DBA Skills: Striped Backup Video
Watch this short video on creating a striped backup for your database.
Application Containers For Cloud Computing
Containers promise to make applications more portable and efficient. The technology, originally based on Linux's cgroups, provides a way of running several applications as modular, platform-agnostic packages in isolation on the same server. Docker's open-source approach to containers has dominated the market, and Microsoft is producing its own equivalent Windows system. What next? Will Containers replace VMS? Robert Sheldon investigates.
SQL Injection, Still?
We still have problems with SQL Injection. Steve Jones has a few thoughts on why.
The Real World: Rebuilding Index - 1 Instance, 106 Databases
The article show a simple way we managed to schedule index rebuild and reorg for an SQL instance with 106 databases used by one application using a Scheduled job.
Automate SQL Server Express Backups and Purge Old Backups
SQL Server Express Edition does not include SQL Server Agent in order to schedule the SQL Server database backups. Here's how to automate the backups for SQL Server Express Edition and make sure the old backup files are deleted.
SQL Monitor Custom Metric: Tempdb Allocation Contention
If your code uses temporary tables, variable tables or dynamic cursors, this metric can help identify whether you have contention on tempdb allocation. Tempdb is shared by all databases and is used for many operations in a SQL Server instance, so it is common for tempdb to cause performance problems.
Salaries and Experience
Experience matters in setting your salary, but Steve Jones reminds us there are different types of experience, and there's more to life than money.
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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