Is Unit Testing Important?
Testing our applications is important, but at what level do we need to test? Steve Jones talks about unit testing today, and wonders if this is prevalent for SQL Server developers.
Worst Day as a DBA Story Finalists
We asked DBAs to share their worst days. Some are funny, others tragic, many both. Here are the 5 finalists, vote for your favorite story to be THE worst day as a DBA.
Automating the Retrieval of SQL Backups from Windows Azure BLOB Storage
If your database server is in Azure, then it makes sense to do backups into Azure too. SQL Server 2014 supports backups to the cloud, and particularly well with Managed Backup. Once your backups are safely in an Azure BLOB, then what? Mike Wood takes up the story.
Automate Sliding Window Partition Maintenance: Part III
Part 3 of Hugh Scott's series on automating sliding window partitions in SQL Server using PowerShell
On Handling Dates in SQL
The handling of dates in TSQL is complex - when SQL Server was Sybase, it was forced by the lack of prevailing standards in SQL to create its own ways of processing and formatting dates and times. Joe Celko looks forward to a future when it is possible to write standard SQL date-processing code with SQL Server.
Grant EXEC on all Stored Procedures to a Role
Easily grant exec permission to all stored procedures to a database role in SQL 2005 or higher.
Privacy and Data
Much of the data collected by companies is being sold for profit. This data isn't treated well and while not much may change, perhaps we should be aware of how we handle data as professionals.
The PoSh DBA – Specifying and Gathering Performance Counters
If you need to keep tabs on a number of servers and applications in a Windows domain then performance counters provide the bedrock of information. It is important to identify the counters you need and gather baseline data to allow you to create alerts when abnormal conditions occur.
Microsoft SQL Server 2014 released to manufacturing
, Quentin Clark, corporate vice president of the Data Platform Group, announced that SQL Server 2014, the foundation of Microsoft’s cloud-first data platform, is released to manufacturing and will be generally available on April 1.
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
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...
Secure Communications
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Secure Communications
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