Checksums can be very helpful for validating that data is intact and free from simple mistakes. They are extremely fast to calculate, and computing power has made them all but trivial over the past few decades. Because of this, checksums often hide in plain sight. One of these is the Luhn Checksum, which is produced by …

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In my previous post, I discussed an issue I encountered where comments caused strange issues in a PowerShell notebook in Azure Data Studio. I opened an issue in GitHub about this, and got some very prompt feedback from a member of the team. It turns out I did not have the latest version of the PowerShell Kernel running …

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This is not the blog post I was intending to write. I started off writing about a different topic, and had some code that I wanted to share in a PowerShell Notebook. Getting that notebook to behave like it should have, however, is another story entirely and worthy of its own post – this one. PowerShell Notebooks are …

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Last year I wrote about how to upload data to Azure Blob Storage Archive Tier, and included a PowerShell script to do so. It's something I use regularly, as I have hundreds of gigabytes of photos and videos safely (and cheaply!) stored in Azure Blob Storage using Archive Tier. Things Just Got Easier! Microsoft recently …

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As a former DBA, it should be no surprise that I am a big fan of keeping data safe, and not just corporate data – this extends to my personal data as well. Early on I realized that the cloud was a great way to protect all my photos, videos, and other digital keepsakes that I absolutely could not stand to lose. As cloud …

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I've found myself working with PowerShell more frequently as of late, in no small part due to the amazing dbatools module. This has led to me trying to figure out how else I can utilize it for some of my personal internal processes. I like to use public datasets for experimentation and presentation demos, especially …

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This Month's T-SQL Tuesday is being hosted by Pat Wright (blog | twitter) and Pat is asking about tips and tricks for making life easier through automation using either T-SQL or PowerShell. Recently I have been doing more and more work in PowerShell in order to get familiar with it. So far I've been quite happy. Batch …

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