A New Word: Anderance
anderance – n. the awareness that your partner perceives the relationship from a totally different angle than you – spending years looking at a different face across the table,...
2025-09-12
506 reads
Blog Posts
AI and Cybersecurity: the Genie is Out of the Bottle
Today's reality is that cybercriminals are increasingly using AI to develop better attacks. This is just the latest reported technique, probably because it's starting to be used more often....
2025-09-12 (first published: 2025-08-21)
240 reads
Free Online Sessions – Building the €100 DWH and Indexing for Dummies
I’m giving two online sessions soon on virtual events that are free to attend. The first one is at Retro Data (20th of September), a new virtual conference focusing...
2025-09-12 (first published: 2025-09-11)
383 reads
The Strategic Imperative of SQL Performance Tuning in Azure
Aligning Technical Excellence with Organizational Agility Tuning SQL performance in Azure transcends routine database management and becomes a strategic imperative when viewed through an executive lens. Slow database operations...
2025-09-12 (first published: 2025-08-21)
337 reads
Adding SQL Server 2025 to my Laptop
I wanted to do some testing of SQL Server 2025 on my laptop. I have written before how I avoided installing SQL Server on the laptop and use containers...
2025-09-10 (first published: 2025-08-20)
676 reads
Scooby-Doo and the Mystery of Cloud Costs (Let’s have some fun!) – Scooby Dooing Episode 1
If there’s one thing I’ve learned in consulting, it’s that SQL Server, and other database performance tuning isn’t just about faster queries—it’s directly tied to your bottom line in...
2025-09-10 (first published: 2025-08-25)
308 reads
SQL Server Availability Groups
Flexibility and Scale at the Database Level When SQL Server 2012 introduced Availability Groups (AGs), they changed the HA/DR game. Unlike Failover Cluster Instances (FCIs), which protect the whole...
2025-09-10
23 reads
T-SQL Tuesday #190–Mastering a New Technical Skill
It’s time for T-SQL Tuesday again and this time Todd Kleinhans has a great invitation that is near and dear to my heart: mastering a new or existing technical...
2025-09-09
67 reads
From Chaos to Clarity: How Microsoft Purview Streamlines Data Governance
In today’s digital landscape, data is both a strategic asset and a potential liability. Organizations are generating vast amounts of information across cloud platforms, on-premises systems, and hybrid environments....
2025-09-08
567 reads
Get required permissions for DMVs
Part of my job at work is to update Transact-SQL reference content. System dynamic management views (DMVs) have permissions that are managed in the SQL Server Database Engine source...
2025-09-08 (first published: 2025-08-23)
251 reads
Blogs
Identity Columns Can’t Be Updated: #SQLNewBlogger
By Steve Jones
I’m not sure I knew identity column values could not be updated. I ran...
Rolling Back a Broken Release
By Steve Jones
We had an interesting discussion about deployments in databases and how you go forward...
A bespoke reporting solution doesn’t have to cost the earth
By ChrisJenkins
You could be tolerating limited reporting because there isn’t an off the shelf solution...
Forums
Can someone please explain what happens?
I have mentioned this several times over several years. Can someone please help me...
SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT) returns null when nothing is found instead of 0
SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT Component) AS Found FROM tblComponents WHERE(Component NOT LIKE '%[a-z]%') AND(LTRIM(RTRIM(Component)) = 'GM13622')...
Remotely Engineer Fabric Lakehouse objects: The Fabric Modern Data Platform
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Remotely Engineer Fabric Lakehouse objects:...
Question of the Day
Creating JSON III
In a SQL Server 2025 table, called Beer, I have this data:
BeerIDBeerName 1Becks 2Fat Tire 3Mac n Jacks 4Alaskan Amber 8KirinI run this code:
SELECT JSON_OBJECTAGG(
BeerID: BeerName )
FROM beer;
What are the results? See possible answers