Query Folding in Power Query to Improve Performance
In this tip Koen Verbeeck discusses query folding, how you can take advantage from it and how to make sure query folding takes place.
Finding Production Drift
The changes made to production can be problematic at times. Steve Jones notes we can't prevent them, but we can look for them.
Cybercrime - the Dark Edges of the Internet
Criminal activity is a growing menace on the internet: This inevitably means more diligence is required by legitimate users in the face of an increasingly sophisticated criminal threat. Robert Sheldon describes some of the emerging threats and risks.
Take our SQLServerCentral Users Survey
Each year SQLServerCentral runs a survey to get some insight into what who our readers are, what they like about the site, and what can be improved. Please take a few minutes to complete this survey by June 12 and get the opportunity to win one of three $50 Amazon vouchers.
The MidnightDBAs release Minion Backup
The MidnightDBA team is announcing the release of a new, free backup solution for SQL Server: Minion Backup. We created Minion Backup (or MB, for short) to be the most flexible, feature-rich backup solution possible.
Who Cares About Your Data?
The observation that people hear what they want to hear is not a new one, and yet the extent to which people will go out of their way to ignore or misinterpret evidence can still surprise.
Converting Comma Separated Value to Rows and Vice Versa in SQL Server
Often while reporting you will encounter a situation where you will have comma separated values in a single column but you want to report them in rows. In other cases you might have values in multiple rows and want them to be a single value separated by comma or some other character. Arshad Ali demonstrates how to write queries in SQL Server to handle these scenarios quickly.
Big Data for SQL folks: The Technologies (Part II)
SQL Server Big Data.
Is the end Near for ETL as we know is?
Will RDBMs be obsolete?
What is NoSQL? What is Hadoop? Big Data-the whole story.
Statistical Analysis
This week Steve Jones asks the questions about advanced data analysis and statistics you might be using in your applications.
Blogs
Shifting Mindsets: Why FinOps is Essential for Cloud Efficiency
By HeyMo0sh
As a DevOps practitioner, I’ve always focused on performance, scalability, and automation. But as...
March 2026 SQL Server Security Updates
By Brian Kelley
On Patch Tuesday, in addition to OS and Office security patches, Microsoft also released...
How Fabric Mirroring Transformed with SQL Server 2025
When mirroring was first released for Azure SQL Database, it used Change Data Capture...
Forums
Multiple Deployment Processes
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Multiple Deployment Processes
How to Use sqlpackage to Detect Schema Drift Between Azure SQL Databases
Comments posted to this topic are about the item How to Use sqlpackage to...
Upgrading Admin Queries
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Upgrading Admin Queries
Question of the Day
Upgrading Admin Queries
I have a query from a former DBA that we run on SQL Server 2025 to check on database metadata. This query references sys.sysaltfiles. I want to refactor this code to be more modern. Which DMV should I reference instead?
See possible answers