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.
Basic Always On Availability Groups in SQL Server Standard
Once Windows Server Failover Clusters have been set up, we can set up Availability Groups in SQL Server. This article will focus on setting up Basic Always-On Availability Groups in SQL Server Standard Edition.
This facilitates High Availability in SQL Server Standard, with three levels of availability and failover:
Asynchronous commit with manual or forced failover,
Synchronous commit with manual or forced failover,
Synchronous commit with automatic failover.
PowerBI premium capacity administration: dataset monitoring and tuning
Over the years Power BI has evolved into a complex and varied ecosystem of tools and solutions, which in its turn demands several supporting roles: there are, of course, developers, data engineers and data scientists, but there is need for one more, i.e. a capacity administrator.
Using AI for the First Draft
What is an AI LLM useful for? Steve thinks a first draft is not a bad way to look at your AI results.
WITspiration - Year 2
A new cohort of WITspiration is strating, the women in technology mentoring circle.
Bridging Snowflake and Azure Data Stack: A Step-by-Step Guide
This article shows how to access Snowflake information from Synapse Analytics.
DBCC CLONEDATABASE is Semi-Discontinued
Microsoft is no longer supporting some uses for DBCC CLONEDATABASE. Read a few of Steve's thoughts on the change.
Blogs
Learn Better: Pause to Review More
By Brian Kelley
If you want to learn better, pause more in your learning to intentionally review.
Azure SQL Managed Instance Next-Gen: Bring on the IOPS
By John
If you’ve used Azure SQL Managed Instance General Purpose, you know the drill: to...
SQL, MDX, DAX – the languages of data
By DataOnWheels
Ramblings of a retired data architect Let me start by saying that I have...
Forums
Two foreign keys to the same table. Can't cascade deletes.
Not sure if this is really a relational theory question but it seems about...
Connecting Power BI to SSAS and effective user not working
Hi everyone, Below is a consolidated summary of what we validated Architecture & data...
High Availability setup - has anyone seen this method?
Hi all, I recently moved to a new employer who have their HA setup...
Question of the Day
Encoding URLs
I have this data in a SQL Server 2025 table:
CREATE TABLE Response ( ResponseID INT NOT NULL CONSTRAINT ResponsePK PRIMARY KEY , ResponseVal VARBINARY(5000) ) GOIf I want to get a value from this table that I can add to a URL in a browser, which of these code items produces a result I can use? See possible answers