The Bit Bucket

This is a post in the SQL Interview series. These aren’t trick or gotcha questions, they’re just questions designed to scope out a candidate’s knowledge around SQL Server and Azure SQL Database.

Section: Administration Level: Intro

Question:

You successfully create a full backup of a database that is in full recovery model.

As part of the backup, is the transaction log shrunk?

Answer:

No — a full database backup does not shrink or truncate the transaction log.

2026-01-06

I can’t tell you how many sessions for developers that I have attended, where the demonstration shows an application connecting to a database as the database owner (dbo) or as a system administrator (like sa). Are we then surprised when developers do this in their own applications?

Please don’t do this.

If you’re running a utility application that’s only used by administrators, and is run within a secure part of the environment, that might be ok. But for normal user applications, it’s just not safe to do so, and it’s really poor practice.

2026-01-05

This is a post in the SQL Interview series. These aren’t trick or gotcha questions, they’re just questions designed to scope out a candidate’s knowledge around SQL Server and Azure SQL Database.

Section: Administration Level: Intro

Question:

You are configuring database mail so that applications can send emails.

Does database mail have a dependency on Microsoft Exchange ?

Answer:

No, Database Mail does not depend on Microsoft Exchange.

Database Mail in SQL Server:

2026-01-04

If you are working with really long script files in SSMS, you might need to work on more than one part of the script at the same time. Perhaps you need to work on a function, and also on the code that calls the function.

On the Window menu, there is a Split option.

When you first do this, you’ll see a split window with the same query at top and bottom:

2026-01-03

Even more SQL love for the new year !

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We have very popular SQL courses, for T-SQL, PostgreSQL, Snowflake, Oracle, and MySQL. We’ve just added our new course Writing SQL Queries for Db2 and you can enrol in it now. It’s already low cost but even better, if you use the coupon code HNY2026 at checkout before 10th January, you can take advantage of our Happy New Year 25% discount as well.

2026-01-02

So 2025 is done. It was both an interesting and a challenging year for me. I’m so glad for all you who have been reading my blog and hope you’ll continue into the future.

What Will Matter Most for Data Professionals in 2026?

As a new year begins, it’s a good time to pause and look ahead — not with hype or predictions, but with a practical view of what will genuinely matter for data professionals in 2026. Across consulting projects, training course development, and hands-on work with SQL Server, Microsoft Fabric, and modern data platforms, several patterns have emerged that are shaping how teams build and operate data solutions.

2026-01-01

This is a post in the SQL Interview series. These aren’t trick or gotcha questions, they’re just questions designed to scope out a candidate’s knowledge around SQL Server and Azure SQL Database.

Section: Administration Level: Intro

Question:

You are using Object Explorer in SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) to browse the contents of a SQL Server. In the System Databases folder, there is a database named model. What is its purpose?

2025-12-31

This is a post in the SQL Interview series. These aren’t trick or gotcha questions, they’re just questions designed to scope out a candidate’s knowledge around SQL Server and Azure SQL Database.

Section: Development Level: Medium

Question:

Does a stored procedure automatically provide a transaction i.e., if a statement within a stored procedure fails, are all previous data modification statements rolled back?

Answer:

No, a stored procedure does not automatically provide an implicit transaction.

2025-12-30

I’ve attended a lot of user groups over the years. They’ve been data-related, developer-related, and all sorts of other topics. I’ve also organized a lot of user groups over the years. One problem that I fell into early on, and that I see many others falling into, is the problem of increasing depth.

User group leaders often have a very skewed view of the content that’s been presented at their groups. That’s because they’ve often seen almost every single presentation that’s ever been given.

2025-12-29

This is a post in the SQL Interview series. These aren’t trick or gotcha questions, they’re just questions designed to scope out a candidate’s knowledge around SQL Server and Azure SQL Database.

Section: Administration Level: Advanced

Question:

When checkpoint writes occur, is only committed data written, or is uncommitted data written?

If only committed data, explain why.

If both, explain why.

Answer:

Checkpoint is a background process that:

• Flushes dirty pages (pages in memory that have been modified since they were read from disk) to disk.
• Records a log sequence number (LSN) in the transaction log that marks the point at which the database is known to be consistent on disk.

This means that SQL Server doesn’t flush only committed transactions — it flushes all dirty pages, whether the transactions that modified them are committed or not.

2025-12-28