Interview questions
At LobsterPot Solutions one of the things we often do for our clients is participate in job interviews, to help get a feel for the technical ability of the people…
AI and SQL
Pinal Dave (@pinaldave), who might always exist in my mind as the person who took me to a KFC in Bengaluru, asks us about how AI has helped our roles…
Hekaton – the bad and the good, and a misconception
The SQL Server platform is a robust system, designed to handle data in a relational system through the “ACID” properties of transactions. That is, to ensure that any piece of…
My last ticket
There are a bunch of different things I do for clients, so it’s a bit strange to try to think what to write about in response to a question about…
Kelly Broekstra, MVP
It's not hard to see why Kelly has been recognised as a Microsoft Most Valued Professional, as she did last week. I think everyone who meets her understands right away…
Responding to cancelled projects
This month (welcome to 2024, by the way) Reitse Eskens (@2meterDBA) asks us about our failures. Our abandoned projects. More specifically, what we’ve learned from them. Thanks Reitse. My failures…
A time for gratitude
First a quick disclaimer. The timing of this is because saying thank is the theme for this month's T-SQL Tuesday, hosted by Kay Sauter. But the content is something that…
Tuning Using Window Functions
Sometimes query tuning involves taking a different approach to a problem. And given that other tuning options might be creating index(es) or redesigning tables - both of which are much…
How encrypted is encrypted?
Encryption is a funny thing. Since the dawn of communication, whenever people have wanted to keep their secrets secret, they've used some sort of encryption. I'm sure parents started spelling…
What’s wrong with SQL Trace?
This month, Grant Fritchey (@scarydba) asks us to write about Extended Events (XE). He mentions that they were a topic once before (it was in 2015 - more than 8…