Over the years, I’ve taken a lot of Microsoft exams. I’ve also spent a lot of time writing exams for Microsoft exam providers. And while I’ve been doing that, I’ve spent a lot of time in forums where I’ve been checking out what people say about the exams.
What amazes me is the number of misconceptions that people have about exams. So I thought it would be helpful to write a post that covers most of the ones that I’ve heard.
2025-11-21
I recently received an early release review copy of Azure Data Fundamentals: A Guide to DP-900 Certification and Beyond by Michael John Peña from my friends at O’Reilly.
Over the years, I’ve taken a large number of Microsoft certification exams. I’ve also helped to write many of the exams. Therecd are people who’ve taken more than me, but not many. This book is designed to help you pass the DP-900 exam. I did take that exam long ago and thought it was a reasonable exam.
2025-11-20
SSMS has the ability to work with different encodings when you are opening or saving files.
When you use File and Open, note that beside the Open button is a drop-down arrow:
The Open With option leads to this:
In that screen, you can choose an existing value or click Add to add another program that you want to use for opening files of that type:
As an example, you might want to use a different XML or JSON editor.
2025-11-19
During a recent consulting engagement, I was asked about how to use column-based encryption in SQL Server. In this article which is the first of a two-part series, let’s explore the technologies involved and how to get started with using column-based encryption. Next time, we’ll continue with using these technologies for column-based encryption.
Encryption is the science of hiding secrets. Information that needs to be protected (often called plaintext) is converted (or encrypted) to a form (often called ciphertext) that is difficult for another person to read within a reasonable period of time.
2025-11-18
It was great to catch up with Simon Sabin today and to have him on another SQL Down Under podcast.
Simon is the founder of Sabin.io where he revolutionizes the data practices of his clients.
Simon has a track record spanning diverse sectors like finance, retail, insurance, and motor sports and is recognized as a data expert. I’ve known Simon for a long time. He was a Data Platform MVP from 2005 to 2024, and a fellow member of the Microsoft Regional Director program.
2025-11-18
This is the twelfth tale in a series of stories about data. I hope you enjoy the series.
Today’s tale relates to a SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) package. It used the same architecture as other packages and on the same server, and even though it said it was successful, nothing happened. Let’s discuss why.
At the site, a separate SSIS server (using an earlier version of SQL Server i.e., 2014) had been deployed. The server was used to run all the organization’s SSIS packages. These packages connected to several data sources:
2025-11-17
I’ve heard people lately discussing the Save icon and how it’s not relevant now. The Save icons that are a picture of a 3 1/2 inch floppy disk are basically meaningless today.
I did have to laugh when I heard a kid who saw a 3 1/2 inch floppy for the first time comment that someone had made “a physical save icon”. I suppose that’s how it seemed to him.
2025-11-16
I receive a lot of email. Most of it is relevant to me, or at least was at some point.
That’s not the case for all my email though. A while back, I started receiving lots of email offering me things as a recruiter. But I’m not a recruiter. However, dodgy companies have included me in a list of recruiters for some reason, and then rent out access to the list to other companies in some way.
2025-11-16
Several times, I’ve seen situations where a user who’s working interactively in SSMS ends up causing deadlocks and causing issues for an application that’s in use. This is even more likely for users who hold locks for long periods of time, and who work directly with production systems.
At best, they might just cause an application to hang. At worst, they might cause a poorly-designed application to terminate.
Why would a user hold locks for a long time? Many users work in what’s called chained mode, where they automatically start a transaction when they make any sort of update. Some other database engines default to that behavior, but you can choose that as a session option in SQL Server as well.
2025-11-15
This post describes how the object dependency tracking views provide more reliable insights into object dependencies than previous methods such as the use of the sp_depends system stored procedure.
During a recent consulting engagement, I was asked about the best way to determine which stored procedures and views made use of a particular table. In the past, the methods available from within SQL Server were not very reliable. Way back in SQL Server 2008, significant improvements were made in this area, yet I see so few people using them, at least not directly. Many will use them indirectly via SSMS.
2025-11-14
