I’m sure you’ve heard the adage that people are more afraid of public speaking than they are of death. On the other hand, some folks can’t get enough public speaking and look forward to opportunities to get up in front of a group and talk. Writing is not so scary since it’s a solitary activity, […]
2021-10-30
208 reads
It might be DNS is the problem more often in the future. Steve notes the attacks on this system are rising.
2021-10-23
112 reads
It's almost time for Brent Ozar's annual salary survey. Steve reminds you that you can influence the questions, but more importantly, take the survey and provide data for all of us.
2021-10-02
318 reads
I recently began writing an article to compare the performance of several window functions to traditional query methods. I began with my favorite function, LAG, but soon found that there were so many other ways to write the query that the article never covered the additional window functions. The article was quite fun to write, […]
2021-09-18
208 reads
Many data professionals have begun working remotely over the past year and a half which translates to less time spent commuting. In my own case, I’ve been a remote worker for almost ten years, but before that I spent two hours on the road each day. This got me wondering what folks have done with […]
2021-08-28
262 reads
Practice makes perfect:” right? Well, not exactly. The reality of it all is that this saying is an untrustworthy aphorism. I discovered this in my “younger” days when I was a passionate tennis player, practicing and playing 20+ hours a week. No matter what my passion level was, without some serious coaching (and perhaps a […]
2021-08-14
247 reads
I've had to install SQL Server many times over the years. Often it has felt that most of these installs were one-offs, a dev server, a new QA instance, a production server for a brand new application. A few times I've had to recover from disaster, including restoring master, but often, I just installed SQL […]
2021-07-31
476 reads
Time is a precious commodity, and so much of our time is dedicated to working. IT professionals often have jobs with good benefits, including generous paid time off. It’s important to get away from work to relax and recharge, but, sometimes, it’s difficult to take those days that belong to us. Even when we do […]
2021-07-17
102 reads
Leaving aside, for a second, Freud’s psychoanalytical definitions, the term “ego” generally refers to a person’s sense of self, and their self-esteem. In casual usage, however, it usually appears in the adjectival form, “egotistical” (most often followed by “jerk”). You don’t need to be a jerk to be a DBA; humility is important. However, ego is important […]
2021-06-26
290 reads
Of all the valuable attributes of a DBA, from passion to humility to practicality, perhaps one of the most important attributes may turn out to be the most seemingly nebulous: foresight. According to Free Dictionary, foresight is the "perception of the significance and nature of events before they have occurred". Foresight does not come naturally to most people, as the […]
2021-05-15
314 reads
By Steve Jones
I’ve often done some analysis of my year in different ways. Last year I...
By Steve Jones
This was Redgate in 2010, spread across the globe. First the EU/US Here’s Asia...
By John
Today is Christmas and while I do not expect anybody to actual be reading...
I have a couple of SQL Agent job steps which run PowerShell commands of...
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Database security permissions save script
I have a SQL Agent job for backing up a set of Analysis Services...
I want to use the new BASE64_ENCODE() function in SQL Server 2025, but return a string that isn't large type. What is the longest varbinary string I can pass in and still get a varchar(8000) returned?
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