No Works of Art
Manual deployments and configuration of software is akin to creating works of art. Not exactly what Steve Jones would like to see if we are to practice software engineering.
Branching and Merging: Ten Pretty-Good Practices
After experiencing 'merge misery' personally, Konrad Lukasik came up with 10 well-tested ways of making branches and merges a stress-free part of application development.
Stairway to SQLCLR Level 3: Security (General and SAFE Assemblies)
In the third level of our Stairway to SQLCLR, we look at the various mechanisms in place to help us control Security. In this Level we will focus on SAFE mode and see how secure SQLCLR is by default.
Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) in SQL Server
There are several ways to implement encryption in SQL Server; Arshad Ali focuses on Transparent Data Encryption (TDE), which was introduced in SQL Server 2008 and is available in later releases.
Patching Problems
After some issues with a recent Windows patch, Steve Jones is concerned about the future of software updates.
Optimizing Transaction Log Throughput
As a DBA, it is vital to manage transaction log growth explicitly, rather than let SQL Server auto-growth events "manage" it for you. If you undersize the log, and then let SQL Server auto-grow it in small increments, you'll end up with a very fragmented log. This article demonstrates how this can have a significant impact on the performance of any SQL Server operations that need to read the log.
No reason to abandon SQL
The early signs are that we can now run a SQL-based relational database with distributed execution plans over commodity hardware, leaving just the task of splicing together of the result to the engine itself, then why can’t Microsoft or Oracle do it?
Blogs
Funny Money: #SQLNewBlogger
By Steve Jones
While wandering around the documentation looking for some Question of the Day topics, I...
Why Database AI Agents need Layers?
By Arun Sirpal
Third part in my Ai series with databases. When building AI solutions within the...
Un-Migrating From the Cloud: T-SQL Tuesday #199
By Steve Jones
This month we have a very interesting invitation from Koen Verbeeck. He has hosted...
Forums
Backup Availability Group
Please I am hoping for some feedback Specifications: Windows Server 2022 SQL Server 2022...
How Do the Experts Become Experts?
Comments posted to this topic are about the item How Do the Experts Become...
Stairway to Reliable Database Deployments Level 4 – Preparing for Production Deployment
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Stairway to Reliable Database Deployments...
Question of the Day
Secure Communications
As of June 2026, what is the best version of TLS to use with SQL Server?
See possible answers