Are You Working More Hours?
AI is causing some people to work more, which seems at odds with the idea of what AI should be: a useful tool.
Managing Changesets Over Time: Stairway to Reliable Database Deployments Level 6
As database changesets accumulate over time, they gradually become more than deployment artifacts. This level explores how a well-organized changeset library evolves into a replayable representation of the database’s structural history, supporting not only reliable deployments but also reconstruction, auditing, and long-term maintainability. Through practical examples and a real-world case study, it shows why maintaining coherent Create and Rollback scripts continues to provide value long after a successful production deployment.
T-SQL in SQL Server 2025: REGEXP_LIKE
This article goes into one of the new regular expression functions in SQL Server 2025: REGEXP_LIKE().
The best AI developer tools in 2026: from coding agents to code review
AI developer tools have matured fast. In 2026, most engineering workflows touch at least one AI coding agent, code reviewer, or research assistant — but the right combination depends heavily on your team size, codebase, and tolerance for setup overhead. This guide breaks down the tools actually worth using across three categories: research and architecture, day-to-day development, and code review, based on real, hands-on experience.
Advanced T-SQL: Replacing Slow Cursors with Window Functions
This article looks at replacing a cursor with a window function to improve performance.
Finding Bad Queries
Recognizing queries that might perform poorly is a skill that will help you, and your AI assistant, produce better code in production.
Database Animations: You’ve Heard of Page Splits. Here’s What They Really Mean.
You've heard that page splits are bad, and they're an indication that your table design is making your storage work too hard. You've heard that the right answer to fix it is adjusting fill factor lower, or doing regular index maintenance.
VACATION!
Yeah, I've got the Go-Go's running in my head because I'm going on vacation tomorrow (holiday for you UK types). I've been slogging through a really dense book, War in Human Civilization. Total recommendation. Get it. Read it. However, I'm right near the end and there's been a lot of discussion about the impact of […]
Fixing P1 Queries
Steve asks if we should focus on the slowest queries or tackle other issues in our systems. Or if we should even have to make these decisions.
Why SQL Server Database Attach fails and how to repair it
This article covers a few common errors when attaching database files to an instance, with some information on how to resolve the issues.
Blogs
The SUM of Nothing: #SQLNewBlogger
By Steve Jones
I caught this interesting item over on Pinal Dave’s blog: Eleven Interview Questions that...
How to Move the SSMS Status Bar to the Top and Color-Code SQL Server Connections
By Hemantgiri
I use color-coded connections in SSMS to distinguish Production, Pre-Production, UAT, and Development. But...
Forums
Split Large Queries in Athena with a Simple Modulo Trick
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Split Large Queries in Athena...
Finding Trailing Spaces
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Finding Trailing Spaces
Question of the Day
Finding Trailing Spaces
I have some data in a SQL Server 2025 database. It looks like this for the dbo.Customer table:
CustomerID CustomerName PreferredName 1 Steve Steve 2 Andy Andy 3 Brian Brian 4 Allan Allan 5 Devin Devin 6 Steve Steve 7 Sally SallyI want to detect which names have a single trailing space. The CustomerName is a varchar() and the PreferredName is a CHAR(). Does this query detect the problem rows?
SELECT
CustomerID,
CustomerName,
PreferredName
FROM Customer
WHERE CustomerName <> RTRIM(CustomerName)
OR PreferredName <> RTRIM(PreferredName); See possible answers 