In September, thousands of IT professionals, developers, and trainers descended on Orlando, FL, for Microsoft’s Ignite conference. This was Microsoft’s chance to make big announcements about artificial intelligence, Azure, SQL Server 2019, DevOps, and much more. The keynotes were live-streamed, and all the sessions are available for streaming on demand. From a distance, there was … Read more
Regulations may require that you audit exactly who does what in your databases. Robert Sheldon explains how SQL Server can help you meet those requirements with its built-in auditing capabilities.… Read more
Today, we use voice in many ways. We can order groceries, ask to hear certain musical recordings, and much more with voice commands to our devices. In this article, Lance Talbert demonstrates how to add voice commands to video games.… Read more
In this article, Andy Brown shares his knowledge of how to create calculated columns in tables, using Power BI as the host software (all of the formulae shown would work equally well in PowerPivot or SSAS Tabular). This article is designed to be the first in a series of articles which will show you how to master programming in DAX. … Read more
In my view, data security is an abstract concept, just as abstract as money, religion and fascination – all devised by humans. And anything that is human-made can be human-destroyed. When it comes to IT and data security, history has proven that pretty much anything can be cracked, taken, reshuffled, altered, refurbished, reheated and re-served. … Read more
SQLPSX is a useful library you can add to PowerShell to automate many DBA tasks. In this article, Laerte Junior demonstrates several useful commands and shows you how to create a SQL Agent job using this library to run daily DBA checks.… Read more
As more shops move to NoSQL databases, developers must learn new techniques for querying and updating data. In this article, Darko Martinović demonstrates how to work with MongoDB in .NET.… Read more
Database administrators are typically responsible for the security and availability of financial data. In this article, Robert Sheldon discusses SOX, passed in 2002, that governs financial data of publicly traded companies in the US.… Read more
Dynamic types were introduced in .NET 4. Dynamic objects let you work with structures such as JSON documents whose composition may not be known until runtime. In this article, Camilo Reyes explains how to work with dynamic types.… Read more
In the third article of this series on testing PowerShell code with Pester, Robert Cain demonstrates how to test the functions in a PowerShell module. … Read more
Recently, I thought about the difference between a career and a job. Technically, a job is one employment agreement out of many that span a career. A career could be database administration, while a job could be the time employed at one company. The difference between these could be considered in another way, however. If … Read more
Vue.js is a versatile JavaScript Framework that has many benefits for the developer building .NET web applications. It is, however, not easy to get started with this framework. In this article, Damon Armstrong provides an introduction to Vue.js.… Read more
With the billing data from your Azure Enterprise Agreement collected into one database, it is still necessary to break down the costs and provide access to the correct departments and individuals. This is important for chargeback and further analysis. In this article, Feodor Georgiev demonstrates how to provide granular access to the billing data.… Read more
In the third part of his series, Nicolas Prigent describes how to run post-deployment configuration and automation tasks on Azure Virtual Machines. Nicolas explains how to use Azure VM Extensions using the Azure PowerShell module to save time during the provisioning process.… Read more
HIPAA was signed into law in the United States in 1996. In this article, Robert Sheldon discusses how the act affects the day-to-day responsibilities of database administrators. … Read more
Being an entrepreneur isn’t for everyone; by the same token, being an employee is not either. There are serious pros and cons to each side that affect one’s stress level, work/life balance, and personal fulfillment. People don’t so much choose to be an entrepreneur as they are called to be one. Entrepreneurs generally know from … Read more
Every Database Administrator, developer, report writer, and anyone else who writes T-SQL to access SQL Server data, must understand how to read and interpret execution plans. My book leads you right from the basics of capturing plans, through how to interrupt them in their various forms, graphical or XML, and then how to use the … Read more
As new versions of SQL Server have been released, the Query Optimizer has undergone many improvements. Adaptive Query Processing, new in 2017, represents a new direction. This set of features provides some flexibility for varying join types, multi-statement table valued functions, and memory grants. In this article, Robert Sheldon explains the three features that make up Adaptive Query Processing … Read more
The Extended Events (or XEvents) feature has been part of SQL Server since 2008, but many database professionals struggle to get started using it. In this article, Phil Factor demonstrates several useful Extended Event sessions that measure just one thing in each. He then provides the code necessary to parse the resulting XML into something you can use.… Read more
SQL Server DBAs are typically quite familiar with security and best practices in Windows but may not understand how security works in Linux. In this article, Kellyn Pot'Vin-Gorman demonstrates how to manage user accounts in Linux and why working while logged in as root is a bad idea.… Read more
Compliant Database DevOps
