Measuring Productivity
Today Steve wonders if the data professionals out there measure themselves on the job.
Database Animations: The Difference Between Row Compression and Page Compression
What's the difference between SQL Server's row compression and page compression, and when does each one make sense?
How Can SQL Server Detect Application Errors When Developers Can’t?
How a simple Extended Events session can turn you from a silent guardian to a developer’s best ally. There is an old, undeniable paradox in the life of a Database Administrator: If you do your job perfectly, nobody remembers you exist, only when you resolve problems. When queries are fast, backups are pristine, and the […]
Preserving Data
Today Steve has a few comments on backups and your ability to get to a restore in the event of an issue with your provider.
Configure SSMS Dark Mode Step By Step
You’re using SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) and would like to use Dark Mode. You’ve looked at the configuration options and don’t see a way to configure it.
When the Token Meter is Zero
DBAKevlar disccusses the new product from Perplexity and Nvidia that just shipped on August 25th. If you haven’t been paying attention its goal is businesses whose entire generative AI solution has been what the AI bubble is betting on.
Understanding Temp Tables and Table Variables in SQL Server
Introduction When building application backends or processing complex data sets in a SQL Server, we frequently need a temporary storage to hold the intermediate query results. For example: Store filtered rows before joining them to another table Hold calculation results inside a stored procedure Break a complex query into smaller readable steps Process a small […]
How to use the Power BI Desktop Bridge to automate tasks in Power BI Desktop and GitHub Copilot
Microsoft continues to blur the line between low-code visual tools and code-first development for Power BI, recently launching a set of official Fabric AI Skills and the Power BI Desktop Bridge preview feature. Together, they allow AI agents to install command-line tools, inspect a running Power BI Desktop process, update a report or model in the Power BI project format (PBIP), and reload the report so that changes appear immediately.
Admin Rights for Everyone
Steve thinks administrator rights for too many people is a bad idea, but even when it's a limited group, he recommends some sort of governance.
Blogs
Architecting Zero Downtime Deployments–Day of Data Boston
By Steve Jones
Here are the resources for my talk at Day of Data Boston. Slides –...
The Book of Redgate:A Prehistory
By Steve Jones
I’ve covered the values in a number of previous posts on the Book of...
Evidence-bound: what AgentDBA will and won’t link
By Arun Sirpal
When the evidence names the database, it says so. When it doesn’t, it stops....
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 