PASS Data Summit 2025 Recap
Last week, I attended the annual PASS Data Summit in Seattle. This was the fourth year of the event since Red Gate took over stewardship of PASS after that...
2025-12-05 (first published: 2025-11-24)
24 reads
Tim Mitchell
Using Python Code in SSIS
SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) is a mature, proven tool for ETL orchestration and data movement. In recent years, Python has exploded in popularity as a data movement and...
2025-09-01 (first published: 2025-08-11)
372 reads
T-SQL Tuesday #179 Roundup: The Data Detective Toolkit
Earlier this month, I hosted the monthly T-SQL Tuesday invitation in which I asked, “What’s in your data detective toolkit?” We got some great responses which I’ll recap here,...
2024-10-30 (first published: 2024-10-21)
277 reads
T-SQL Tuesday #179: What’s In Your Data Detective Toolkit?
Most of us who work with data have, at least a few times, been presented with a challenge to explore and attempt to make sense of a poorly-defined set...
2024-10-01
29 reads
Reflections on My First-Ever Presentation, Fifteen Years Later
May 3rd represents a small but significant milestone in my career. It was 15 years ago today, on May 3, 2008, when I delivered my first public technical presentation....
2023-05-19 (first published: 2023-05-03)
224 reads
My Office Setup
At the PASS Summit a few weeks ago, I had a great chat with some folks about our home office setups. More and more of us are working from...
2022-12-16 (first published: 2022-12-01)
290 reads
Returning to PASS Summit
In just a couple of weeks, the PASS Summit will return to Seattle, Washington. This one will be extra special, since it’s going to be the first in-person Summit...
2022-10-31
12 reads
Creating a Generic SSRS Report
Creating useful reports is part art and part science. On one end of the spectrum, you have visually appealing and highly customized reports and dashboards that are truly works...
2022-04-13 (first published: 2022-03-31)
444 reads
What Stephen King Taught Me About Data Storytelling
I’ve been a fan of macabre fiction writer Stephen King since I first picked up The Dark Half sometime in the early 1990s. Since then I’ve read dozens of...
2022-03-20
16 reads
Let’s Talk About Your Development Environment
Let’s talk about your development environment. Specifically, I’d like to chat with you about the virtual space where your data architecture team, software developers, and information curators do their...
2021-06-07
27 reads
Blogs
A New Word: on tenderhooks
By Steve Jones
on tenderhooks – adj. feeling the primal satisfaction of being needed by someone, which...
Ramblings about data communities and your contributions, no excuses
By DataOnWheels
I have been active in the data community throughout my career. I have met...
SQL Server Journey till 2025 (brief)
By Vinay Thakur
Quick Summary for Microsoft SQL Server till 2025, I am fortunate to be part...
Forums
Ola Hallengren Index Optimize Maintenance can we have data compression = page
I have a quick question on Ola Hallengren Index Optimize Maintenance . Do we...
how do i map the "current" object entry in for each to one variable
hi, in an ssis for each loop over an object variable called MyListVariable, i...
Simulating Mercury’s Orbital Motion Using Pure T-SQL (NASA 2025 Dataset)
SQL Server is typically viewed as a transactional or analytical database engine. However, it...
Question of the Day
String Similarity I
On SQL Server 2025, when I run this, what is returned?
SELECT EDIT_DISTANCE_SIMILARITY('SQL Server', 'MySQL') See possible answers