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News and Events from SQLskills

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.

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Recent Posts

RSS Paul’s Blog
  • 2025: the year in books January 5, 2026
    Back in 2009 I started posting a summary at the end of the year of what I read during the year and people enjoy it so I did it every year afterward until 2019 and then restarted for 2023 (see 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2023 , 2024– a ton of amazing books in those posts to tempt you!). For 2024 […]
  • New course: SQL Server Vector Search Essentials December 16, 2025
    We’re tremendously excited to be developing a library of AI-focused courses, as well as new courses focused on traditional SQL Server topics, all based on SQL Server 2025 and Azure SQL Database. Joe Sack is back with us and he gets the honors for our first new course: AIVSE: Vector Search Essentials. This course prepares […]
  • December Deep Discount sale on our Blackbelt bundle! December 3, 2025
    From now until mid-December we have our lowest prices ever on our signature 158-hour Blackbelt training bundle: US$1,599 for Lifetime access (no expiration) US$899 for one-year access (or to upgrade) After that, prices revert to last year’s Black Thursday sale prices off US$1,895/$990 respectively for the rest of the month. If you have a one-year […]
  • The Curious Case of… log truncation in a distributed availability group November 30, 2025
    It’s been a while since I wrote one of these, but I’m picking up the series again. This is a question that came in through email from a prior student, which I’ll summarize as: with a distributed availability group, what are the semantics of log truncation? As I’m not an AG expert (I just know […]
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

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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

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  • Meet—or even exceed—your SLAs

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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

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