Regular Columnist: Michael Coles

This guest editorial from Michael Coles was originally published on Aug 1, 2007. It is being re-run as Steve is on vacation. Today Michael talks about the potential for reward for taking risk.  Read more...

Implementing searching in your database is always a challenge and MVP Michael Coles brings us a method of building a Google-like search for SQL Server.  Read more...

A look at the 2007 PASS Summit's first few days.  Read more...

Are you taking care of yourself as an IT professional? We try to cover all aspects of your SQL Server career here, not just the technical stuff. Longtime SQL Server guru Michael Coles brings us some health tips in an interview with Dr. Jerry Sanders   Read more...

The great debate over NULLs will probably never end. Should we use them in our databases? What meaning do they have? These are all valid questions. In this article SQL Server expert Michael Coles takes a look at the problems that are inherent in eliminating NULLs completely from a database.   Read more...

Longtime SQL Server expert Michael Coles brings us the second part of his his introductory look at XML in SQL Server 2005 with a short examination of XQuery, the way in which you can write queries on XML data.   Read more...

Dealing with NULL data is something that often confuses new SQL Server developers, but even experienced DBAs might not understand all the intricacies of NULL operations. In a follow up to his highly acclaimed Four Rules of Null article, Michael Coles brings us a few new tricks with NULLs.   Read more...

Longtime SQL Server expert and author Michael Coles takes a look at one of the security products that every SQL Server DBA should consider. Read on to find out how NGSSQuirreL can help you.   Read more...

SQL Server 2005 has greatly expanded the capabilities of SQL Server in many different areas. One of those that has matured greatly is the integration of XML data inside SQL Server. Longtime writer and guru Michael Coles brings us the first part of a two part series on XML ion SLQ Server 2005.   Read more...

Numbers are fascinating concepts in all types of mathematics, but they can be very helpful as well in your SQL Server queries. Guru Michael Coles brings us a look at how a numbers table can you and includes a bunch of code for both SQL Server 2000 and SQL Server 2005.   Read more...

In the final installment of his series, Michael Coles examines a few other functions in his SQL Server 2000 toolkit to help you with other functions, like reading a directory on your server. Read the series and send some feedback to make this THE premier toolset for SQL Server 2000 DBAs.   Read more...

Phonetic matching, working on finding terms that are misspelled, is an art and there are a number of ways to handle it. In SQL Server 2000 the tools are limited, but Michael Coles brings us part 3 of his toolkit with some handy functions that can help you with text searching.   Read more...

After introducing us to a comprehensive encryption toolkit in part I, Michael Coles delves into Regular Expressions and the functions included in the toolkit for use on SQL Server 2000.   Read more...

SQL Server 2005 builds some great encryption tools into the product, but what if you are stuck with SQL Server 2000? SQL Server expert Michael Coles brings us the first part of a series along with a free toolkit to manage encryption and keys.   Read more...

One of the more interesting new features with SQL Server 2005 is the native encryption built into the product. Expert SQL crpytographer, Michael Coles, brings us a look at the symmetric keys in SQL Server 2005 and how they can be used to encrypt data and be secured by a certificate.   Read more...

Many people have posed the question of how to generate sequential numbers for some report when the underlying data has no numbering system. The solutions have always been complicated derived or temporary tables and are difficult to implement. SQL Server 2005, however, brings us the ROW_NUMBER() function and author Michael Coles shows us how this can be used to easily add sequential numbering to your results.   Read more...

SQL injection has been a hot topic the last couple years and there are some great articles at SQLServerCentral.com on this topic. Michael Coles brings us an updated look at this SQL Server security issue with some new examples you might not have previously thought.   Read more...

That certainly is a mouthful, but it boils down to author Michael Coles implementation of a sound matching search for SQL Server 2005. Another mouthful, but if you are interested in getting close matches because your clients cannot spell, you might want to read this one.   Read more...

You may never need to work with them, but if you do then you will quickly realize how complicated barcodes can be. Michael Coles recently had a project and developer a toolkit to actually print barcodes from SQL Server.   Read more...

Encryption in SQL Server is difficult to implement and manage, but it is being required more and more often. However understanding what encryption means is as important as being able to manage and implement it. Michael Coles brings us part 2 in his series on explaining the mysteries behind cryptography.   Read more...