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Day: October 6, 2026

Moving the SSMS Status Bar to the Top of the Screen

Published 2026-10-06 by Kevin Feasel

Hemantgiri Goswami makes a move:

I have a strange preference. I keep my Windows taskbar at the top of the screen, and I have been doing so for years. Anything requiring attention shall be positioned at the TOP.

This isn’t about aesthetics.

When you administer Development, UAT, Pre-Production, and Production databases throughout the day, the SQL syntax doesn’t change. The query window doesn’t change. Sometimes, even the database names don’t change.

I’d never thought to do that before, to be honest.

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Securing MCP Servers Connected to a Database

Published 2026-10-06 by Kevin Feasel

Dejan Lukic shares some advice:

AI agents don’t ask permission before every query. Instead, they themselves decide which tools to call and chain together. That’s a fundamentally different risk model than traditional access control – and it’s exactly why MCP (Model Context Protocol) servers connected to databases need their own security playbook.

This guide covers the failure modes to watch for: confused deputy, token passthrough, prompt injection, over-scoped credentials, and session hijacking. Then, how to prevent those failure modes – using authentication, authorization, and least-privilege controls.

Treat them like any other often-confused employee. Which, in many environments, means making them sysadmins.

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Implicit INNER JOINs from LEFT OUTER JOINS

Published 2026-10-06 by Kevin Feasel

Dualcore DBA demonstrates how you can turn an outer join into an inner join on accident:

This post is a quick public service announcement to serve as a reminder to be careful with joins in SQL, particularly in queries with a large number of INNER and LEFT JOINs.

An INNER JOIN onto a LEFT JOIN will effectively make that LEFT JOIN an INNER JOIN.

This is a bit different from the other major case: a LEFT OUTER JOIN whose column you use in the WHERE or HAVING clauses.

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Major Announcements from FabCon Europe 2026

Published 2026-10-06 by Kevin Feasel

Meagan Longoria has a list:

Policies were much needed. Until now, many Fabric capabilities were controlled by tenant switches that enable a feature for everyone or restrict it for everyone. Nothing was this fine-grained, which created blind spots and admin headaches. Fabric Policies let admins define who can perform an action, what the rule covers, and where it applies. If no rule matches, the action is denied.

The first three policy types are:

  • Item creation (capacity scope): controls who can create specific item types in workspaces on a capacity.
  • Edit workspace settings (tenant scope): controls who can change security-sensitive workspace settings, such as network security and customer-managed keys.
  • External data sharing (tenant scope): controls who can share data externally, from which workspaces, for which sensitivity labels, and to which recipient domains.

Policies are stored in Policy Set items and managed in the Policies Center in the OneLake catalog. They support public APIs and Git integration, and policy changes are recorded in the Microsoft 365 audit log.

Click through for all ten.

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