Recent Posts

ProcureSQL Speakers at Day of Data Pittsburgh and St. Louis 2026

The ProcureSQL team is bringing practical insights on SQL Server performance, data protection, Power BI, and Microsoft Fabric to two Day of Data events this October. John Sterrett will present in Pittsburgh on Saturday, October 10, 2026,…

Top 10 Announcements from FabCon Europe 2026

FabCon Europe took place in Barcelona from September 28 to October 1, 2026. Microsoft announced a long list of updates across Fabric and Power BI. The September 2026 Fabric feature summary alone has well over 100 items. These are the 10 announcements we're most excited about. Most of them are in preview, so we've noted the release status for each one.

10 Decisions to Make Before You Create A Fabric Workspace

,

Creating a Fabric workspace takes about 30 seconds. Restructuring workspaces after people have built content in them takes a lot longer. Moving content to another workspace usually means redeploying or recreating it, and anything bound to the old item IDs has to be rebound: reports connected to a semantic model, a notebook’s default lakehouse, pipeline […]

The post 10 Decisions to Make Before You Create A Fabric Workspace first appeared on Data Savvy.

SQL Server Security updates in September 2026

September 2026 SQL Server Security Updates

, ,
The cost of a properly planned SQL Server maintenance window is measurable and manageable.  The cost of a database compromise or database-service outage is much harder to contain. Microsoft released SQL Server security updates on September…

10 Limitations of Fabric Deployment Pipelines And Some Alternatives

Fabric deployment pipelines look like they solve CI/CD for Fabric content, especially for people who prefer a GUI over writing code to handle deployments, but the implementation has enough structural gaps that they fall apart for several real deployment workflows. Even when they do work, the UI isn’t always intuitive. Every piece of active software […]

The post 10 Things I Hate About Fabric Deployment Pipelines— And Some Alternatives first appeared on Data Savvy.

Think Twice Before Enabling Fabric’s Inbound Network Protection

Fabric inbound network protection involves two tenant-level controls: Private Link and Block Public Internet Access. But enabling them disables several features.

The post Think Twice Before Enabling Fabric’s Inbound Network Protection first appeared on Data Savvy.

The $150 Challenge: What We’re Building and Why

, ,
Series: Building a SQL Server Always On Lab in Azure Before You Begin This is the first post in the series. There are no prerequisites beyond an active Azure subscription with the Visual Studio credit activated. If you haven’t done that yet, the next post covers it as its first step. Who Is This Series […]

Crawl, Walk, Run with Agentic Development of Power BI Assets

,

If you’ve been watching AI roll through the data community and thinking, “this seems useful, but I have no idea where to start,” this post is for you.

The post Crawl, Walk, Run with Agentic Development of Power BI Assets first appeared on Data Savvy.

Data Architecture

10 Decisions to Make Before You Create A Fabric Workspace

,

Creating a Fabric workspace takes about 30 seconds. Restructuring workspaces after people have built content in them takes a lot longer. Moving content to another workspace usually means redeploying or recreating it, and anything bound to the old item IDs has to be rebound: reports connected to a semantic model, a notebook’s default lakehouse, pipeline […]

The post 10 Decisions to Make Before You Create A Fabric Workspace first appeared on Data Savvy.

SQL Server Security updates in September 2026

September 2026 SQL Server Security Updates

, ,
The cost of a properly planned SQL Server maintenance window is measurable and manageable.  The cost of a database compromise or database-service outage is much harder to contain. Microsoft released SQL Server security updates on September…

SQL Server 2025 Fabric Mirroring: Change Feed vs CDC Explained

,
SQL Server 2025 replaces CDC with a new change feed for Fabric mirroring giving you lower overhead, self-healing DDL, no sysadmin required. Here's what changed and what to plan for.

SQL Server Dynamic Data Masking Security Pitfalls: How Masked Data Gets Exposed

, ,
SQL Server Dynamic Data Masking (DDM) is one of those SQL Server features that is commonly misused as a primary security feature used in production. Since it landed in SQL Server 2016, I’ve seen teams throw it at compliance requirements and…

Operating Materialized Lake Views in Microsoft Fabric

, , ,
This is the last post in a three-part series exploring the mechanics of Materialized Lake Views (MLVs). The goal is to help you understand how they work and whether they make sense for your environment. What they are, when they help, and when they fall short.

Designing with Materialized Lake Views in Microsoft Fabric

, ,
This is the second post in a three-part series exploring the mechanics of Materialized Lake Views. The goal is to help you understand how they work and whether they make sense for your environment. What they are, when they help, and when they fall short.

SQL Server 2025 Upgrade Cost & ROI

,

The issue I’ve found is that reviews of SQL Server 2025 that showcase the business impact of the upgrade are hard to find and don’t focus solely on its technical aspects. … Continue reading →

The post SQL Server 2025: Is the Upgrade Worth the Money? appeared first on SQL Server Consulting & Remote DBA Service.

Materialized Lake Views in Microsoft Fabric

, ,
This is the first post in a three-part series exploring the mechanics of Materialized Lake Views. The goal is to help you understand how they work and whether they make sense for your environment. What they are, when they help, and when they fall short.

C-Level

SQL Server 2025 Upgrade Cost & ROI

,

The issue I’ve found is that reviews of SQL Server 2025 that showcase the business impact of the upgrade are hard to find and don’t focus solely on its technical aspects. … Continue reading →

The post SQL Server 2025: Is the Upgrade Worth the Money? appeared first on SQL Server Consulting & Remote DBA Service.

Microsoft Fabric Mirroring changes the game with Data Ingestion giving you near real-time data with a no-code framework

Fabric Mirroring is Changing the Game for Data Ingestion

,
Microsoft’s Fabric Mirroring will change how you perform data ingestion. If you are using products to automate batch processes for data dumping, did you know that Fabric Mirroring might remove the need for these tools and provide you with…
John Sterrett from ProcureSQL attend the 2025 Microsoft Fabric Conference

Microsoft Power BI to Microsoft Fabric: Are You Ready for the Transition?

,
In 2023, Microsoft announced its new platform, Microsoft Fabric, an innovative product that combined Microsoft Power BI, Azure Synapse Analytics, Azure Data Factory, Fabric SQL Databases, and Real-Time Intelligence into one platform. Over…

Legacy Applications: Should They Stay Or Should They Go?

Modernizing Legacy Applications Older legacy systems and legacy applications are crucial to a business's functionality. They're the backbone that holds a business together, whether they are a bank's mainframe holding customer accounts, a factory's…
John Sterrett from ProcureSQL attend the 2025 Microsoft Fabric Conference

The CIO’s Guide to Leveraging Microsoft Fabric for Competitive Advantage

,
I attended the Microsoft Fabric conference for the first time last week. I wanted to provide a guide that CIOs and CEO's could leverage to understand how they could utilize these new announcements at the 2025 Fabric Conference to obtain a competitive…

Community

ProcureSQL Speakers at Day of Data Pittsburgh and St. Louis 2026

The ProcureSQL team is bringing practical insights on SQL Server performance, data protection, Power BI, and Microsoft Fabric to two Day of Data events this October. John Sterrett will present in Pittsburgh on Saturday, October 10, 2026,…

We’re Speaking at FabCon/SQLCon

, ,
We are happy to announce that three ProcureSQL employees are on the FABCON/SQLCON agenda. These co-located conferences are happening in Atlanta, Georgia March 16 - 20.

TSQLTuesday #188 – The Recap of Growing the Younger Data Community and Speakers

  Earlier this month, we hosted T-SQL Tuesday and chose the topic of Growing the Younger Data Community and Speakers.  Today, I bring you a summary recap of everyone who shared their thoughts on this subject with links to their…

TSQLTuesday #188 – Growing the Younger Data Community and Speakers

This month, I am hosting T-SQL Tuesday for the very first time. T-SQL Tuesday is a monthly blog party created by Adam Machanic in 2009. I want to give Steve Jones a shout-out for allowing me to host this month's edition. Each month, a…
Austin Texas SQL Saturday

Austin Texas SQL Saturday was a Success!

Austin Texas SQL Saturday was a Success! Austin Texas SQL Saturday was a success! Procure SQL would not exist if it wasn't for #SQLFamily and the SQL Community. Therefore, we always want to help connect, share and learn with our local data…
Make Your Queries Go Faster

SQL Saturday Jacksonville Sponsors

Procure SQL is proud to be speaking and sponsoring SQL Saturday Jacksonville this weekend. Join us and several other amazing community speakers as we all share our knowledge with the community. The event will be on Saturday, May 14th, 2022,…
Make Your Queries Go Faster

Getting Started with SQL Server Performance Tuning

Watch! Getting Started with Performance Tuning Have slow queries and want to get down to the basics of learning some fundamentals for performance tuning? If so, John Sterrett is giving an talk at the Nashville User Group (Online) tomorrow.…
Procure SQL September 2018 Training Opportunities

September 2018 Training Opportunities

, ,
The Procure SQL team is out and about in September, sharing their knowledge for free at SQL Saturdays as well as online webinars!  We are very proud of our team and their efforts to share knowledge and experiences.  Be sure to say hello and…

SQL Saturday Houston 2018

, , ,
We are back this year!  Not only are we sponsoring SQL Saturday Houston, we are also speaking!  All three of us are presenting!  Go here to see the full schedule. What is SQL Saturday? SQL Saturday is a free training event for Microsoft…
Join Our Newsletter

Blog Categories

Tags

Archives