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What's Happening in 2026...

2026 is an exciting year already! We’re working on a bunch of new courses and a new AI Blackbelt badge. The first course is already available – Joe Sack’s SQL Server Vector Search Essentials – on the new vector search capabilities of SQL Server 2025/Azure SQL Database.

Talking of Joe, he’s back working with SQLskills for the first time in ten years, and he and Kimberly (supposed to be retired!) have a new podcast – Kimberly & AIJoe Talk Tech – check it out!

Be sure to spelunk around our Resources tab, there are LOTS of resources out there on SQL Server!

SQL Server 2022 wasn’t a large release for Engine features so we recorded a series of targeted 2022 update sessions to complete our regular courses and bundles – we have a great set of bundles available in our new Learning Paths where you can really focus on just what you need to succeed!

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We’ve worked with thousands of people like you: intelligent, hardworking data professionals who just haven’t been given what they need to succeed…which results in all sorts of dire consequences:

  • Productivity stalls because people can’t work.

  • Revenue suffers because customers can’t make purchases.

  • Your team feels defeated by compounding problems.

  • Your manager loses confidence in your ability to keep things running.

Server downtime and poor performance are bad for business. They’re even worse for your career.

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Recent Posts

RSS Paul’s Blog
  • The SQL Server Transaction Log, Part 2: Log Architecture February 19, 2026
    (This post first appeared on SQLperformance.com four years ago as part of a blog series, before that website was mothballed later in 2022 and the series was curtailed. Reposted here with permission, with a few tweaks.) In the first part of this series I introduced basic terminology around logging so I recommend you read that […]
  • Achievement Unlocked: One Year Sober February 17, 2026
    (This is from the Insider Newsletter that I sent out earlier today…) Back in early 2023 I wrote a long blog post about my struggles with alcohol and how I’d decided to stop. I made it a few months, and then several times on and off after that, in the classic struggle to actually stop […]
  • The Curious Case of… occasional query failure on a tiny table February 17, 2026
    This is a case that happened on a client system last year: occasionally a common query on a tiny table appeared to ‘hang’ and had to be killed and re-run. What’s going on? The table in question only had a few million rows of data in it, with a maximum row size of 60 bytes, […]
  • New course and bundle: SQL Server 2025 Vector Search in Practice February 16, 2026
    (TL;DR; Video trailer for the new course is here.) Joe’s next course, AIVSP: Vector Search in Practice, is now available! This online course builds on AIVSE: Vector Search Essentials to cover production patterns for vector search in SQL Server 2025 and Azure SQL Database. Designed for SQL Server DBAs and developers who have completed the prerequisite […]
RSS Jonathan’s Blog
  • Do you need Trace Flag 460? March 9, 2023
    For most people that are reading this post, I’d venture to guess that you have no idea what Trace Flag 460 is or when you would use it. Well first off, let me tell you it’s a fully documented and supported trace flag, and it’s totally safe. In fact, on SQL Server 2019 and higher […]
  • Event exceeds the number of allowable bound actions February 27, 2023
    Did you know that there is a limit to the number of actions you can add to a single event in Extended Events? While I was playing around with Trace Flag 9708 for my previous blog post, one of the things I wanted to try to see was whether it would be easy to determine […]
  • SQL Server 2022: Measuring Extended Events Performance Impacts February 20, 2023
    Have you ever wondered if Extended Events is affecting the performance of your workload? I have written a lot about Extended Events and have been a huge promoter of why you should be using Extended Events instead of SQL Trace for longer than I have worked at SQLskills.com. While Extended Events provides a lot of […]
  • What’s New in SQL Server 2022: GENERATE_SERIES() October 5, 2022
    I’ve been doing a lot of work with SQL Server 2022 lately and one of my absolute favorite new features that I just came across today is the GENERATE_SERIES() built-in table function. I just happened to see it in the Books Online content while looking up the syntax for something else. GENERATE_SERIES (Transact-SQL) – SQL […]
RSS Kimberly’s Blog

Show your data who's boss.

With training and consulting from SQLskills, you’ll proactively drive your team’s success, rather than just reacting to your database issues.

  • Deliver elegant solutions to problems that once baffled you

  • Stop worrying about downtime and slowdowns

  • Elevate your team’s capacity

  • Take control of your data career

  • Gain respect and support from management

  • Meet—or even exceed—your SLAs

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We invite you to join the SQLskills family and share our passion!

Each newsletter includes:

  • SQLskills news

  • A book review from Paul

  • The Curious Case of… that discusses a problem we’ve seen at a client recently

  • Paul’s Ponderings, where Paul writes about a topic of interest to the SQL Server community

  • #TBT, interesting resources and recent blog posts

  • Demo Video, a video showing something cool about SQL Server from one of the team

Here’s an example newsletter from March 2017 so you can see what it’s like.  No marketing emails, no spam, plus all the prior newsletters!

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