AI read the procedure that everybody walks past. Nine hundred lines, no comments, one very old warning at the top.
Find the Query That Ran at 3 a.m.: A Wanted Poster
How to find the query that ran at 3 a.m. after the fact. It uses nothing but what SQL Server 2025 keeps on its own. I planted a culprit, gave it eight disguises and buried it in four hundred innocent lookups. Then I tracked it down with Query Store. This is the poster.
Claude on SQL Server: Read, Prove, Then Change
Claude on SQL Server is safe when production gives it eyes and nothing else. This post splits the loop into three stages: start this week with a read-only login, make it a daily habit with a past cases library, then run it on a schedule with a second opinion. I tested the login on SQL Server 2025.
SQL Server Deadlock, Slow-Cooked: A Recipe That Serves Two Sessions
A SQL Server deadlock, written up the way a recipe card is written. Ingredients, prep, method, and what to do when the sauce splits. It reproduces on SQL Server 2025 every time, and I have the timestamps and the deadlock graph to prove it.
The Nightly Index Rebuild Job, 1998 to 2026: An Obituary
The nightly index rebuild job has died after a long illness. It was born in 1998 to a hard disk that could not seek. It never believed the disk had been replaced. It is survived by page density, which did most of its work all along.
T-SQL Mistakes: Careless and Careful Write the Same Six Queries
T-SQL mistakes, in the two-panel format the children’s magazines used. Careless writes it one way. Careful writes it the other. Every pair was run on the same 1,200,000 rows on SQL Server 2025 and measured. One pair returned a wrong answer. One I stopped after fourteen minutes of CPU.
The Halloween Server Shadow: Spot the Impossible One
The Halloween server shadow puzzle hides one mismatched cable. Look at three racks and choose the shadow that cannot belong.
AI Interview Questions Test You, Not the Machine
AI interview questions test whether you can explain something out loud. Cardinal can produce an answer. Cardinal cannot be asked.
Slow Queries: A Field Guide to Eight Species
Slow queries, identified the way a field guide identifies birds: by silhouette, habitat, call, and the species they’re confused with. All eight were raised in the lab on SQL Server 2025. The reads and the wait types are what each one produced.
Embeddings and Vectors: The Map of Meaning
Part four of ten. Search used to mean matching words. Embeddings let a system match meaning instead, and almost every AI feature that touches your data stands on that one idea. 1. What is an embedding? An embedding is a list of numbers that stands for the meaning of a…
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