Articles

External Article

The SQL of The Game of Life

Joe Celko finds a reference to Conway's Game of Life while clearing out his desk, and is suddenly gripped with nostalgia. It wasn't just flares, mullets and disco, but simple computer games in interpreted basic. Somehow, Conway's Game of Life was too intriguing to be abandoned in the attic. Can it be implemented in SQL? Joe sets up a challenge.

2014-06-16

2,958 reads

External Article

Setting Up Your SQL Server Agent Correctly

It is important to set up SQL Server Agent Security on the principles of 'executing with minimum privileges’, and ensure that errors are properly logged and alerts are set up for a comprehensive range of errors. SQL Server Agent allows fine-grained control of every job step that should allow tasks to be run entirely safely even if they occasionally need special privileges.

2014-06-13

3,563 reads

External Article

On Comparing Tables in SQL Server

How do you compare two SQL tables? Every SQL Developer or DBA knows the answer, which is 'it depends'. It is not just the size of the table or the type of data in it but what you want to achieve. Phil Factor sets about to cover the basics and point out some snags and advantages to the various techniques.

2014-06-10

5,867 reads

Blogs

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Question of the Day

BIT_COUNT I

In SQL Server 2025, I have a table (dbo.UserPermission) that contains this data:

UserID  UserPermissions
15
23
37
What is returned when I run this code:
select bit_count(UserPermissions) as PermissionCount
from dbo.UserPermission
where UserID = 3;

See possible answers