The 2013 Tribal Awards
The inaugural 2013 Tribal Awards kick off today and Steve Jones has a few thoughts.
SQL Server Database Backup and Restore with Windows Azure Blob Storage Cloud Services using T-SQL Commands
SQL Server 2012 introduces a new feature to issues backups on the Windows Azure Blob Storage service directly and restore from there when needed. But how does it work and how to get started using T-SQL commands for backup and restore operation?
What is a Database Administrator today?
Today we have a guest editorial from Jim Youmans that asks "what does it mean to be a DBA today?"
Cloud Services for the DBA
A critical part of any DBA's role is implementing the systems that will improve in the long term their organization's guardianship, use and understanding of its data. Too often, however, this gets lost in the fog of immediate and urgent tasks. Gareth Marlow explains why he believes Cloud services will play an increasingly prominent role in helping DBAs achieve their strategic goals.
Partitioned Views
A look at Partitioned Views, their advantages, disadvantages backed up by examples and statistics.
SQLServerCentral apologizes and you can win a book
After a plagiarized article this week, a content for you.
SQL Server Database RESTORE WITH MOVE or not WITH MOVE
Mike Eastland frequently restores production databases to various development servers. The drive layouts between the servers are almost never the same. He is constantly shuffling files on his development servers due to space constraints, which in turn breaks the automated restore scripts because the MOVE clauses are invalidated. Does he have to use the MOVE clause every time he does a restore?
Competition or Cooperation
Would you rather work with people, or compete with them? Steve Jones has comments on the Microsoft Stack Ranking system that seems to encourage the latter.
Getting Started with Microsoft Power Query for Excel
Power Query, provided as part of Microsoft Power BI self-service solution, is an Excel add-in that can be used for data discovery, reshaping the data and combining data coming from different sources. Power Query is one of Excel add-ins. Read on to learn how to install and get started using it.
Blogs
Advice I Like: Respect
By Steve Jones
“Don’t aim to have others like you; aim to have them respect you.” –...
Setting Up a Mac for Data Engineering and AI Work
If you work with data pipelines, SQL, notebooks, or machine learning models, a Mac...
Want to look at cloud reporting but not sure what the costs will be?
By ChrisJenkins
Have you been thinking about migrating your reporting to Microsoft Fabric or Snowflake but...
Forums
SQL Art, Part 4: Happy 4th of July — A British DBA's Guide to Celebrating a War We Don't Talk About
Comments posted to this topic are about the item SQL Art, Part 4: Happy...
locking down agent for new user on our dev machine
hi , a new user wants to be able to add sql agent jobs...
SQL Server Enum Implementation: A Single-Row View Strategy for Avoiding Magic Values
Comments posted to this topic are about the item SQL Server Enum Implementation: A...
Question of the Day
BIT_COUNT I
In SQL Server 2025, I have a table (dbo.UserPermission) that contains this data:
UserID UserPermissions 15 23 37What is returned when I run this code:
select bit_count(UserPermissions) as PermissionCount from dbo.UserPermission where UserID = 3;See possible answers