https://thepolyglotdba.com Database internals, security, and war stories across SQL Server, Snowflake, Postgres, AWS, and more. https://thepolyglotdba.com/images/ThePolyglotDBAFavIcon.jpeg https://thepolyglotdba.com en-gb Tue, 03 Nov 2026 14:58:32 GMT https://thepolyglotdba.com/article?slug=sqlserver-lock-timeout https://thepolyglotdba.com/article?slug=sqlserver-lock-timeout Sun, 01 Nov 2026 12:00:00 GMT ALTER TABLE on a live database can hang indefinitely waiting for a schema lock. SET LOCK_TIMEOUT is how you turn that silent hang into a controlled failure you can handle. SQL Server https://thepolyglotdba.com/article?slug=rss-feed https://thepolyglotdba.com/article?slug=rss-feed Tue, 06 Oct 2026 12:00:00 GMT A friend of mine, David, asked if the blog had an RSS feed. My first reaction was, "do people still use those?" General https://thepolyglotdba.com/article?slug=azure-sql-firewall https://thepolyglotdba.com/article?slug=azure-sql-firewall Tue, 22 Sep 2026 12:00:00 GMT "Allow Azure services and resources to access this server" sounds like it means your Azure services but the reality is it doesn't... It means every Azure customer on the platform, probably not what you intended. Azure SQL https://thepolyglotdba.com/article?slug=snowflake-coco-ai-prompt https://thepolyglotdba.com/article?slug=snowflake-coco-ai-prompt Thu, 17 Sep 2026 12:00:00 GMT Last week Snowflake enabled CoCo and the AI Prompt in Snowsight for all accounts by default. There's no toggle to suppress the UI! That requires a support ticket. In the meantime, here's how to shut down Cortex access at the role level while you wait. Snowflake https://thepolyglotdba.com/article?slug=dm-exec-requests-av https://thepolyglotdba.com/article?slug=dm-exec-requests-av Wed, 16 Sep 2026 12:00:00 GMT SQL Server 2022 CU26 and SQL Server 2025 CU9 both ship with a known regression that crashes the process if a monitoring query hits sys.dm_exec_requests while a database is still recovering. Here's what to look for and how to mitigate it. SQL Server https://thepolyglotdba.com/article?slug=nitro-security https://thepolyglotdba.com/article?slug=nitro-security Sun, 13 Sep 2026 12:00:00 GMT The i4i, i4g, im4gn, and is4gen families ship with custom Nitro SSDs and a security architecture most teams don't fully understand. The encryption, the key isolation, and the no-operator-access guarantee are all worth knowing in detail. AWS https://thepolyglotdba.com/article?slug=sqlserver-blocking https://thepolyglotdba.com/article?slug=sqlserver-blocking Fri, 11 Sep 2026 12:00:00 GMT One long-running transaction can cascade into dozens of blocked sessions. Here's how to track the head blocker fast and what to do about it before it escalates. SQL Server https://thepolyglotdba.com/article?slug=welcome https://thepolyglotdba.com/article?slug=welcome Thu, 10 Sep 2026 12:00:00 GMT Why I started writing, what this blog is about, and what you can expect to find here. General