Introduction to GitHub Actions Part 1: Getting Started
This article series will teach you what you need to know to take advantage of GitHub Actions, especially for deploying database code.
2025-04-07
Articles
Windows Clustered MSDTC and SQL Server 2019 mishap
Introduction As you may know, in the early days of SQL Server Clustering, Microsoft advised to provide each clustered SQL Server instance with its own Microsoft Distributed Transaction Coordinator (MSDTC) resource. Since SQL Server 2012 this advice has been withdrawn. Microsoft now recommends to provide your instance with its own MSDTC resource, once you notice the […]
2025-04-04
2,763 reads
DAX CASE Statement Functionality using IF, SWITCH and SWITCH True
If you don’t know, DAX (Data Analysis Expressions) is a language for creating custom calculations and aggregations in Power Pivot, Power BI, and other data analysis tools. Two functions in DAX come close to replicating the functionality but come with limitations. Which one of these functions should you use?
2025-04-04
Scales & Measurements
If you’re going to work with databases, you probably ought to know something about data. In particular, we don’t put data directly into a database; we have to encode it and represent it in a format which a machine can handle.
2025-04-02
DeepSeek: What is new with this AI technology?
Learn how the DeepSeek GenAI LLM works and see how it produces SQL code.
2025-03-31
3,506 reads
Finding Out What Changed in a Cumulative Update
Over the last several years, Microsoft has been putting less and less effort into Cumulative Update documentation. We used to get full-blown knowledge base articles about fixes, but these days, we get a collection of footnotes with deceiving hyperlinks that look like they’re going to lead to more information – but they simply lead back to themselves.
2025-03-31
Implementing Fuzzy Search in SQL Server Using New Inbuilt Functions
Learn about the new string similarity functions in Azure SQL Database.
2025-03-28
5,940 reads
Basic Regex Emulator for SQL Server
Regular expressions (REGEX) let you adaptively investigate, employ, and authenticate text data. This makes it easy to search for simple or complex string patters. There is no direct way to do this in SQL Server, but in this article we look at some SQL functions you can create to emulate regex like functionality.
2025-03-28
Beyond Single-Cloud: A Peek into Multi-Cloud
The digital landscape is rapidly evolving, and the question has progressed from whether to adopt cloud technology to how to effectively use it to drive business growth and innovation. Having recognized the power of the cloud in terms of agility, scalability and innovation, organizations are turning their focus to how to get more from their investment. One such consideration is multi-cloud.
2025-03-26
Dynamic T-SQL Script Parameterization Using Python
Learn how dynamic SQL and sp_executeSQL can be used together from Python.
2025-03-24
3,274 reads
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Comments posted to this topic are about the item Lessons from the Postmark-MCP Backdoor
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Question of the Day
The Maximum Value in the Identity Column
I have a table with this data:
TravelLogID CityID StartDate EndDate 1 1 2025-01-01 2025-01-06 2 2 2025-01-01 2025-01-06 3 3 2025-01-01 2025-01-06 4 4 2025-01-01 2025-01-06 5 5 2025-01-01 2025-01-06I run this code:
SELECT IDENT_CURRENT('TravelLog')
I get the value 5 back. Now I do this:
SET IDENTITY_INSERT dbo.TravelLog ON
INSERT dbo.TravelLog
(
TravelLogID,
CityID,
StartDate,
EndDate
)
VALUES
(25, 5, '2025-09-12', '2025-09-17')
SET IDENTITY_INSERT dbo.TravelLog OFF
I now run this code.
DBCC CHECKIDENT(TravelLog)
GO
INSERT dbo.TravelLog
(
CityID,
StartDate,
EndDate
)
VALUES
(4, '2025-10-14', '2025-10-17')
GO
What is the value for TravelLogID for the row I inserted for CityID 4 and dates starting on 14 Oct 2025?
See possible answers