What Write Ahead Logging Is and Why It Matters
Kendra Little talks about write ahead logging in SQL Server, one of the basic concepts that developers and DBAs should understand.
Snake draft sorting in SQL Server, part 4
In the previous posts in this series (part 1, part 2, part 3), I described how I have optimized a long-running set of routines by processing databases, tables, and even subsets of tables in parallel. This leads to many separate jobs that all kick off at roughly the same time
How to Set Up Microsoft Fabric Database Mirroring for Azure Cosmos DB
This article shows how to configure database mirroring from CosmosDB to Microsoft Fabric.
How to Sort String Date Values on a Power BI Slicer Visual
In this article, we look at how to build a slicer visual in Power BI and how to create a custom sort order for the slicer values.
Is Perfect Software Attainable?
I was in a social media discussion the other day where someone said “Perfection isn’t real, but progress is.” This started me thinking, is there really no perfection? Can you not actually create a piece of software that is perfect? Of course you can. As long as your requirements are perfect, and the code does […]
Identify Tables With Dropped Columns
How easily can we find tables with dropped columns that need cleanup?
Manage Elastic jobs in Azure using Azure Elastic Jobs Manager
Microsoft Azure offers Azure Elastic Job agent as a managed service, enabling efficient scheduling of T-SQL workloads on Azure SQL Databases. Learn how to configure the service in this article.
Poor Database Design Realities
Steve sees that poor database design is the reality of the world and we have to work around that.
Snake draft sorting in SQL Server, part 3
In part 2 of this series, I showed an example implementation of distributing a long-running workload in parallel, in order to finish faster. In reality, though, this involves more than just restoring databases. And I have significant skew to deal with: one database that is many times larger than all the rest and has a higher growth rate.
Blogs
Advice I Like: Pyramid Schemes
By Steve Jones
If someone is trying to convince you it’s not a pyramid scheme, it’s a...
Using Prompt AI for a Travel Data Analysis
By Steve Jones
I was looking back at my year and decided to see if SQL Prompt...
FinOps for Kubernetes: Leveraging OpenCost, KubeGreen, and Kubecost for Cost Efficiency
In the era of cloud-native applications, Kubernetes has become the default standard platform for...
Forums
Database file shrink issue.
Hi experts, I have a 3+ TB database on a 2019 sql server which...
The North Star for the Year
Comments posted to this topic are about the item The North Star for the...
Multiple Escape Characters
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Multiple Escape Characters
Question of the Day
Multiple Escape Characters
In SQL Server 2025, I run this code (in a database with the appropriate collation):
SELECT UNISTR('%*3041%*308A%*304C%*3068 and good night', '%*') AS 'A Classic';
What is returned? See possible answers