[Video] Office Hours at the Black Pebble Beach
After the PASS Data Community Summit in Frankfurt, Germany, I headed back to Iceland and spent a few more days gallivanting around the country in a Tesla Model Y camper. (Well, “camper” is a glamorous word for it: CampEasy.com puts a mattress in the ba …
What’s missing in T-SQL? My wish list of features that developers actually need in SQL Server
Edward Pollack recently wrote an excellent wish list for T-SQL features he’d like to see in an upcoming version of SQL Server. Now, it’s my turn. This article covers what I’d like to see the most. Extensibility added to SQL Server I’ve had this wish fo …
I Know a Query’s Gonna Be Bad When… #TSQL2sday
I open it up and the first thing I see is a comment with a changelog showing a long list of dates and author initials. Oh I know, you think documentation is a good thing, but: Somebody’s initials from ten years ago isn’t helping anything The big long l …
Confession Time: I Never Taught You About B-Trees.
I work with databases for a living. I teach people, and I help them via consulting. And as far as I can remember, I’ve never written something about how b-trees work. And I don’t ever expect to. Ever. For decades, I felt really guilty about that. I kep …
AI can build the pipeline, but don’t trust it for security (building an app with an AI LLM, part three)
Building a database deployment pipeline with AI assistance sounds straightforward…until the AI starts treating temporary security shortcuts as permanent architecture. In part three of his series on building an app and database almost entirely through a …
How I built a startup with no web development background: lessons from launching Unibridge
Building a startup as an international student, while job hunting on OPT and coding past midnight, isn’t the origin story most founders tell…but it’s an honest one. This is Abhishek Goyal’s first-hand account of how Unibridge came to life – a platform …
[Video] Office Hours from Iceland’s Glacier Lagoon
Prefer listening to this via podcast? Good news! You can now subscribe to Office Hours on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Podcast Index, Podcast Addict, Podchaser, and anywhere else fine podcasts are sold. One of my most favorite spots on earth is Jökulsárlón …
How to match names in C# without exact string comparisons
Duplicate records are a costly problem in any system that stores people’s names. “Jon Smith” vs. “John Smith.” “Liz” vs. “Elizabeth.” “Renée” vs. “Renee.” To a human, these are obviously the same person. To an exact string comparison, they’re four diff …
Who’s Hiring Database People? July 2026 Edition
Is your company hiring for a database position as of July 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 title, …
DMS migration failing? How to debug Oracle to Cloud SQL network errors, layer-by-layer (OSI model guide)
For database engineers stepping into cloud migrations for the first time, networking is the silent troublemaker. Most tutorials skip straight to configuring connection profiles, but if the network underneath isn’t right, DMS will fail in ways that feel …
How to Format Your Queries in SSMS
Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio 22.7 added the ability to format your T-SQL queries by right-clicking and clicking Format SQL, or by hitting control-K, control-Q on your keyboard: You’re probably not going to like the default formatting out of t …
Live Class Enrollment Closes July 12. Here’s Why.
Years ago, when I used to sell a Live Class Season Pass, I sold it year long. All year long, you could hop into my online store and enroll in my live classes. From the moment you enrolled, you could immediately start attending the very next online clas …
I let Copilot build my database. Here’s what I learned – and everything I’d do differently next time (part two)
I handed Microsoft Copilot the keys to design a PostgreSQL schema for Azure Database for PostgreSQL Flexible Server, with as little intervention from me as I could stand. What came back was a working four-table schema (dialects, terms, translations, ar …
5 T-SQL features that should already exist (2026 SQL Server wish list)
SQL Server is one of the most mature database platforms in the world, but that doesn’t mean it’s finished. With T-SQL now spanning Fabric, Azure SQL Database, Synapse, and SQL Managed Instance, the gap between what the language can do and what develope …
[Video] Office Hours at Iceland’s Most Famous Waterfall
Iceland has some pretty famous waterfalls, from Þórufoss and Skógafoss in Game of Thrones, to Háifoss in Stranger Things, to Dettifoss in Prometheus, and more. However, probably the most-photographed one is Seljalandsfoss, partially because of its easy …