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Database Weekly
The Complete Weekly Roundup of SQL Server News by SQLServerCentral.com
Hand-picked content to sharpen your professional edge
Editorial
 

Widespread New Technology Adoption

This week I saw an article at Ars Technica that noted in 2025 that electrical vehicle sales had increased 28% in the US. That's quite a level of growth in adoption of this technology, especially given how set in their ways the US can be and how often these transition away from ICE vehicles has been politicized.

I've had a Tesla for a little over 3 years and I think it's the best and most fun car I've over owned. The technology and convenience are amazing, and I still enjoy driving the car around. For the most part I don't have range anxiety, though I recently skipped using it on a weekend trip. The car has proven to be very inexpensive to operate and I wouldn't hesitate to purchase another EV.

Apparently lots of other people feel the same, though not everyone. About 75% of new vehicles sold are still ICE vehicles, which I completely understand. Not everyone has access to regular charging at home and the cost of these vehicles, while only slightly more than ICE ones, is still much higher to start. That hasn't stopped many people from evaluating and choosing to purchase a car that runs on battery technology. However, plenty of people just don't want to adopt new technology.

I see the same thing in the tech industry. GenAI has been quite the disrupter the last few years, but many people don't trust models and don't want to try to use them. I've also seen many people who blindly trust this new technology, which can be even worse.

I've seen the same type of attitude in the past with DevOps, PowerShell, NoSQL and other technologies. Many people are slow to adopt new technology, for a variety of reasons. It might be they aren't sure the technology really offers any improvement, which is understandable. After all, if something new doesn't actually provide significant benefits, is it worth an investment? After all the investment is a cost and there are likely some downsides.

There are other people who are resistant to any change or unmotivated to bother, preferring to stick with what they know and are comfortable with using. I don't quite understand this view, as it's entirely possible we originally learned a poor way of doing things. It's also likely that as technology changes, there are improvements made from our learnings in the industry. Certainly doctors, mechanical engineers, architects, lawyers, and more adopt new practices because their professions evolve and move in new ways, so why should technology professionals be different?

I'd like to think that the reason many people don't bother to learn new (or improve existing)  skills or adopt new tools is that they don't have time. We're all under pressure to get work done, and often without any planning for our various administrative work and meetings, let alone time to invest in ourselves. However, I will say that finding a way to carve out time to read, experiment, and practice skills has helped me improve my own career prospects, as well as helped me convince employers to match my investment with their own time, resources, and funding.

Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Join the debate, and respond to the editorial on the forums

 
The Weekly News
All the headlines and interesting SQL Server information that we've collected over the past week, and sometimes even a few repeats if we think they fit.
Vendors/3rd Party Products

Scripting Databases with Flyway Enterprise CLI

This article will cover the basics of the Flyway generate command and how it can auto-generate several types of Flyway migration scripts. This includes versioned migrations that, after testing, can be used to deploy changes, and baseline migration and undo scripts that are useful for a range of development tasks.

International Women’s Day: Women in technology at Redgate

To celebrate International Women’s Day 2025, we asked women in Redgate’s Technology function about their careers, how they got into tech in the first place, and the advice they’d give to others starting out in the field. Here’s what they said…

AI/Machine Learning/Cognitive Services

AI in SQL Server 2025: Embeddings

One of the cornerstones of AI is a concept called embeddings. Virtually every AI model, whether for text, video, or audio, uses something related to embeddings. Starting with SQL Server 2025, this is a term you’ll be hearing a lot, as its potential for applications is enormous! In this post, I want to offer a more didactic explanation of embeddings, especially for those who haven’t had the opportunity to explore the world of AI or machine learning.

These eight new AI benchmarks could help make models less biased

From Technology Review Feed - Tech Review Top Stories

A new pair of AI benchmarks could help developers ...

2025 Predictions in Machine Learning and AI

From Dataversity

Is 2025 the year that the AI advances of recent years finally deliver significant results to corporate bottom lines worldwide? I believe the answer is yes. The technology has...

Career, Employment, and Certifications

AI Is Taking Over These Jobs — Here’s How to Stay Employed

From Past News - RSS Feeds

AI is transforming the job market, raising concern...

T-SQL Tuesday #184 Mentoring and Sponsorship

From SQLServerCentral Blogs

This month’s T-SQL Tuesday blog party is hosted by Deborah Melkin – Data Platform MVP, WIT co-lead and WITspiration founder. Deb’s invitation is to blog about mentoring and sponsorship. What... The...

On Mentoring: A T-SQL Tuesday post

From StraightPath Solutions SQL Blog

Deborah Melkin is hosting the community T-SQL Tuesday #184 carnival of blog posts. Her topic is one that is near and dear to her – and also near and...

T-SQL Tuesday 184 - Mentorship

From FLX SQL

T-SQL Tuesday is a monthly blog party hosted by a different community member each month. This month, Deborah Melkin (blog) asks us to talk about our relationship with mentoring and...

T-SQL Tuesday #184–Mentoring

From SQLServerCentral Blogs

This month’s T-SQL Tuesday blog party is hosted by Deborah Melkin, and it’s a good one that asks us where we are making the world better. The topic is... The...

T-SQL Tuesday #184 – My Mentoring Journey

From Callihan Data

“A true mentor is someone who sees more talent and ability within you than you see in yourself, and helps bring it out of you.” — Bob Proctor “I...

TSQL Tuesday #184: Mentoring and Sponsorship

From SQLServerCentral Blogs

Thank you to Deborah Melkin for hosting TSQL Tuesday this month! I’ve always considered mentoring and sponsorship very structured. Now, I wonder if they’re also small things we do... The...

T-SQL Tuesday #184 Mentoring and Sponsorship

From Curious..about data

This month’s T-SQL Tuesday blog party is hosted by Deborah Melkin – Data Platform MVP, WIT co-lead and WITspiration founder. Deb’s invitation is to blog about mentoring and sponsorship. What...

T-SQL Tuesday #184 – Why I Mentor

From Deb the DBA

Happy T-SQL Tuesday! Even though it’s my topic, I still found this post hard to write about because there’s so much I want to say. Why I Mentor? The...

Conferences, Classes, Events, and Webinars

PASS Summit 2025 & PASS Summit On Tour 2025 Call for Speakers is now open!

PASS Summit 2025 & PASS Summit On Tour 2025 Call for Speakers is now open! We’re anticipating over 275 sessions across Seattle, New York, Dallas, and Utrecht, the Netherlands. So, whether you’re looking to make your speaking debut or you’re already an experienced presenter, we want to hear from you.

FREE Window Functions Course (This Month Only!)

From SQLServerCentral Blogs

Want to really level up your SQL game? I mean, g...

DMO/SMO/Powershell

The not so simplified syntax of Where-Object in PowerShell

PowerShell 3.0 introduced several notable improvements to its cmdlet library, with one of the most useful features in this release being the simplified syntax for the Where-Object cmdlet. This enhancement made filtering objects more efficient and user-friendly by introducing Property and Value parameters and a switch parameter for every comparison operator.

Data Mining / Data Analysis

Why extracting data from PDFs is still a nightmare for data experts

From Ars Technica

Countless digital documents hold valuable info, and the AI industry is attempting to set it free.

DevOps and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD)

Securing the DevOps Pipeline Part 1: Tools and Strategies for Safer Deployments

From Simple Talk

Protecting Your CI/CD from Build-Time Threats DevOps has transformed software delivery, but with rapid deployments come increased security risks. As a DevOps engineer, I’ve seen firsthand how small security...

Introduction to GitHub Actions Part 1: Getting Started

From Simple Talk

GitHub is one of the most popular services on the planet for storing documents. That includes everything from PowerPoint presentations to recipes, but it’s the de facto standard for...

ETL/SSIS/Azure Data Factory/Biml

It’s Essential – Verifying the Results of Data Transformations (Part  3)

From Dataversity

Unexpected (and unwanted) data transformation prob...

Kafka

How To Delete a Topic in Apache Kafka®: A Step-By-Step Guide

This guide will walk you through the steps to delete a topic, will discuss best practices, and will explore advanced considerations to know for setting up and deleting topics in the future.

MDX/DAX

Using visual calculations for conditional formatting

From Sqlbi

How to easily implement conditional formatting through visual calculations in Power BI.

Microsoft Fabric ( Azure Synapse Analytics, OneLake, ADLS, Data Science)

Write your data into Lakehouse by Notebooks

Since Lakehouse is one of the key items within Microsoft Fabric, it is important to know how to write data into it in various formats and using different tools. One of the most common tools is notebooks, as they provide great flexibility and speed for development and testing with graphical outputs.

Fabric Databases Connection Secrets

Fabric Database was a great announcement during Ignite Conference. The announcement spread all around, a great new feature. This feature seems simple, especially for everyone who already knows about Azure SQL. However, we don’t need to dig too deep to discover the small secrets this feature has. Secrets that can easily cause mistakes with bad consequences. Let’s understand a bit more about this.

Real-Time Intelligence in Microsoft Fabric

From SQLServerCentral Blogs

In today’s data-driven world, organizations need the ability to analyze and act on data as it flows in real time. Microsoft Fabric provides a powerful ecosystem for real-time intelligence,... The...

How to get all your Fabric Items using Python Only Notebook

From FourMoo

This blog below explains how to use a Python only notebook to get all the Fabric items using the Fabric REST API. NOTE: At the time of this blog...

Operationalize fabric-cicd to work with Microsoft Fabric and Azure DevOps

From Kevin Chant

Reading Time: 6 minutesIn this post I want to show how you can operationalize fabric-cicd to work with Microsoft Fabric and Azure DevOps. Which I exclusively revealed...

Performance Tuning SQL Server

SQL Server Performance Office Hours Episode 4

From Erik Darling Data

SQL Server Performance Office Hours Episode 4 If I...

SQL Server Performance – What IT Leaders Need to Know

From SQLServerCentral Blogs

IT leaders have a lot on their plates! Budgets, st...

PowerPivot/PowerQuery/PowerBI

The complexity of using Power BI in US Sovereign Clouds

From Simple Talk

 

Stop Pressing Publish in Power BI – OneDrive or Sharepoint can do that for you

From Purple Frog Systems

If you’re still using the Publish button in Power BI Desktop, there’s a better and more efficient way to manage your reports while saving time. By leveraging OneDrive and...

Python

How to create and manage Python Virtual Environments

From AllAnalytics

Wouldn’t it be great if we could create a Python...

SQL Server News

What’s Coming in SQL Server 2025, DMV Edition

From Brent Ozar Unlimited

 

Security News and Issues

TP-Link Router Botnet

From Schneier on Security

There is a new botnet that is infecting TP-Link routers: The botnet can lead to command injection which then makes remote code execution (RCE) possible so that the malware can...

Silk Typhoon Hackers Indicted

From Schneier on Security

Lots of interesting details in the story: The US Department of Justice on Wednesday announced the indictment of 12 Chinese individuals accused of more than a decade of hacker intrusions...

Apple patches 0-day exploited in “extremely sophisticated attack”

From Ars Technica

0-day exploited by maliciously crafted web content to break out of security sandbox.

4 Out of 6 AI Voice Cloning Companies Fail to Protect Against Scammers

From Past News - RSS Feeds

A new Consumer Reports assessment revealed the serious security gaps in some AI voice cloning tools that cybercriminals are exploiting with minimal effort to commit fraud. The findings raise...

T-SQL and Query Languages

Think About SQL MERGE in Terms of a RIGHT JOIN

RIGHT JOIN is an esoteric feature in the SQL language, and hardly ever seen in the real world, because almost every RIGHT JOIN can just be expressed as an equivalent LEFT JOIN. The following two statements are equivalent:

T-SQL 101: #129 Inserting Multiple Rows at Once with VALUES clause in SQL Server T-SQL

From The Bit Bucket

Prior to SQL Server 2008, we could only insert a s...

A Short PSA On Transaction Count, ROLLBACK, and COMMIT In SQL Server

From Erik Darling Data

A Short PSA On Transaction Count, ROLLBACK, and CO...

All About SQL Server Stored Procedures: Isolation Levels

From Erik Darling Data

All About SQL Server Stored Procedures: Isolation Levels Going Further If this is the kind of SQL Server stuff you love learning about, you’ll love my training. I’m offering...

Tally Table Alternatives: #SQLNewBlogger

From SQLServerCentral Blogs

We published an article recently at SQL Server Central on Tally Tables in Fabric from John Miner. In it he showed how this can be efficient. A day after... The...

SDU Tools: Reset Sequence using SQL Server T-SQL

From The Bit Bucket

Our free SDU Tools for developers and DBAs, now includes a very large number of tools, with procedures, functions, and views. Users that are new to working with sequences...

March 2025 SQL Challenge: Test Your Skills with Advanced SQL Scenarios

From SQLServerCentral Blogs

If you’re an experienced SQL user eager to sharpen your expertise with real-world challenges, the March SQL Practice is the perfect opportunity. This month’s challenge is designed for advanced... The...

Video: CONVERT/CAST and MAX–Order Matters!

From 36 Chambers – The Legendary Journeys

THE VIDEO THE SYNOPSIS In this video, I demonstrate how order of operations matters when it comes to casting or converting a data type and performing an aggregation on...

All About SQL Server Stored Procedures: Some Notes On Locking Hints

From Erik Darling Data

All About SQL Server Stored Procedures: Some Notes On Locking Hints Going Further If this is the kind of SQL Server stuff you love learning about, you’ll love my...

T-SQL 101: #128 Inserting Data into a Table using SQL Server T-SQL

From The Bit Bucket

To insert new rows into a table, you will mostly use the INSERT statement. In the example above, I've inserted one row into the dbo.CinemaGroups table. There are a...

Tech News

AI is Creating New Paths for Women — And Closing Doors at the Same Time

From Past News - RSS Feeds

AI is advancing and displacing women’s careers. ...

Trust AI or Peers More for Advice? Here’s What Execs Prefer & Why

From Past News - RSS Feeds

Executives are placing more trust in AI than colle...

IT Certification Pay Surges Amid Cloud, AI, and Security Demands

From IT Pro - Microsoft Windows Information, Solutions, Tools

As enterprises tackle complex integrations and dat...

Developer convicted for “kill switch” code activated upon his termination

From Ars Technica

Software developer plans to appeal after admitting...

Telecom tells employees they won’t get bonuses if they don’t follow RTO policy

From Ars Technica

Report: Strict enforcement comes as Vodafone is reducing domestic office space.

ServiceNow Buys AI Startup Moveworks for $2.85B: What It Means for Markets

From Past News - RSS Feeds

ServiceNow expands its AI capabilities with the acquisition of Moveworks, adding 500 employees and enhancing enterprise-wide AI adoption for major companies. The post ServiceNow Buys AI Startup Moveworks for $2.85B:...

$11.9B AI Deal: Altman Calls CoreWeave ‘An Important Addition’ to OpenAI

From Past News - RSS Feeds

The AI cloud provider has secured an $11.9 billion deal with OpenAI ahead of its IPO. The post $11.9B AI Deal: Altman Calls CoreWeave ‘An Important Addition’ to OpenAI appeared...

The Lighter Side

AI coding assistant refuses to write code, tells user to learn programming instead

From Ars Technica

Cursor AI tells user, "I cannot generate code for ...

Error'd: No Time Like the Present

From Daily WTF

I'm not entirely sure I understand the first item today, but maybe you can help. I pulled a couple of older items from the backlog to round out this timely...

Despite everything, US EV sales are up 28% this year

From Ars Technica

In the US, customers are buying while there are still incentives, no extra tariffs.

BEVs are better than combustion: The 2025 BMW i4 xDrive40 review

From Ars Technica

We spend a week with BMW's regular all-wheel drive electric sedan.

Virtualization and Containers/Kubernetes

Kubernetes Clusters Running at Just 10% CPU Utilization, Cast AI Report Finds

From IT Pro - Microsoft Windows Information, Solutions, Tools

Cloud waste persists in Kubernetes environments, while automation offers both cost savings and operational benefits.

 
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