Coping with a working life as an imposter
It is not existing knowledge but the skill of acquiring new knowledge rapidly that will help you overcome imposter syndrome.
2026-05-27 (first published: 2020-09-19)
557 reads
Phil Factor
- Interests: Motorbikes, Beer, gardening, conservation, Local history.
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)
662 reads
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)
516 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)
20,182 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)
406 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)
3,774 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
258 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)
6,389 reads
Spoofing Data Convincingly: Text Data
Learn how to generate some convincing data for your development databases.
2021-01-05
3,032 reads
2020-12-12
403 reads
Blogs
DiskANN Experiment — Exploring Entry Points and Graph Neighborhoods
Introduction I was experimenting with vector search in SQL Server 2025 using approximately 3.8...
T-SQL Tuesday #203: Risk and Reward
By Steve Jones
This is timely, as I’m currently on a boat in the Adriatic taking a...
dataMinds Connect 2026 – Slides & Scripts
You can find the slides and SQL scripts for my session “Spice up your...
Forums
Communication, For Incidents and Life
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Communication, For Incidents and Life
PostgreSQL psql Meta Commands: Tables
Comments posted to this topic are about the item PostgreSQL psql Meta Commands: Tables
Building a Support Ticket Triage Report with IIF() and CHOOSE() in SQL Server
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Building a Support Ticket Triage...
Question of the Day
PostgreSQL psql Meta Commands: Tables
Which of the following psql meta commands (also called backslash or slash commands) will provide information about tables within a database?
See possible answers