vNext 2016
Steve Jones looks at the next version of SQL Server, SQL Server 2016. Until this week, it was known as vNext.
Alan Cooper: Geek of the Week
Alan Cooper helped to debug the most widely-used PC language of the late seventies and early eighties, BASIC-E, and, with Keith Parsons, developed C-BASIC. He then went on to create Tripod, which morphed eventually into Visual Basic in 1991. Alan remains enthusiastic and interested in development with strong views on Agile and Pair Programming.
Generating A Password in SQL Server with T-SQL from Random Characters
Dallas Snider explains how to use T-SQL to generate a random password that meets an organization's password requirements.
SQL Monitor Custom Metric: Plan Cache; Cache Pages Total
This metric collects the number of 8-kilobyte pages that make up the plan cache to help identify memory pressure or plan cache pollution. A sudden drop in values for this metric may indicate that the instance is under memory pressure and SQL Server had to reclaim part of the plan cache for other use.
DDL Auditing using the Default trace
This article explains how default trace can be used for auditing purposes when combined with PowerShell scripts
Time Slots - An Essential Extension to Calendar Tables
After answering many forum entries from developers asking for help with dealing with SQL that involved time intervals and ranges, Dwain dreamed of a generalized tool that sets up time slots of various sorts without the need to experiment; that could do the heavy lifting, so that developers could do aggregations and reports based on time intervals without the hard graft. Here is Dwain's dream made reality.
Complete Definitions
When we write scripts, we often assume many settings will be at some default value. When we generate scripts, that's not the case. Perhaps we should be sure that we always include the settings we expect.
How to FTP a Dynamically Named Flat File
Learn how you can dynamically name a file in SSIS and then send it using the FTP task.
MongoDB vs. Azure DocumentDB
There’s a new kid on the block in the NoSQL world – Azure DocumentDB. Released in preview back in August 2014 and going Generally Available this month, Azure DocumentDB is Microsoft’s initial foray into the increasingly competitive space of non-relational database management systems. Of course there is no better competitor in this space to measure up against than MongoDB. How close does DocumentDB stack up to MongoDB? Are they even close?
Blogs
Monday Monitor Tips: Intelligent Alert Thresholds
By Steve Jones
At the recent Redgate Summit in Chicago, I demo’d (lightly) the ML based Alert...
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...
Forums
String_agg not working as needed
I'm trying to get this string_agg to put all the 'comments' into one result...
Vectors in SQL Server 2025
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Vectors in SQL Server 2025
Odd Sequences
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Odd Sequences
Question of the Day
Odd Sequences
What values are returned from this code?
CREATE SEQUENCE NumericSequence
AS NUMERIC(5,1)
START WITH 1.0
INCREMENT BY 0.1;
GO
SELECT NEXT VALUE FOR NumericSequence
GO
SELECT NEXT VALUE FOR NumericSequence
GO See possible answers