Watson Freemium
IBM has released a free version of its Watson service to help people perform analytics on their data.
Prevent Confidential Data at the Application Layer from getting into SQL Server
In this tip Tim Smith looks at different approaches to stop confidential data from getting into the database.
Hierarchies on Steroids #1: Convert an Adjacency List to Nested Sets
SQL Server MVP Jeff Moden shows us a new very high performance method to convert an "Adjacency List" to “Nested Sets” on a million node hierarchy in less than a minute and 100,000 nodes in just seconds. Not surprisingly, the "steroids" come in a bottle labeled "Tally Table".
No Compelling Reason
Steve Jones wants to know if you have compelling reasons to upgrade or not upgrade this week.
A TDD Journey: 3- Mocks vs. Stubs; Test Frameworks; Assertions; ReSharper Accelerators
Test-Driven Development (TDD) involves the repetition of a very short development cycle that begins with an initially-failing test that defines the required functionality, and ends with producing the minimum amount of code to pass that test, and finally refactoring the new code. Michael Sorens continues his introduction to TDD by implementing the first tests and introducing the topics of Test doubles; Test Runners, Constraints and Assertions.
Data Mining Part 17: Working with Reports
In this chapter, we will learn how to create Data Mining Reports using Reporting Services.
Data Mining Part 17: Working with Reports
In this chapter, we will learn how to create Data Mining Reports using Reporting Services.
The 10 (.5) Commandments for IT Professionals
A list of the commandments, or at least suggestions, that Simon Holzman sees as important for IT professionals.
Azure Virtual Machines Part 0: A VM Primer
Mike Martin kicks off his series on Azure Virtual Machines with a primer, full of background and terms. To fully understand the Azure Virtual Machines offering, Mike explains how everything is connected and co-existing.
A Dearth of Comments
Steve Jones talks about one of the least favorite things for IT people: documentation. How much do you really need to do?
Blogs
Stupid Things I Did With AI: ASCII Art
By Steve Jones
I ran across this article recently (https://www.gatesnotes.com/meet-bill/source-code/reader/microsoft-original-source-code) and it has a great opening piece...
Simple Talks Podcasting in 2026
By Steve Jones
I’m in the UK today, having arrived this morning in London. Hopefully, by this...
SSMS 22 still inserting tabs instead of spaces
I’m not trying to start up a debate whether you should use tabs or...
Forums
Script Task execution error with HTTP request
I have a script task that tries to execute a HTTP request, which seems...
SQL Server 2025 Standard Developer Edition
Comments posted to this topic are about the item SQL Server 2025 Standard Developer...
URL Safe or Not?
Comments posted to this topic are about the item URL Safe or Not?
Question of the Day
URL Safe or Not?
If I use BASE4_ENCODE() in SQL Server 2025, is the output URL Safe by default?
See possible answers