Articles

External Article

Is It Time To Stop Using IsNumeric()?

The old system function IsNumeric() often causes exasperation to a developer who is unfamiliar with the quirks of Transact SQL. It seems to think a comma or a number with a 'D' in the midde of it is a number. Phil Factor explains that though IsNumeric has its bugs, it real vice is that it doesn't tell you which of the numeric datatypes the string parameter can be coerced into, and because it doesn't check for overflow. Phil comes to the rescue with a couple of useful alternatives, one of which works whatever version of SQL Server you have, and which tell you what datatype the string can be converted to.

2017-08-21

4,500 reads

SQLServerCentral Article

Reporting Services Makes Server Support Easier

Reporting Services is one of the most widely used subsystems in SQL Server and there have been some very creative solutions invented by DBAs around the world. New author Carolyn Richardson is one of those, bringing us a implementation that tracks uptime and disk space for her SQL Servers

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2017-08-18 (first published: )

8,806 reads

External Article

Database Code Analysis

Database code analysis will reduce the number of 'code smells' that creep into your database builds. It will alert the team to mistakes or omissions, such as missing indexes, that are likely to cause performance problems in production. It will allow the Governance and Operations team visibility into production readiness of the code, warning them of security loopholes and vulnerabilities. William Brewer describes the two technical approaches to database code analysis, static and dynamic, and suggests some tools that can help you get started.

2017-08-18

3,546 reads

External Article

How to Read a Transaction Log Backup

The transaction log backup is stored in SQL Server proprietary format, just like the transaction log itself. Even though the transaction log backup is in a special format, Microsoft has provided us with the fn_dump_dblog() function to read transaction log backups. This function is undocumented, so you should use care when using this function in a production environment.

2017-08-17

4,324 reads

External Article

Monitoring Azure Cloud and Hybrid Environments

Cloud-based services and applications must still be monitored just like the on-premise ones. You still need most of your data center activities that ensure that your planning, budgeting, security and service-level obligations are met wherever the data and services are actually hosted. There is much to be said for an integrated approach to providing a unified view of entire application workloads on-premise. hybrid and cloud using the same tools wherever possible.

2017-08-16

3,995 reads

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Question of the Day

The Large Encoded Value

I want to use the new BASE64_ENCODE() function in SQL Server 2025, but return a string that isn't large type. What is the longest varbinary string I can pass in and still get a varchar(8000) returned?

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