Verifying Object Exists and Dropping Object with One Statement
For years you probably have been writing code similar to the code below to verify an object exist prior to dropping it.
2020-03-19
Articles
Never Create Columns with ANSI_PADDING set to OFF
There is no good reason for having ANSI_PADDING set to OFF when you create tables in SQL Server. It was provided purely for legacy databases that had code that assumed the old CHAR behavior for dealing with padding, and its use has now been deprecated.
2020-03-18
Securely Manage Database Credentials Using Visual Studio Manage User Secrets
In this tip we cover how to manage application secrets in a development environment to securely store database credentials.
2020-03-18
Fetch Web Data in Power BI
Introduction Reporting on web data has been a fascinating part of developing any dashboard or reports in Power BI. Often this data is available either free that can be consumed anonymously or by using some kind of authentication mechanism. In this article, I'm going to demonstrate how to connect to a web application from Power […]
2020-03-17
5,533 reads
Translating a SQL Server Schema into a Cassandra Table: Part II Integrity Constraints
Complex integrity constraints are more challenging to enforce in Cassandra than they are in a relational database. In this article, Shel Burkow walks through four modelling examples in Cassandra involving constraints.
2020-03-17
What’s in that database? Getting information about routines
There is a lot of information held in SQL Server metadata about your SQL Server procedures, triggers, views and functions. Some of it is valuable, other nuggets are useful and a few are rather dull but worthy. It really all needs to be tied together to tell the full story, especially if you are not able to, or do not want to, query the metadata directly.
2020-03-17
Combining many crossing intervals
This article demonstrates how the geometric functions in SQL can be use to solve the Islands and Gaps problem.
2020-03-16
2,609 reads
Moving on from Volunteer Projects
I can’t remember a time when I was not involved in side-projects, usually as a volunteer but also writing books or creating courses. New projects are like bright, shiny objects, and it’s easy to get involved in too many of them.
2020-03-16
Overview of Azure Cache for Redis
Caching data is one way to improve application performance. In this article, Chandra Kudumla explains a service for caching data found in Azure called Azure Cache for Redis.
2020-03-16
Approaches to Import JSON in SSIS (SQL Server 2016+) Part 1
In this article, 1st of 2-part series, we will look at 2 approaches to import JSON in SSIS using 2 methods: the new functionality of SQL Server 2016 and the Json.NET library.
2020-03-13 (first published: 2018-08-20)
32,766 reads
Blogs
How to Clear the SSMS Cache (SSMS 21 and Later)
By SQLPals
How to Clear the SSMS Cache (SSMS 21 and Later) Updated...
The flight recorder: Replaying what an AI agent did on my SQL Server
By Arun Sirpal
“What exactly did it do on my server?” is the first question a DBA...
Announcements from the Microsoft Fabric Community Conference — Barcelona 2026
By James Serra
Microsoft shared a broad set of Fabric, Power BI, and SQL updates at FabCon...
Forums
It's Never Just One Thing
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Calculating Min-Max Normalization in PowerBI
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Checking the Error Log III
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Question of the Day
Checking the Error Log III
If I want to run sp_readerrorlog on SQL Server 2025, what permissions do I need?
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