Someone here imported a large text file using ADF, and all the fields ended up as nvarchar(max). I was livid. I don't think the person who did this even...

A Data Scientist friend said that he can do more with a high quality 1Gb dataset than he ever could with many TB/PB from the data swamp.

He explained that a...

In the last decade I've seen a change. That third, smaller group seems to have grown significantly. It now appears to me that third group is the majority. Even...

It takes a lot of hard work to make something look easy.

In all honesty my experience has been that the ones that don't grind are the exceptions rather than the...

My ears are burning! Yep, right of passage mistake.

One thing I have learned over time is that cookie cutter projects, Docker images or templates are extremely useful, even for personal...

I tried running one of my old articles through ChatGPT asking it to improve its readability.  I was pleased with the results.

When writing for SQLServerCentral I use the yoast plug-in...

My company gives every employee a small budget per month for training.  With careful management of that budget it is possible to get 2 or 3 Udemy courses a month. ...

Offerings from cloud vendors seem heavily based on open source albeit customised to some level.  Anyone remember HeartBleed, the vulnerability in OpenSSL?  I think people have a vague awareness that...

Jeff, do your teams have any tools to help them identify the impact of their change?

Years ago a senior developer said, "I hear you and want to help you but...

I do wonder whether the rejection of "big design upfront" has gone too far towards the "inadequate attention to design" end of the spectrum.

It strikes me that to build a...

One under-appreciated characteristic of  a long standing IT team is that they tend to have a good grasp of the business domain for which their work is used.  In some...

Does anyone else find that by working out how to articulate the problem in a way that a junior data engineer can understand it, the solution appears naturally out of...

"Something doesn't work" is quite broad in scope.  Not expected output/result at one end through to some form of error being thrown at the other.

With errors there is a clear...

When I started working for a business to business direct mail company and later an advertising agency I found the use of statistics fascinating.  If a company wants to be...

Certainly in the AWS cloud patching is on AWS's half of the shared responsibility model.  You can request a delay to a patch but it isn't an indefinite delay.

I am...