SQL Server Threats
Is your SQL Server truly secure? Here are the top cyber threats targeting it. Learn how you can stop them before it strikes.
Using psycopg2 to Connect Python to PostgreSQL
Learn how to connect to a PostgreSQL database from Python with this popular library.
Why CQRS and Event Sourcing Are Gaining Ground in High-Concurrency Web Systems
In web app development company boardrooms, architects and engineers are debating old assumptions. Scaling up isn’t just about faster servers or better caching anymore. It’s about reshaping how systems think. CQRS (Command Query Responsibility Segregation) and Event Sourcing are no longer fringe ideas. They’re becoming default choices in high-concurrency systems where consistency, auditability, and performance […]
Working with Indexes on SSMS
Overview In SQL Server, indexing is a technique used to improve the performance of queries by reducing the amount of data that SQL Server needs to scan. You can think of it like a table of contents in a book—it helps SQL Server find data more quickly. In this article, we will cover the following […]
Yet another Date Dimension
Evolution of code The thing with any bit of code that has been around for a while, is that when change comes along, the tendency is to cater for the change by adding new stuff, while nothing gets taken away. Some stuff has definitely been taken away from this Date Dimension, but some historical artefacts […]
Add a Second NIC for an Availability Group to Separate Network Traffic
Introduction Sometimes we face the scenario in an enterprise environment that the database in SQL Server Always On Availability Group (AOAG) has high concurrency read and write access from application servers. If we keep using the one network interface card for both network traffic of database connections from application servers and database mirroring between AOAG […]
How Much Can You Learn?
This Friday Steve Jones wonders about the upper limits for what you may learn in a year.
Picking the ON or WHERE Clause for the SQL Predicate
Helping people solve T-SQL problems is one of my favorite hobbies. Someone messaged me the other day with a complex query that was almost complete except for one issue. He needed to perform a LEFT OUTER JOIN but had to filter based on a value from the right table. However, when he added the filter, SQL removed rows from the left table. The task was to decide where to place the SQL predicate: in the ON or WHERE clause.
Data Sovereignty in the Cloud
Steve has a few thoughts on the lack of data sovereignty in the cloud, with an outlook that isn't very positive.
What is Delayed Durability in SQL Server — And Should You Turn It On?
Learn about delayed durability in SQL Server and how it might help you with a heavily loaded server.
Blogs
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...
Presenting with Visual Studio Code
A while back I wrote a quick post on setting up key mappings in...
Advice I Like: In 100 Years
By Steve Jones
In 100 years a lot of what we take to be true now will...
Forums
AllocationType as ROW_OVERFLOW_DATA
Hello, I inherited a number of tables with like 20-30 column using nvarchar(256) in...
is it true we cant debug c# scripts in ssis anymore under vs
Hi, i'm running vs2022. I'm trying out a c# script that i'd like to...
Question of the Day
Missing the Jaro Winkler Distance
I upgraded a SQL Server 2019 instance to SQL Server 2025. I wanted to test the fuzzy string search functions. I run this code:
SELECT JARO_WINKLER_DISTANCE('tim', 'tom')
I get this error message:Msg 195, Level 15, State 10, Line 1 'JARO_WINKLER_DISTANCE' is not a recognized built-in function name.What is wrong? See possible answers