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We’ve looked at events generated by applications, databases, and storage systems — but it’s important to remember that Azure and Fabric themselves also generate events. These are sometimes called platform events, because they come from the infrastructure and services you’re running rather than from your business data directly.

Some examples are really practical. Azure might emit events when resources are scaled up or down — say, when a cluster automatically adds nodes to handle increased load. Fabric might generate events when a pipeline starts, completes, or fails. You’ll also see events related to service health, configuration changes, or security alerts.

2026-02-24

When you first make a connection to the new LocalDB edition of SQL Server Express, the system files, etc. that are required for a new version are spun up. (The system files such as the master database files, etc. end up in:

C:\\Users\\<username>\\AppData\\Local\\Microsoft\\Microsoft SQL Server Local DB\\Instances\\LocalDBApp1) 

Now that can take a while on a slower machine, so this means that the default connection timeout of 30 seconds that you’ll find in most client libraries, could well be exceeded.

2026-02-23

Another important category of real-time sources comes from cloud storage platforms like Azure Blob Storage and AWS S3. These aren’t just passive data stores — they can actually generate events whenever something happens to the data inside them.

For example, when a new file is uploaded into a data lake, the storage service can immediately raise an event. That event might then trigger an ingestion pipeline, start a transformation process, or kick off machine learning model scoring. The key here is that you don’t have to wait for a scheduled scan or a batch job to check for new files. The storage system itself notifies you the instant a change occurs.

2026-02-22

There is a hotel in Sydney that we often stayed at several times per year, either for training or mentoring/consulting work. I really like it. If you asked me why though, I would find it hard to list all the reasons why I like it. (There are some things I don’t like about it too but that’s a topic for another day).

But one of the things that had always surprised me, each and every time I ate breakfast there, is how sharp the knives were. It might seem an odd thing to notice but I’ve never noticed this in any other hotel that I’ve ever stayed at.

2026-02-21

This diagram highlights the difference between Change Data Capture (CDC) and Change Event Streams (CES) — two ways of turning databases into real-time event sources.

On the left side, we see CDC. Here the focus is on row-level changes. Every time a row is inserted, updated, or deleted in a table, that operation is captured and streamed out as an event. Those events typically feed into real-time replication or analytics pipelines. In other words, CDC makes sure your downstream systems always have fresh copies of your data. It’s like having a live feed of every transaction at the cash register. That’s why we use the analogy here of cash register receipts — you get a record of each sale exactly as it happens.

2026-02-20

Version 27 of our free SDU Tools for developers and DBAs is now released and winging their way out to our SDU Insiders.

You can find details on the tools here .

If you haven’t been using SDU Tools yet, I’d suggest downloading them and taking a look. At the very least, it can help when you’re trying to work out how to code something in T-SQL.

Along with the normal updates to SQL Server versions and builds, we’ve added the following new tools:

2026-02-19

When we talk about Change Event Streams, or CES, we’re looking at a different layer of database activity than CDC.

CDC — Change Data Capture — focuses on row-level changes: inserts, updates, and deletes in your transactional tables. That’s very useful for analytics and replication. But there’s a lot more going on inside a database than just row changes.

CES captures the broader set of events that affect the structure and governance of the database itself. This includes things like schema changes — if someone adds a new column, drops a table, or creates an index. It also includes permission updates — for example, when access rights are granted or revoked. And it can even capture configuration changes or other metadata-level modifications.

2026-02-18

It’s Chinese New Year this week, and I want to offer my best wishes to all my readers that celebrate the lunar new year.

新年快乐 ！(Happy new year)

It’s the start of the year of the Fire Horse.

The start of a new lunar year is a time of renewal, reflection, and optimism. Across the world, families and communities are come together to celebrate with traditions that emphasise good fortune, gratitude, and fresh beginnings.

2026-02-17

Many organizations already have huge amounts of business-critical data sitting in relational databases — SQL Server, PostgreSQL, MySQL, and so on. But by default, these databases aren’t real-time data sources. Traditionally, if you wanted to know what changed, you’d run queries at intervals — maybe once an hour, or once a day — and look for differences. That approach works, but it introduces delay.

This is where Change Data Capture, or CDC, comes in. CDC is a technique that turns a traditional database into a real-time data source. Instead of polling for differences, CDC actually streams the changes themselves as they occur. Anytime a row is inserted, updated, or deleted, that operation is captured and emitted as an event.

2026-02-16

Most people seem to be unaware that a CREATE SCHEMA statement can also include other DDL or DCL within it.

I’ve never been very keen on the option to add additional clauses in the CREATE SCHEMA statement as I’ve seen lots of issues when scripts are executed manually. You get a different outcome, depending upon how you execute it. For example, if you run statements in this script:

CREATE SCHEMA SomeSchema AUTHORIZATION Someone

CREATE TABLE Blah (Some table definition);

Where does the table Blah get created? Well, it depends.

2026-02-15