Understanding a Database
The ways in which you might try and reverse engineer a database design are on Steve's mind today.
2025-03-10 (first published: 2018-11-30)
312 reads
Editorials
Shadow AI Data Leak Risk or “From the Desk of I saw that Coming”
CSO recently published an article based on a report from Harmonic about generative AI data leaks, and the findings were eye-opening. According to the report, over 8% of employee prompts to public large language models (LLMs) contained sensitive data, ranging from security and compliance issues to privacy and legal vulnerabilities. This wasn’t just a handful […]
2025-03-08
149 reads
Tracking Table Sizes
Today Steve asks if you track the details of your table growth inside a database.
2025-03-07
185 reads
The Job Outlook for Database Professionals
The job outlook for database professionals is good, but it's not that easy to get a great job. Steve has some advice for you today.
2025-03-05
238 reads
A Poor Data Model
Steve has a few thoughts on natural keys, which often turn out not to be as unique as we expect.
2025-03-03
163 reads
What is time?
There was a post on X I read today about valuing your time. The gist was that since this person had waited 9 minutes to save $4, they valued their time at $27 an hour. I get the point being made. Time is valuable and you need to set the value of your time. It […]
2025-03-01
84 reads
Your Biggest Data Model Complaints
Today Steve asks which data model issues are most annoying to you.
2025-02-28
138 reads
Why Not Use AI?
Steve re-posts a question from someone else, asking why you wouldn't want to use an AI.
2025-02-26
208 reads
2025-02-24
145 reads
Triggers
Triggers. Who doesn’t like a good, lively debate about triggers? With the extreme cold that we’ve experienced this past week in the northeastern U.S., I feel like a little heated debate wouldn’t be a bad way to forget about the cold. But alas, I’m not here to talk about database triggers. Sorry, we’ll have to […]
2025-02-23 (first published: 2025-02-22)
96 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