We are back in business! It’s been a few years since there was an in-person PASS Summit. Some major changes and a couple of years later we are excited to be back in person for what is now the “PASS Data Community Summit”. If SQL Saturday and Data Saturday event sizes are any indication, this conference will be significantly smaller than past years when it was the PASS Summit but...
November 15, 2022
PASS Data Community Summit 2022
15November
August 2, 2022
Create Comma Delimited List in SQL
02August
Previously, I wrote a blog about how to create a comma separated list in T-SQL. 12 years later…one moment I have to go check and see if I’m really so old that I can say I wrote a blog post 12 years ago… Ok, I’m back. It is confirmed. I am in fact officially old. I really did write that blog 12 years ago on June 23, 2010. Wow. Anyway… 12 years later that post has...
May 24, 2022
Azure Synapse Analytics Release Notes
24May
Each month the Azure Synapse Analytics team works hard to get new features, updates, and improvements out the door. Here you will find a running list of updates released each month and links to the corresponding blog posts from the product team. You can always find the full updates from the product team and other great Synapse content over on the Azure Synapse Blog. May 2022 Read about the May...
November 1, 2021
Log Analytics with Azure Synapse Analytics
01November
There are a lot of services in Azure. Way more than a few. What is something you want to do with all your services and applications? You want to monitor them. How do you do that? By looking at the logs that are produced. How do you capture and make sense of thousands of log entries from hundreds of services for this really awesome solution you’ve been working on? Azure Monitor. This post isn’t...
November 1, 2021
Log Analytics with Dedicated SQL Pools (Formerly SQL DW)
There are a lot of services in Azure. Way more than a few. What is something you want to do with all your services and applications? You want to monitor them. How do you do that? By looking at the logs that are produced. How do you capture and make sense of thousands of log entries from hundreds of services for this really awesome solution you’ve been working on? Azure Monitor. This post isn’t...
January 28, 2020
How to Resolve Remove-AzKeyVaultKey : Operation returned an invalid status code ‘Forbidden’ Error
28January
I’ve come across another error message in my seemingly never-ending battle with Azure Key Vault. A while back I couldn’t delete a resource group because of Key Vault soft-delete. Then I couldn’t recreate a Key Vault with the same name again because of soft-delete. Which brings us to today’s post where I had to go to PowerShell and purge a key that but ran into an issue...
January 24, 2020
Bring Your Own Key to Azure SQL Database Managed Instance TDE
24January
Last year Azure SQL Database Managed Instance saw the introduction of bring your own key (BYOK) functionality for transparent data encryption (TDE). This functionality has been in the singleton database version of Azure SQL Database for a while longer and you can read about how to use that here. The experience between the two is very similar, but let’s focus on the Managed Instance side of...
November 25, 2019
Building an Azure Sandbox – Part 1 – The Basics
25November
I recently posted that I was doing my annual Azure sandbox rebuild but this time I wanted to do things a little differently…all in PowerShell. Unlike previous years when I would remove most of the resources, this year I removed all of the resources. As in I log into the Azure Portal and it says no resources to display. No databases, no networks, not even an empty resource group. As I work...
November 19, 2019
Using Visual Studio Code
19November
I’m a creature of habit. I have my routine when I get to my hotel room on business trips. I have a way I like my email and notes organized. I don’t want fruits or veggies on my pizza. And I like tools that I’ve always used. Don’t mess with my tools. I know my shortcut keys in SQL Server Management Studio. I work well in the PowerShell ISE. I know my way around Visual...
November 6, 2019
Building an Azure Sandbox
06November
It’s that time of the year again. No, not fall, although I do love the weather change that’s around the corner. It’s time for me to rebuild my Azure environment! Each year I try to wipe out as much of my Azure environment and rebuild it as I possibly can. I like to keep up on product updates that I may have missed, try out new services that I haven’t gotten around to just...
