Drop and Recreate
Steve Jones notes that disasters come in all shapes and sizes, but a little prep that you might not have thought of can reduce the scale of the issues.
Debugging Natively-Compiled Stored Procedures Statements
Considering that SQL Server 2014 Natively Compiled Stored Procedures are compiled into binary code, you may have asked yourself if it's possible to monitor statement execution. In this tip Daniel Farina explains how you can monitor SQL Server Natively Compiled Stored Procedures.
The Last Job
Steve Jones contemplates employment and the future of the last job he'll have. This Friday he asks you if this might be yours.
What, when and who? Auditing 101 - Part 2
In my previous article we discussed Change Tracking which is one of the new technologies introduced by Microsoft. This article will focus on Change Data Capture.
Finding SQL Server views with (or without) a certain property
In this tip Aaron Bertrand uses SQL Server metadata queries to discover SQL Server views that have certain properties or use certain syntax.
Citizen Programmers
Steve Jones finds the Salesforce platform interesting and notes we have lots of "citizen programmers" doing work with data.
Cloud Identities versus Federated Identities in Office 365
Identities, the 'accounts' by which Cloud and Web users identify themselves, are tricky to manage, and tiresome for the users. Cloud services such as Office 365 have their main use in large organisations and so there have to be easy ways for system administrators to maintain them. Microsoft provide three alternative strategies; Cloud identities, Synced identities and federated identities. What is the differences between them, and which should you choose?
SQL Monitor Custom Metric: Excessive Virtual Log Files in Transaction Log
This metric picks up excessive counts of Virtual Log Files (VLF) in a transaction log that can lead to performance problems, including write performance, restore and recovery times. The ideal value for this metric should be less than 25; excessively high values (greater than 50) can cause high write times when writing to the transaction log.
SQL Server Survey
How do you use SQL Server, and how do you expect this to change next year? Fill in our survey, and enter a prize draw to win Amazon vouchers.
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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