Our Next Chapter – Welcoming Buck Woody and Launching CDO as a Service

“Oh, hi, don’t mind us – we’re just having a little conversation about SQL Server. I’m so glad you can join us. There are seats up front here…” That was the first time I ever heard words from Buck Woody directed at me. It was my first time attending one of his sessions at the … Read more

Speaking at PASS Summit On Tour: NYC

I’ll be speaking on Tuesday, 8/19, at the PASS Summit on tour in New York City. I’ll be giving a talk in the “professional development” world this time.. And I’ll be doing the same session at the PASS Summit in Seattle this fall. This time, rather than talk about SQL Server DBA tips, upgrades, migrations, … Read more

Your Silent Face: The Illusion of the Safety of “Never Patching” Your SQL Servers.

No hearing, or breathing… No movement, no colors… Just silence… Sounds peaceful. Sounds serene. And in a world where entropy didn’t exist, it could even stay that way. That’s not our world, though. Our SQL Servers (in whatever flavor they exist) don’t live in utopia. They live in a world where bad actors are trying … Read more

SQL Server Vulnerability Alert: CVE-2025-49719

On patch Tuesday this week, Microsoft released an Important severity security update (a CVSS base score of 7.5) The details of this 0-day exploit are available to read at the NIST site, and the Microsoft security update site. In short, the exploit that Microsoft has discovered and subsequently fixed can allow information disclosure. (That’s the … Read more

Bizarre Love Triangle (Sysadmins, AV tools and DBAs)

“Every time I think of you, I feel shot right through with a bolt of blue…” – If your SQL Servers (and especially your SQL Server Availability Groups and Failover Cluster instances) could speak – that’s what they’d say about the times your security and sysadmin teams deploy a new AV tool without talking to … Read more