Turbocharge Your Database Maintenance With Service Broker: Part 2
I demonstrate how to monitor and troubleshoot Service-Broker-task execution in the context of a database-maintenance process.
New SQL Monitor Metric: Principals with Sysadmin Login
This metric counts the number of principals who are members of the sysadmin fixed server role. SQL Server relies on role-based security to manage permissions. If multiple IT system administrators have permissions to set up new SQL Server logins, they might be inclined to do so as part of the sysadmin role. Adding a normal user to the sysadmin role could pose a security risk and is not recommended unless the principal is highly trusted.
The PoSh DBA – Getting Airborne with PowerShell
Maybe the best way of helping the busy database professional to get started with practical PowerShell-based administration is to pull together all the essential community cmdlets into a toolkit for the POSH DBA, and explain how and why you'd use them.
Blocking Users by IP
SQL Server MVP Brian Kelley brings us a great new article that solves a problem that might help your security. In this short piece, we learn how we can use logon triggers to block users based on their IP address.
What Do You Want to Learn?
This Friday Steve Jones wants to know what do you want to learn more about in SQL Server? It's the end of the year, with lots of speakers winding down their events, but looking forward to next year. Let us know now what you'd like to learn about in 2014.
SQL Server SQLCMD Basics
Sqlcmd makes many SQL Server tasks, such as automating test runs and maintenance tasks, easier and quicker. The sqlcmd command-line utility is valuable to any database developer or DBA as the prime means of executing batches of SQL Statements to SQL servers, and saving results to file. Rob Sheldon gives you the basic facts about this great utility.
SSIS Distributed Transactions
This article shows the steps to set-up distributed transactions for SSIS.
Building Real-World Microsoft BI Dashboards Today
There is a lot of Microsoft buzz about Power BI and Excel these days, but customers need real-world, professional business intelligence solutions that meet their complex real-world requirements today. In this article, Jen Underwood shares what technologies were used to develop a dashboard solution for a Fortune Global 500 company using Microsoft Business Intelligence technologies, and why. Some of the decisions may surprise you and the lessons learned are sure to be of value.
Project Hekaton
Today Steve Jones talks about the Hekaton features that are coming in SQL Server 2014.
Getting Started with Columnstored Index in SQL Server 2014 – Part 2
Column Store Index, which improves performance of data warehouse queries several folds, was first introduced in SQL Server 2012. Though it had several limitations, now SQL Server 2014 enhances the columnstore index and overcomes several of the earlier limitations. In this article, Arshad Ali discusses how you can get started using the enhanced columnstore index feature in SQL Server 2014 and do some performance tests.
Blogs
Shifting Mindsets: Why FinOps is Essential for Cloud Efficiency
By HeyMo0sh
As a DevOps practitioner, I’ve always focused on performance, scalability, and automation. But as...
March 2026 SQL Server Security Updates
By Brian Kelley
On Patch Tuesday, in addition to OS and Office security patches, Microsoft also released...
How Fabric Mirroring Transformed with SQL Server 2025
When mirroring was first released for Azure SQL Database, it used Change Data Capture...
Forums
Multiple Deployment Processes
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Multiple Deployment Processes
How to Use sqlpackage to Detect Schema Drift Between Azure SQL Databases
Comments posted to this topic are about the item How to Use sqlpackage to...
Upgrading Admin Queries
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Upgrading Admin Queries
Question of the Day
Upgrading Admin Queries
I have a query from a former DBA that we run on SQL Server 2025 to check on database metadata. This query references sys.sysaltfiles. I want to refactor this code to be more modern. Which DMV should I reference instead?
See possible answers