How a Microsoft-signed SQL Server stored procedure lets sysadmins bypass disabled xp_cmdshell
Discover how a Microsoft-signed system procedure bypasses SQL Server's disabled xp_cmdshell setting - plus detection and mitigation steps for defenders
Building a SQL Server Fleet Audit That Leadership Actually Reads
Learn how to build a report that shows the health of your database estate that your leadership will read and use.
“But NOLOCK won’t hurt me if I’m using an index!”
NOLOCK is bad and you probably shouldn't use it, but every time I mention that publicly, the pushback just keeps coming. I don't know why people so firmly believe that their situation couldn't possibly be affected by bad/random data from NOLOCK.
Split Large Queries in Athena with a Simple Modulo Trick
Learn how you might balance the load in Amazon Athena when you have large partition windows.
Today's AI
Are GenAI models getting better? Is today's model the worst one you'll use in the future? Steve has a few thoughts.
Using Friendly Names for SQL Servers via DNS
At my organization, servers have a very cryptic name or a name where you can’t immediately tell the function. For instance, Amazon is the name of the SQL Server which our SharePoint uses as a back-end and Nile is the SQL Server hosting the databases for our HR application. This isn’t intuitive and it makes upgrading the servers a challenge because we always have to go back and touch the applications
Four Rules for Adding AI Without Breaking What Already Works
Kellyn talks about the four golden rules when adding AI features to existing applications and systems.
Optimized Locking in SQL Server 2025
Learn about Optimized Locking in the latest versions of SQL Server and Azure SQL Database.
Blogs
DiskANN Experiment — Exploring Entry Points and Graph Neighborhoods
Introduction I was experimenting with vector search in SQL Server 2025 using approximately 3.8...
T-SQL Tuesday #203: Risk and Reward
By Steve Jones
This is timely, as I’m currently on a boat in the Adriatic taking a...
dataMinds Connect 2026 – Slides & Scripts
You can find the slides and SQL scripts for my session “Spice up your...
Forums
Communication, For Incidents and Life
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Communication, For Incidents and Life
PostgreSQL psql Meta Commands: Tables
Comments posted to this topic are about the item PostgreSQL psql Meta Commands: Tables
Building a Support Ticket Triage Report with IIF() and CHOOSE() in SQL Server
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Building a Support Ticket Triage...
Question of the Day
PostgreSQL psql Meta Commands: Tables
Which of the following psql meta commands (also called backslash or slash commands) will provide information about tables within a database?
See possible answers