Happy Holidays, Let's Do Nerdy Stuff

I'm actually writing this on my day off. I took a bunch of vacation around the holidays because I could, and because I don't take enough the rest of the year. Anyway, I'm just going to share how I've been spending my time (not counting time with the family, which I am certainly doing). I […]

UNISTR Escape

Deprecated Feature Tracking

The AI Bubble and the Weak Foundation Beam

The problem that I continue to struggle with the AI Bubble is not innovation, but who has leverage. The AI industry has quietly constructed a capital stack with too many mutual dependencies and too few independent cash flows. When AI profitability hiccups, the financial impact does not land in one place. It cascades across the entire championship and everyone loses and not all players are equally positioned to survive it. This is the AI Bubble in a foundational nutshell.

How to Query JSON Data Quickly in SQL Server, Part 2: SQL Server 2025

SQL Server 2025 and .NET 10 bring several new improvements to storing JSON natively in the database and querying it quickly.

SQL Server Licensing is Simple

Over the years I've had no shortage of licensing questions for SQL Server. At times it's felt a little crazy. Look at the licensing guide. Choose EE or SE and the number of cores. Then check if you're using VMs. Oh, and consider the cloud, and which cloud you're running a workload on. It's simple […]

Random Number Generator in SQL using Marsaglia Polar

How can we build a random number generator using Marsaglia Polar method in SQL Server without the use of external tools?

The Ending Substring

Personal Contact Is Vital

I'm writing this while in hiding at the PASS Data Community Summit that's taking place in Seattle this week. I just had a real surprise, finding out that DocumentDB is PostgreSQL under the covers and always has been. However, as much as I enjoy talking PostgreSQL, for the moment, I'll shut up about it. Instead, […]

Specifying the Collation