Time to Rebrand
I became a SQL guy back in 1998 because the company that hired me used SQL Server. It’s been a good ride and it’s paid the bills, but after 15 years or so it’s time to do something different.
Shredding Unicode Japanese characters using SSIS
This articles describes two ways to shred Unicode Japanese character from xls files into SQL Server table using SSIS
Source Code Security
The code you use may contain security information. Be extra careful in this case, especially when you use encryption.
Getting Started with Database Engine Tuning Advisor in SQL Server – Part 2
Arshad Ali demonstrates how you can use the command line interface to tune SQL queries and how you can use SQL Server Profiler to capture the workload for tuning with Database Engine Tuning Advisor.
SQL Monitor Custom Metric: Hash Warnings (Last Hour)
This alert is raised when the number of hash warnings events in the last hour goes above a specified threshold. A hash warning event means that part of the data processed for a hash operation was written to tempdb during query execution, which can degrade SQL Server Performance.
Obedience Training For Databases: Cascading Constraints
In which Phil Factor illustrates in TSQL how it is possible to use foreign key constraints to enforce data rules, and illustrates some surprising consequences of using cascading.
One Rule, Umpteen Constraints
Despite being deprecated for many years, Phil Factor explains why RULEs are still hanging on in there in SQL Server 2014.
Identifying and Solving Index Scan Problems
When you're developing database applications, it pays to check for index scans in the SQL Server query plan cache. Once you've identified the queries, what next? Dennes Torres gives some preliminary guidelines on how to find out why these index scans are being chosen for these queries and how to make the queries run faster and more efficiently.
Cumulative sum of previous rows
I had an update statement that took 3 minutes to run after this code change it took 6 seconds.
Azure Blob Storage Part 9: Shared Access Signatures
In this article, Robin Shahan talks about security and how to control access to containers and blobs using shared access signatures (SAS) and stored access policies.
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