How to Sort String Date Values on a Power BI Slicer Visual
In this article, we look at how to build a slicer visual in Power BI and how to create a custom sort order for the slicer values.
Is Perfect Software Attainable?
I was in a social media discussion the other day where someone said “Perfection isn’t real, but progress is.” This started me thinking, is there really no perfection? Can you not actually create a piece of software that is perfect? Of course you can. As long as your requirements are perfect, and the code does […]
Identify Tables With Dropped Columns
How easily can we find tables with dropped columns that need cleanup?
Manage Elastic jobs in Azure using Azure Elastic Jobs Manager
Microsoft Azure offers Azure Elastic Job agent as a managed service, enabling efficient scheduling of T-SQL workloads on Azure SQL Databases. Learn how to configure the service in this article.
Poor Database Design Realities
Steve sees that poor database design is the reality of the world and we have to work around that.
Snake draft sorting in SQL Server, part 3
In part 2 of this series, I showed an example implementation of distributing a long-running workload in parallel, in order to finish faster. In reality, though, this involves more than just restoring databases. And I have significant skew to deal with: one database that is many times larger than all the rest and has a higher growth rate.
Basic Always On Availability Groups in SQL Server Standard
Once Windows Server Failover Clusters have been set up, we can set up Availability Groups in SQL Server. This article will focus on setting up Basic Always-On Availability Groups in SQL Server Standard Edition.
This facilitates High Availability in SQL Server Standard, with three levels of availability and failover:
Asynchronous commit with manual or forced failover,
Synchronous commit with manual or forced failover,
Synchronous commit with automatic failover.
PowerBI premium capacity administration: dataset monitoring and tuning
Over the years Power BI has evolved into a complex and varied ecosystem of tools and solutions, which in its turn demands several supporting roles: there are, of course, developers, data engineers and data scientists, but there is need for one more, i.e. a capacity administrator.
Using AI for the First Draft
What is an AI LLM useful for? Steve thinks a first draft is not a bad way to look at your AI results.
WITspiration - Year 2
A new cohort of WITspiration is strating, the women in technology mentoring circle.
Blogs
A New Word: los vidados
By Steve Jones
los vidados – n. the half-remembered acquaintances you knew years ago, who you might...
In-Person CISA Training – April 13-16, 2026
By Brian Kelley
I will be leading an in-person Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA) exam prep class...
EightKB 2026
EightKB is back again for 2026! The biggest online SQL Server internals conference is...
Forums
query to track time spent on individual tasks in SSIS
Hi everyone I am looking at building a query to determine how much time...
SQL Server Transactional Replication from Always On Availability Groups to Azure SQL Database
Comments posted to this topic are about the item SQL Server Transactional Replication from...
Hidden Heroes
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Hidden Heroes
Question of the Day
Identities and Sequences I
When thinking of the Identity property for auto incrementing columns and sequences for the same action, which are explicitly linked to increment a number in a table when a new row is added?
See possible answers