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SQLServerCentral Article

T-SQL in SQL Server 2025: Fuzzy String Search I

Comparing strings has always been hard when we don't have great data quality. If we need exact matches, SQL Server works great. However, we often expect users to enter values without typos and know what values they want to find. Or at least know part of the string. However, matching with wildcards or partial strings […]

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2026-01-28 (first published: )

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External Article

Power BI Quick Reference Guide

I need a structured reference guide to help me get started or expand on Power BI knowledge. I want to be able to bookmark a resource and then use it daily when needed as I build my data sets, reports, and dashboards. Can you please enumerate some common and helpful resources as a Power BI Quick Reference guide?

2026-01-28

SQLServerCentral Article

T-SQL in SQL Server 2025: Fuzzy String Search II

In the last article, we examined fuzzy string matching in SQL Server 2025 with a few new functions. We know comparing strings has always been hard when we don't have great data quality. If we need exact matches, SQL Server works great. However, we often expect users to enter values without typos and know what […]

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2026-01-23

1,824 reads

External Article

Sending messages to Slack from SQL Server 2025

In an earlier tip, A history of accessing REST APIs and web pages from SQL Server, I talked about reaching out to external endpoints from SQL Server, including the new sys.sp_invoke_external_rest_endpoint procedure that hit the on-premises editions in SQL Server 2025. This seemed like an ideal use case to enhance our current solution for sending a message to Slack: using xp_cmdshell to call a PowerShell script that calls Invoke-RestMethod. In this tip, I’ll describe how we changed our implementation and why it is a marked improvement for us.

2026-01-23

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Question of the Day

Missing the Jaro Winkler Distance

I upgraded a SQL Server 2019 instance to SQL Server 2025. I wanted to test the fuzzy string search functions. I run this code:

SELECT JARO_WINKLER_DISTANCE('tim', 'tom')
I get this error message:
Msg 195, Level 15, State 10, Line 1 'JARO_WINKLER_DISTANCE' is not a recognized built-in function name.
What is wrong?

See possible answers