Taking Care of Things Today
Steve Jones talks about procrastination today and how you might not want to do that with your SQL Servers.
Untrusted Foreign Keys with NOT FOR REPLICATION Option on the Key
My Foreign Keys are STILL untrusted after the double CHECK. Here's how you can fix this issue.
Questions About Pivoting Data in SQL Server You Were Too Shy to Ask
Of all the basic SQL operations, the pivot seems to cause the most problems. It turns out that there are several questions that come to mind while learning about pivoting, but which are seldom asked on forums.
Returning Sorted Record Sets Using the ORDER BY Clause
Having your data returned to you in some meaningful sorted order is important sometimes. If you don’t tell SQL Server you want to order the results of a SELECT statement then there is no guarantee that your result set will come back in a particular order. To make sure a result set is ordered you need to use the ORDER BY clause. In this article I will be exploring how to return an order result set by using the ORDER BY clause.
A Little Empathy
Perspective makes a big difference and Steve Jones looks at how you might change the way you think about clients, customers, and the work you do.
Prevent sp_ Procedures with SQLCop
Learn how you can use SQLCop to prevent your developers from writing stored procedures that are named sp_ something.
Data Cleaning in SQL 2012 with Data Quality Services
Feodor Georgiev provides a thorough walkthrough on setting up SQL Server's Data Quality Services (DQS) and creating the rules it uses to function as a first step towards data cleansing.
Hadoop and SQL Server
Hadoop is a technology that's getting quite a bit of attention in the last few years, including integration with SQL Server. Steve Jones talks about the technology and how it might fit in your career.
Options to Improve SQL Server Bulk Load Performance
In this tip Ben Snaidero looks at how to improve SQL Server Bulk Load performance. He focuses his performance tests on options using the BULK INSERT T-SQL command to judge how the various options affect speed.
Dynamically Create Tables Based on an Access Table
Create and Load Sql Server Tables based on Dynamic Access Database
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
Comments posted to this topic are about the item The Quiet Part
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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