I recommend visiting the Microsoft site at https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/virtual-machines-windows-upload-image/ to obtain the latest and greatest instructions.

I wish I would have spelled my name correctly.

When using SSMS with a projector or very large screen HDTV, there are several customizations to make things easier to read for the people in the back of the room. First let’s look at a screen capture of SSMS without any customizations. Figure 1. SSMS with default settings. Do you really need the Properties pane during a presentation? Probably ...

Excel is a great tool but Power BI offers more in the realm of visualization. The 64-bit version of Excel is better at processing large files than the 32-bit version, but even it has limitations. Power BI Desktop (BI as in Business Intelligence) is a free alternative to Excel for working with large files and Big Data. It is possible to enable the ...

Too often I see SQL Server misspelled as SQL Sever. You can easily prevent this by using AutoCorrect in Word. Start by clicking on File. Figure 1. Click on File in Word. Next, click on Options. Figure 2. Click on Options. On the Word Options dialog box, select Proofing and then click the AutoCorrect Options button. Figure 3. Click the ...

Readers who need specific help should go to MSDN forums for SQL Server https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/sqlserver/en-US/home?category=sqlserver or Stack Exchange.

Temporal tables in SQL Server 2016 and Azure SQL Database allow you to have historical changes to data maintained for you automatically. You don’t have to write custom code to maintain historical values. New SQL syntax allows you to query and retrieve the data as it was in the past or you can simply retrieve the most recent value. The official ...

The SQL Server product team wants to hear from you. Here’s your chance to say what you expect from documentation. Hurry – the survey closes on March 18. http://www.instant.ly/s/cwef3/nav#p/186a0

SQL Server runs on Linux now. Apply for the preview at https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/server-cloud/sql-server-on-linux.aspx

Yesterday my friend Kalen Delaney asked me about @@VERSION showing (HYPERVISOR) even though she wasn’t running inside a virtual machine. I was able to replicate the behavior on my machines. I asked my colleagues at Microsoft about this. It was confirmed that it is by design. The addition of (HYPERVISOR) to the output indicates only whether or not ...