New Year’s Task: Quick, Easy Prep for a Raise
You’re busy, so I’ll keep this short. Several months from now, you’re gonna have a salary review. Your manager is going to ask what you’ve been up to, and you’re not going to have a lot of great answers. Copilot isn’t tracking your successes for you. T …
Database Development with AI in 2026
This seems like the appropriate first BrentOzar.com blog post in the year 2026, eh? In the PollGab question queue for Office Hours, MyRobotOverlordAsks asked a question that merited a full blog post answer: My company announced during some AI training …
How to Create a SQL Server Linked Server to Oracle 26ai Free
Easily move data from SQL Server to Oracle 26ai Free with this step-by-step guide. Learn how to set up a linked server, configure FREEPDB1 and avoid common issues. I recently had to migrate some data from SQL Server to Oracle 26ai Free edition. I thoug …
SQL Server Regular Expression Performance and Guidelines
SQL Server 2025 introduces regular expression (regex) functions to the TSQL language. You could do this in previous versions with user defined CLR functions, but the 2025 functions are natively available and supported by Microsoft. I prefer native func …
Are You Looking for Work? Underpaid? Overpaid? Let’s Find Out.
Every year, I run a salary survey to help folks have better discussions with their managers about salaries, benefits, and career progression. This year, the survey is for unemployed folks, too! The first question has a new option for “Unemployed (and l …
Your Favorite Posts From This Year
Reading is fundamental, and fundamentally, here are the 2025 blog posts that y’all read the most this year. (This list doesn’t include the most popular timeless posts overall.) 10. Free Spring Training Webcasts – I’ve noticed that people have near-zero …
How to View SQL Server Object Code Easily with sp_showcode
sp_helptext has served SQL Server DBAs for years, but it has its very obvious – and many – limitations: broken lines, missing triggers, no help with encrypted objects, to name just a few. That’s where sp_showcode comes in… Why DBAs Need Better Code Ret …
Known Issues So Far in SQL Server 2025
Whenever a brand spankin’ new version of any software comes out, there are bugs, and SQL Server is no exception. This has led to a mentality where folks don’t wanna install a new version of SQL Server until the first couple of Cumulative Updates come o …
SQL Server Privilege Escalation via Replication Jobs
Privilege escalation in SQL Server isn’t just theory – it can happen through everyday maintenance jobs. This article demonstrates how a user with roles like db_owner or db_ddladmin can exploit replication cleanup processes to gain sysadmin rights, and …
Common SQL Server Problems: Invalid Object Name
This post is part of a series on common issues encountered in SQL Server. This time, we’ll talk about the invalid object name error: Msg 208, Level 16, State 1 Invalid object name ‘{object_name}’. What are some of the primary reasons behind the invalid …
[Video] Office Hours at the Last Spike
I drove the Graffiti Gulf out to The Last Spike (video) outside of Las Vegas and took your top-voted questions from https://pollgab.com/room/brento. Here’s what we covered: 00:00 Start 01:45 Jan de Graaf: Our database landscape seems CPU-bound. We some …
Identity Columns Can Have Gaps, and That’s Okay.
Say you’ve got a table with an identity column, something that’s supposed to start at 1 and go up to a bajillion: DROP TABLE IF EXISTS dbo.Orders; CREATE TABLE dbo.Orders (Id INT IDENTITY(1,1) PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED, OrderDate DATETIME2, CustomerName NV …
Let’s Build a Better KILL. What Do We Need to Consider?
When there’s a performance emergency, a lot of us perform the same manual tasks over and over. We run sp_BlitzWho or sp_WhoIsActive, look for blocking, long-running or out-of-control queries, and kill them. I’m going to build a new sp_kill for the Firs …
How to Build an AI-Powered Semantic Search in PostgreSQL with pgvector
Learn how to build a sleek, AI-powered semantic search engine that lives inside your existing database. We’ll walk through how to store vector embeddings, run similarity-based queries, and turn ordinary text searches into meaning-aware retrieval with n …
Watch My Training Classes Offline with the Latest Teachable App
If you’re the kind of person who likes to learn on the go, my training provider Teachable just updated their apps. Now, both the Android and iOS apps let you download classes ahead of time and watch ’em disconnected. I also love the built-in reminder f …