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Will AI Tools End Up With An Intentional Bias?
As products continue to integrate AI features and functionality directly into them, what are the risks of intentional biases in what they produce? Why would someone produce an AI Tool with an intentional bias? Money. It’s going to be very tempting for database platform companies, as well as ancillary software products that will have AI… Continue reading
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When Statistics Don’t Help: A Trillion Row Table Performance Mystery.
We knew something was wrong when queries at various times of the day started taking minutes instead of milliseconds on an SQL Server database. The question was, what? About The Table: The Statistics Issue: When I investigated the issue, I made a discovery about the distribution statistics for the clustered index (which was also the… Continue reading
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Reflections on the PASS Data Community Summit 2024
Now that I have been back for a couple of days and had a chance to digest the summit, I have some observations. I made some of these observations and promptly forgot about this blog post. So I am finishing it up and publishing it in early 2025. I worked for a great company that… Continue reading
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What Microsoft Doesn’t Seem Understand When It Comes to AI Concerns.
I was at the PASS Data Community Data Summit and not surprisingly Microsoft spent a significant amount of time talking about AI. They talked about all the steps they take to make sure that AI is ethical. Don’t get me wrong, that’s important and good to see. Considering the general IP concerns that have emerged… Continue reading
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Notifications From SQL Server Agent
So I recently moved some databases to a new server running SQL Server 2019 and encountered a issue with job status notifications from SQL Agent jobs. I don’t do much with the agent doing failure (or success notifications) for jobs, I usually add a step to a job to notify via e-mail of success or… Continue reading
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The Single Best Tip For InfluxDB Queries IMHO
So the most basic tip I can offer when it comes to queries for InfluxDB it is this. Always qualify by time, yes, always.InfluxDB is a time series database platform. They designed it for you to query by date. So fight the urge as much as you want to run a query that doesn’t qualify… Continue reading
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The Original Escapes Of Arthur Coghlan
I got the updated edition of this book yesterday. Arthur Coghlan is an Australian magician and escape artist. His daughter Helen has performed multiple escapes designed by her and her father on Fool Us and has successfully fooled Penn and Teller several times. Now to the book. It is an exciting mix of useful information… Continue reading
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So what is going on here.
The plan is to create content about databases (SQL Server and InfluxDB mostly) and stuff related to my other interests, such as magic and other things. Continue reading
About Me
Suburban dad, database administrator, amateur magician and high school sports official.
I have been doing the database thing for almost 30 years, most of that with SQL Server along with other platforms, most recently InfluxDB.
I perform magic with a volunteer organization and enjoy practicing it, learning new things and the history of the art.