How to implement Deep Data Security (DeepSec) in Oracle 26ai: complete step-by-step guide (part one)
So you’ve been tasked with deploying a Generative AI, RAG (retrieval-augmented generation), or Agentic AI application. Have you thought about how to secure your most sensitive structured data – as well as your vectorized unstructured data? The good new …
How to avoid nested REPLACE functions with TRANSLATE in SQL Server
If your T-SQL is buried under layers of nested REPLACE() calls just to swap out a few characters, there’s a simpler way. SQL Server’s TRANSLATE() function — introduced in 2017 but still rarely used — lets you replace multiple characters in a single str …
Testing AI with an Office Hours Question
When the new MiniMax H3 image-to-video model dropped this month, I was really impressed with how quickly and easily it was able to make 5-10 second videos from a starting image – not in the cloud, mind you, but on my own home computer gear: View this p …
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 …
When CTEs Don’t Work, Try Temp Tables – #TSQL2sday
Common Table Expressions are awesome because they let SQL Server reorder processing in whatever way it deems to be the most efficient for your current data distribution, on your current version of SQL Server. Default to CTEs. When SQL Server gets that …
The full story of PASS Data Community Summit: 25 years of connect, share, and learn
PASS Data Community Summit is celebrating a milestone most communities never reach: 25+ years of data professionals showing up for each other. From a single Microsoft-seeded user group in 1999, to the global, multi-platform conferences everyone knows t …
MSDB attack paths: how to secure SQL Server Agent, triggers, and restores
SQL Server DBAs routinely rely on automation: SQL Server Agent jobs, maintenance plans, refresh processes, restore scripts, replication cleanup, CDC operations, cross-database modules, and temporary objects. These workflows are often trusted because th …
[Video] Office Hours: Car in the House Edition
Today I’m hanging out in the dining room, or what would normally be a dining room, but we use it to store a 1992 Honda Beat. I explain why, and then take your top-voted questions from https://pollgab.com/room/brento. The audio on this one is a little t …
How to ensure replication stability in PostgreSQL (fix/prevent lag, bloat, and bottlenecks)
PostgreSQL replication is one of the most powerful tools available for keeping your database resilient, redundant, and performant, but it’s only effective when it’s stable. Replication lag, network bottlenecks, and long-running transactions can each qu …
Who’s Hiring Database People? August 2026 Edition
Is your company hiring for a database position as of August 2026? Do you wanna work with the kinds of people who read this blog? Let’s make a love connection. If your company is hiring, leave a comment. The rules: Your comment must include the job titl …
MySQL vs PostgreSQL: spatial data types, functions, and migration pitfalls explained
MySQL and PostgreSQL both store spatial and geometric data, but they take fundamentally different approaches. While MySQL bakes spatial support directly into its engine, PostgreSQL separates two ecosystems: native geometric types (built-in, flat-plane, …
Free Webcast: 3 Numbers Every Tuner Should Know.
Every SQL Server performance tuner eventually faces the same question: is this normal, or is something wrong? The answer starts with 3 numbers about your SQL Server: How fast it’s going How hard it’s working How big it is On August 19, I’m doing a free …
How to build an Oracle AWR-equivalent diagnostics stack in PostgreSQL (step-by-step guide with code)
Moving from Oracle to PostgreSQL means losing one of Oracle’s most-loved diagnostic tools: the Automatic Workload Repository (AWR). The good news? Most of AWR’s core capabilities – snapshot history, wait event sampling, Top SQL analysis, and buffer cac …
[Video] Office Hours: Desert Database Q&A
I’m in the Lake Mead National Recreation Area today, hanging out in the triple-digit heat, to answer your top-voted questions from https://pollgab.com/room/brento. Prefer listening to this via podcast? Good news! You can now subscribe to Office Hours o …
How a SQL Server backup can execute attacker code during restore – and how to prevent it (CVE-2026-47295 vulnerability)
CVE-2026-47295 is a SQL Server vulnerability that lets a maliciously crafted database backup execute attacker-controlled code with sysadmin privileges during a routine RESTORE DATABASE operation. The flaw lives in the internal replication cleanup proce …