The Hidden Security Risks of Role Combination in SSAS Tabular
See how security in SSAS tabular models might not work as you expect, and how you could easily fail an audit.
2026-10-09
743 reads
Articles
How a Microsoft-signed SQL Server stored procedure lets sysadmins bypass disabled xp_cmdshell
Discover how a Microsoft-signed system procedure bypasses SQL Server's disabled xp_cmdshell setting - plus detection and mitigation steps for defenders
2026-10-09
Building a SQL Server Fleet Audit That Leadership Actually Reads
Learn how to build a report that shows the health of your database estate that your leadership will read and use.
2026-10-07
1,158 reads
“But NOLOCK won’t hurt me if I’m using an index!”
NOLOCK is bad and you probably shouldn't use it, but every time I mention that publicly, the pushback just keeps coming. I don't know why people so firmly believe that their situation couldn't possibly be affected by bad/random data from NOLOCK.
2026-10-07
Take the 2027 State of the Database Landscape Survey
Share your view on the database landscape and you could win USD$500.
2026-10-07 (first published: 2026-09-28)
Split Large Queries in Athena with a Simple Modulo Trick
Learn how you might balance the load in Amazon Athena when you have large partition windows.
2026-10-05
1,538 reads
Using Friendly Names for SQL Servers via DNS
At my organization, servers have a very cryptic name or a name where you can’t immediately tell the function. For instance, Amazon is the name of the SQL Server which our SharePoint uses as a back-end and Nile is the SQL Server hosting the databases for our HR application. This isn’t intuitive and it makes upgrading the servers a challenge because we always have to go back and touch the applications
2026-10-05
Optimized Locking in SQL Server 2025
Learn about Optimized Locking in the latest versions of SQL Server and Azure SQL Database.
2026-10-02
2,846 reads
How to mirror data from SQL Server to Microsoft Fabric: complete guide
Learn all about Microsoft Fabric mirroring for SQL Server: how it works, what's new in 2025, setup, limitations, and troubleshooting
2026-10-02
Database Animations: Stop Using Page Splits to Justify Lowering Fill Factor.
You're looking at page split numbers in a monitoring tool or Perfmon, and you've heard that page splits are bad, so you're lowering fill factor, expecting your page splits to go down.
2026-09-30
Blogs
The flight recorder: Replaying what an AI agent did on my SQL Server
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“What exactly did it do on my server?” is the first question a DBA...
Announcements from the Microsoft Fabric Community Conference — Barcelona 2026
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Microsoft shared a broad set of Fabric, Power BI, and SQL updates at FabCon...
Au Revoir for now
By Steve Jones
No, I’m not quitting or retiring. Just going on vacation, but I leave tonight...
Forums
Let's Talk Certifications
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Let's Talk Certifications, which is...
The Hidden Security Risks of Role Combination in SSAS Tabular
Comments posted to this topic are about the item The Hidden Security Risks of...
The Empty Aggregate
Comments posted to this topic are about the item The Empty Aggregate
Question of the Day
The Empty Aggregate
I have this table in a SQL Server 2025 database:
CREATE TABLE [dbo].[CustomerOrder] ( [OrderID] [int] NULL, [CustomerID] [int] NULL, [total] [money] NULL ) ON [PRIMARY] GOWhat is returned from this code? (answers are for the sum and then the count)
SELECT SUM(total) AS sum,
COUNT(total) AS count
FROM dbo.CustomerOrder;
See possible answers