Microsoft and R
R is an interesting language and one that might become more important to data professionals in the future. Microsoft is also making an investment here.
How to get Database Design Horribly Wrong
Database Design is one of those tasks where you have to carefully get all the major aspects right. If you mess-up just one of these, it can all go horribly wrong. So what are these aspects that can ruin database design, and how can you get them right? Robert Sheldon explains.
SQL Saturday #364 - Boston, MA
SQL Saturday is coming to Boston on April 18th 2015. Join us for a free day of SQL Server training and networking, and listen to great speakers like Grant Fritchey, Brent Ozar, and Andy Leonard. Register while space is available.
Using the ROLLUP, CUBE, and GROUPING SETS Operators
Greg Larsen discusses the ROLLUP, CUBE and GROUPING SETS operators. These operators are used with the GROUP BY clause and allow you to create subtotals, grand totals and superset of subtotals. Read on to find out more about these additional GROUP BY operators.
What is Behaviour Driven (Database) Development?
Behaviour Driven Development (BDD) is not always clearly understood, and the term is particularly unfamiliar in database circles. Seb Rose introduces us to the fundamentals of BDD, and make some suggestions for how it might be relevant to database development.
Computational Biologist
A job Steve Jones has never heard of is using data to improve medical treatments.
Converting to data-driven code
How converting extensive, repetitive code to a data-driven approach resolved a maintenance headache and helped identify bugs
Calculate the Statistical Mode in SQL Server using T-SQL
Next to the average and the median, there is another statistical value that you can calculate over a set: the mode. This is the value that appears the most often in the set. The average and the median are straight forward to calculate with T-SQL in SQL Server, but how can we determine the mode using T-SQL?
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
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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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