The Wild Developers of SQL Server like Wildcards
Phil Factor explains the enduring attachment of database developers to wildcards, despite their current deficiencies.
2025-03-17 (first published: 2018-12-17)
487 reads
Phil Factor
- Interests: Motorbikes, Beer, gardening, conservation, Local history.
On Looking and Acting the Part
Phil Factor's offers tips for longevity in the world of IT consultancy: listen well, humiliate no-one and convince others that it was their expertise that solved the problem.
2024-12-27 (first published: 2020-01-18)
428 reads
Idempotent DDL Scripts That Always Achieve The Same Result - Making Changes Only Once: Stairway to Exploring Database Metadata Level 6
Idempotence is the property of certain operations in mathematics and computer science, that can be applied multiple times without changing the result beyond the first time they are run. When you are making changes to a database to deploy a new version, you need to be sure that certain changes aren’t made twice, or in the wrong order.
2023-10-04 (first published: 2016-12-21)
19,670 reads
Potholes in the Road of Progress
Phil Factor looks at some technologists more famous for thwarting progress than for their own creations.
2022-09-02 (first published: 2017-07-17)
315 reads
Reading and Writing your Database's Documentation using JSON
One of the problems to which I keep returning is finding the best way to read and apply documentation for databases. As part of a series of articles I'm doing for Redgate's Product Learning, I've been demonstrating how to maintain a single source of database documentation, in JSON, and then add and update the object […]
2021-06-28 (first published: 2021-05-28)
3,611 reads
Malleable Source Control
Git has proved to be a better fit to the needs and workflow of a database development team than anything that came before. Git is valuable because it encourages branching and merging, giving more choice in the way that your team can work. Due to the ease with which you can adapt Git, there is […]
2021-04-03
154 reads
Exploring Facts About SQL Server Tables: Stairway to Exploring Database Metadata Level 5
Now that we've explored, in preceding levels, some of the information that is available about indexes, triggers, keys and distribution statistics, we can concentrate on the tables themselves and their columns.
2021-01-13 (first published: 2016-12-07)
6,257 reads
Spoofing Data Convincingly: Text Data
Learn how to generate some convincing data for your development databases.
2021-01-05
2,909 reads
2020-12-12
322 reads
Presenting the Facts about Data Breaches
If you're faced by an investigation team, after a data breach, it is no use putting on your 'Mr. Sincerity' face and making vague statements. They want documented facts.
2020-11-14
158 reads
Blogs
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I was looking back at my year and decided to see if SQL Prompt...
FinOps for Kubernetes: Leveraging OpenCost, KubeGreen, and Kubecost for Cost Efficiency
In the era of cloud-native applications, Kubernetes has become the default standard platform for...
2025 Wrapped for Steve
By Steve Jones
I’ve often done some analysis of my year in different ways. Last year I...
Forums
reaching ftp thru winscp but erroring in ssis ftp task connection
Hi, below i show various results trying to reach our ftp site (a globalscape...
Finding Motivation
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Finding Motivation
The Last Binary Value of the Year
Comments posted to this topic are about the item The Last Binary Value of...
Question of the Day
The Last Binary Value of the Year
What does this code return?
SELECT cast(0x2025 AS NVARCHAR(20))Image 1:
Image 2: 
Image 3: 
Image 4: 
See possible answers