Ben Johnston in Blogs SQL Server Regular Expression Performance and Guidelines SQL Server 2025 introduces regular expression (regex) functions to the TSQL language. You could do this in previous versions with... 02 January 2026 15 min read 111
Ben Johnston in Blogs Managed Instance Gotchas – Configuration Items In my last post I described issues that might stop your migration to a SQL Server Managed Instance (SQL MI).... 13 May 2025 10 min read
Ben Johnston in Blogs Managed Instance Gotchas – Error Conditions I was recently on a project to migrate a very transactional installation of SQL Server to Azure SQL Managed Instance... 31 March 2025 9 min read 2
Ben Johnston in Blogs SQL Server 2022 CU Updates and Error Code 0x851A0043 I’ve been working in the Azure space for the last few years and less with full server installations. Azure leaves... 18 February 2025 5 min read
Ben Johnston in Blogs A Use Case for Memory-Optimized Tempdb Metadata I recently had an interesting production SQL Server issue that turned out to be very easy to fix. The fix... 08 January 2025 10 min read
Ben Johnston in Blogs Writing an Efficient Query SQL is easy to start writing. The basic syntax to start returning data is very simple. This low threshold for... 19 October 2024 20 min read 3
Ben Johnston in Blogs Choosing Data Types and Column Options An entire post on choosing the correct data types either seems like overkill or much needed and overdue. The perspective... 31 August 2024 27 min read 11
Ben Johnston in SQL Server How to master a database configuration audit in SQL Server: a complete guide A SQL Server database configuration audit is where most issues are found — from compatibility levels and file locations, to... 20 August 2024 16 min read
Ben Johnston in SQL Server SQL Server Configuration Audit: Complete Checklist and T-SQL Scripts Complete SQL Server configuration audit checklist with T-SQL scripts: edition and patch level, file locations, sp_configure settings, logon triggers, login... 25 July 2024 22 min read 1
Ben Johnston in SQL Server How to successfully execute a SQL Server hardware audit (complete guide) Learn how to audit SQL Server hardware and Azure cloud configuration — covering CPU, memory, storage, OS version, and backups... 17 July 2024 14 min read
Ben Johnston in SQL Server SQL Server Audit Checklist: Discovery & Setup Audit SQL Server with a structured discovery checklist. Covers server configuration, disk and memory, backups, security, database settings, and code... 06 June 2024 30 min read
Ben Johnston Building a Culture of Data: The Technical Aspects In the first part of this two-part series, I covered the mostly non-technical aspects of building a data culture. While... 19 April 2024 13 min read
Ben Johnston in Culture Building a Culture of Data One of the major trends in enterprise computing, and really in enterprises themselves is an increased emphasis on data. My... 04 April 2024 19 min read
Ben Johnston in Blogs Batch Delete in SQL Server: Six Patterns for Large-Scale DELETE Operations Six practical T-SQL patterns for deleting large numbers of rows in SQL Server without locking tables, blocking users, or growing... 01 March 2024 25 min read
Ben Johnston in Blogs Feature Flags in Data Projects My motivation for writing this summary was an interaction with a project owner that didn’t understand why we couldn’t use... 01 February 2024 23 min read
Ben Johnston in Blogs Warehouse Load Patterns – Part 2 – Load Patterns This continues and finishes my two-part series on warehouse load patterns. There are many methods to transfer rows between systems... 31 December 2023 29 min read
Ben Johnston in Blogs Warehouse Load Patterns – Part 1 – Requirements and General Patterns No matter the ETL tool used, there are some basic patterns to follow when transferring data between systems. There are... 26 November 2023 28 min read
Ben Johnston in SQL Server SQL Server Security Features: Complete Guide Complete guide to SQL Server security features - TDE, Always Encrypted, Dynamic Data Masking, Row-Level Security, auditing, firewall rules, and... 15 October 2023 38 min read
Ben Johnston in Blogs SQL Server Row Level Security: Detecting and Mitigating RLS Attacks (Part 6, Series Summary) Detect and mitigate attacks against SQL Server Row Level Security (RLS) - side-channel timing attacks, excessive-error patterns, brute force attempts.... 03 October 2023 25 min read
Ben Johnston in Blogs SQL Server RLS Security: Attacks & Vulnerabilities Explore SQL Server Row-Level Security vulnerabilities - direct attacks, indirect attacks, and side-channel bypasses. Essential reading before deploying RLS in... 25 September 2023 22 min read