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SQLServerCentral Article

SQL Art 2: St Patrick’s Day in SSMS (Shamrock + Pint + Pixel Text)

Last time we turned SQL Server into a Christmas tree. Every year around St Patrick's Day I find myself doing something I can't fully justify. This year that thing was using SQL Server's spatial viewer to draw a shamrock and a pint of Guinness. Hope you have a happy St Patrick's Day and a few […]

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2026-03-16

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Technical Article

Webinar: Compliance Without Compromise: Test Data Management That Finally Fits

You know you shouldn't have production data in test environments. But every time you look at fixing it, the options feel impossible: enterprise tools that cost six figures and take months to implement, or DIY scripts that sort of work until they don't. Join this webinar on Mar 18 to learn more.

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2026-03-16 (first published: )

External Article

Getting Started with mssql-python for Data Developers

rogrammatic interaction with SQL Server or Azure SQL from a Python script is possible using a driver. A popular driver has been pyodbc that can be used standalone or with a SQLAlchemy wrapper. SQLAlchemy on its own is the Python SQL toolkit and Object Relational Mapper for developers. In the end of 2025 Microsoft released v1 of their own Python SQL driver called mssql-python. How do you get started using mssql-python for programmatic access to your SQL Server?

2026-03-11

SQLServerCentral Article

Fun with JSON

Last year, I used a lot of JSON to exchange data between systems. There are several ways to extract data from a JSON file, but there is one specific, probably less-used possibility that I’d like to highlight. For one project, I received JSON files containing a variable number of parameters and their values. If I […]

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2026-03-09 (first published: )

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Restoring On Top II

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Comments posted to this topic are about the item Restoring On Top II

SQL Art 2: St Patrick’s Day in SSMS (Shamrock + Pint + Pixel Text)

By Terry Jago

Comments posted to this topic are about the item SQL Art 2: St Patrick’s...

Breaking Down Your Work

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Comments posted to this topic are about the item Breaking Down Your Work

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Question of the Day

Restoring On Top II

I have a database, DNRTest, that has a number of tables and other objects in it. The other day, I was trying to mock up a test and ran this code on the same server:

-- run yesterday
CREATE DATABASE DNRTest2
GO
USE DNRTest2
GO
CREATE TABLE NewTable (id INT)
GO
Today, I realize that I need a copy of DNRTest for another mockup, and I run this:
-- run today
USE Master
BACKUP DATABASE DNRTest TO DISK = 'dnrtest.bak'
GO
RESTORE DATABASE DNRTest2 FROM DISK = 'dnrtest.bak' WITH REPLACE
What happens?

See possible answers