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.
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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.
A Plethora of PowerShell Pitfalls: Part 2
There are some pitfalls in PowerShell for the unwary. Many people who are learning PowerShell come across quirks that can cause frustration. Michael Sorens continues his series, warning abut four of the most common PowerShell pitfalls and explains how to avoid them.
Blogs
A New Word: los vidados
By Steve Jones
los vidados – n. the half-remembered acquaintances you knew years ago, who you might...
In-Person CISA Training – April 13-16, 2026
By Brian Kelley
I will be leading an in-person Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA) exam prep class...
EightKB 2026
EightKB is back again for 2026! The biggest online SQL Server internals conference is...
Forums
query to track time spent on individual tasks in SSIS
Hi everyone I am looking at building a query to determine how much time...
SQL Server Transactional Replication from Always On Availability Groups to Azure SQL Database
Comments posted to this topic are about the item SQL Server Transactional Replication from...
Hidden Heroes
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Hidden Heroes
Question of the Day
Identities and Sequences I
When thinking of the Identity property for auto incrementing columns and sequences for the same action, which are explicitly linked to increment a number in a table when a new row is added?
See possible answers