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.
Efficiency
This Friday Steve Jones asks about how you are tackling your career growth as you get older. Are you getting more efficient?
Self-maintaining, Contiguous Effective Dates in Temporal Tables
'Temporal' tables contain facts that are valid for a period of time. When they are used for financial information they have to be very well constrained to prevent errors getting in and causing incorrect reporting. This makes them more difficult to maintain. Is it possible to have both the stringent constraints and simple CRUD operations? Well, yes. Dwain Camps patiently explains the whole process.
SQL Saturday #372 - Exeter, UK
SQL Saturday, organized by SQL South West, is coming to Exeter, England on April 25. This is sure to be a special event, and as always, offers a free day of training and networking. Register while space is available.
Exploding the Myths of Big Data
As big data application success stories (and failures) have appeared in the news and technical publications, several myths have emerged about big data. This article explores a few of the more significant myths, and how they may negatively affect your own big data implementation.
Are There That Many GUIDs?
Steve Jones talks about a recent survey that showed more people use GUIDs as primary keys than identity values.
Blogs
Narrow Task Decomposition in AI Pipeline Agents
A nightly load into sales_fact fails. Ask an orchestrating agent to break down the...
Car Update: August 2026
By Steve Jones
It’s been some time since I provided a car update, so I decided to...
Microsoft Fabric OneLake Shortcuts: When to Use Them and When Not To
By James Serra
An architecture scenario Imagine separate Sales, Finance, Shared Data, and Executive Analytics workspaces. Sales...
Forums
Managing Incidents and Fighting Fires
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Backing Up a DMK
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Backing Up a DMK
The Quiet Part
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Question of the Day
Backing Up a DMK
In SQL Server 2025, I have a database with a Database Masker Key (DMK). I want to back up this key and keep a copy offline. When do I have to open this key before running the backup?
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