Daniel Hutmacher

Working with date/time datatypes in T-SQL can be quite frustrating if you don’t have the tools and know-how. Let me arm you with all the knowledge you need to correctly model, convert, index and query your date/time data in a logical and easy-to-understand manner.

Working with date/time datatypes in T-SQL can be quite frustrating if you don’t have the tools and know-how. Let me arm you with all the knowledge you need to correctly model, convert, index and query your date/time data in a logical and easy-to-understand manner. We’ll cover the wide range of datatypes available in SQL Server/Azure SQL, and help you understand which ones are right for your goals. We’ll dig in to explicit and implicit conversions, optimal indexing strategies, and some hidden gotchas when working with date/time data. For the icing on the cake, we’ll also look at some horrible real-world anti-patterns from the trenches, and how to address them like a pro.

IT vulnerabilities leading to data breaches have been getting a lot of attention in the news, ranging from elaborate supply-chain attacks to ransomware. You may even have read about things like advanced cryptographic timing attacks or buffer overruns. But there’s one vulnerability as old as SQL itself, and it still reigns supreme when it comes to compromising your confidential information: The SQL Injection. This is not just about your homepage. SQL injections can be found everywhere, including your ETL frameworks, your desktop apps, even your login prompts. I’ll show you a wide range of code patterns that bad actors can exploit, from the obvious to the obscure, but we’ll also look at ways to prevent or mitigate the effects of SQL injection attacks. In this presentation, you will gain a firm understanding of * the primary and secondary risk factors involved in SQL injection, * what to look for — in your code as well as in the database itself, * ways to detect SQL injections, and * how to plug those vulnerabilities — whether you can change code or not.

Join Bob Ward and friends to learn every aspect of SQL Server 2025 including AI built-in, Developer features, all of the core engine, Azure Arc, Fabric Mirroring, and more.

Join Bob Ward and friends to learn every aspect of SQL Server 2025 including AI built-in, Developer features, all of the core engine, Azure Arc, Fabric Mirroring, and more.

With the recent introduction of new JSON functions and JSON indexes in SQL Server 2025 and Azure SQL Database, this is a good time to learn what JSON is, and how to work with it in. While JSON support is a great addition to T-SQL, some of these new features will require a little planning and...

IT vulnerabilities leading to data breaches have been getting a lot of attention in the news, ranging from elaborate supply-chain attacks to ransomware. You may even have read about things like advanced cryptographic timing attacks or buffer overruns.

IT vulnerabilities leading to data breaches have been getting a lot of attention in the news, ranging from elaborate supply-chain attacks to ransomware. You may even have read about things like advanced cryptographic timing attacks or buffer overruns.

IT vulnerabilities leading to data breaches have been getting a lot of attention in the news, ranging from elaborate supply-chain attacks to ransomware. You may even have read about things like advanced cryptographic timing attacks or buffer overruns. But there’s one vulnerability as old as SQL itself, and it still reigns supreme when it comes to compromising your confidential information: The SQL Injection. This is not just about your homepage. SQL injections can be found everywhere, including your ETL frameworks, your desktop apps, even your login prompts. I’ll show you a wide range of code patterns that bad actors can exploit, from the obvious to the obscure, but we’ll also look at ways to prevent or mitigate the effects of SQL injection attacks. In this presentation, you will gain a firm understanding of * the primary and secondary risk factors involved in SQL injection, * what to look for — in your code as well as in the database itself, * ways to detect SQL injections, and * how to plug those vulnerabilities — whether you can change code or not.

You’re a SQL Server DBA or developer. You’ve inherited a mess of undecipherable self-joins and temp tables with identity columns, and you have this dream that you could simplify it all - using a simple, elegant one-liner. In this session, we'll dive into the amazing world of window functions in SQL Server. We'll start with the basics, explaining what window functions are and why they're so powerful. Then we'll explore the different types of window functions - ranking, aggregate, and offset - and when to use each one. We'll cover practical examples on how window functions can simplify your queries, dramatically improve performance, and make your T-SQL code so much easier to read and maintain. After this session, you'll be able to write more efficient queries, solve complex problems with a few lines of code, and your colleagues will throw glorious parties in celebration of your brilliance. On a serious note, though, window functions are so much better than my ability to write abstracts - once you’ve tried them, you’ll never want to go back.

IT vulnerabilities leading to data breaches have been getting a lot of attention in the news, ranging from elaborate supply-chain attacks to ransomware. You may even have read about things like advanced cryptographic timing attacks or buffer overruns.

You’re a developer, data engineer, or DBA working with SQL Server. You remember reading about ACID compliance in some computer science class a couple of decades ago, and maybe you just assumed that every transaction you run in SQL Server is fully ACID: Atomic, Consistent, Isolated and Durable.

Cryptography is everywhere. Most of what you do on the Internet and in the cloud is encrypted. If you’re working with data or cloud infrastructure, just checking the TLS checkbox is only half the job. You need to have a decent understanding of what goes on underneath the padlock icon in order to keep your company’s dirty secrets safe. In this high-level introduction to cryptography, we’ll look at the origins and evolution of encryption, leading up to modern-day symmetric and asymmetric encryption, signatures and certificates. After the session, you’ll be able to use hand-wavy phrases like “certificate chain” and “public key infrastructure”, as if you know what they mean. No PhD required.

Ever since the incident, you’ve been wanting to learn more about database partitioning in SQL Server. This session walks you through what partitioning really does, and what it doesn’t do. We’ll take a look at some of the quirks of partitioning, as well as how to use it to boost performance, enable high(er) availability, and even build lightning-fast data retention policies.

Ever since the incident, you’ve been wanting to learn more about database partitioning in SQL Server, but every time you play around with it, it just ends up being complicated and slow. This session walks you through what partitioning really does, and what it doesn’t do.

Ever since the incident, you’ve been wanting to learn more about database partitioning in SQL Server. This session walks you through what partitioning really does, and what it doesn’t do. We’ll take a look at some of the quirks of partitioning, as well as how to use it to boost performance, enable high(er) availability, and even build lightning-fast data retention policies.