In this article, I wanted to discuss the PowerShell (PoSh) pipeline, which was confusing to me at first and took some time to get used to working with. I had used one in Linux before, but the PoSh one is more powerful, but also slightly different. Hopefully I can demystify some of the concepts for […]
2026-01-07 (first published: 2020-12-31)
6,144 reads
In this next article, we look at how notebooks using Python can be cheaper than Spark notebooks.
2026-01-07
2,404 reads
When there’s a performance emergency, a lot of us perform the same manual tasks over and over. We run sp_BlitzWho or sp_WhoIsActive, look for blocking, long-running or out-of-control queries, and kill them.
2026-01-07
See how Claude Code helped load a lot of messy data into a database for less than $5.
2026-01-05
2,540 reads
Sometimes we cannot improve query performance because we don’t have control over the code. Consider a query that is generated by Entity Framework (EF) from the application and you do not have access to the source code. The main question is how you can improve SQL Server query optimization for a poorly performing query?
2026-01-05
In this article, I will provide a set of examples to show case the use of OUTPUT clause for INSERT and DELETE statements.
2026-01-02 (first published: 2017-05-25)
307,347 reads
This article covers the 10 key concepts developers should understand to avoid surprises and to use the model database intentionally.
2026-01-02
In this article, I am going to explain fixing a problem related login failure error with SQL Server. The Problem One of the common error in the SQL Server error log is "Login failed for user 'DomainName\ServerName$'. Reason: Could not find a login matching the name provided. [CLIENT: <local machine>]". Even though it says that […]
2025-12-31 (first published: 2020-11-24)
54,295 reads
Just like advances in artificial intelligence, I have heard that quantum computing is going to be a disruptive technology for our future. For instance, there’s the concern that it’s going to break/crack a lot of network encryption and potentially data encryption. What’s going to be affected, how long do we have, and what do I (and my organization) need to do to prepare for it?
2025-12-31
Learn about the new ZSTD compression algorithm in SQL Server 2025.
2025-12-29
2,017 reads
By Steve Jones
I haven’t done one of these in awhile, but I saw an article recently...
In last months one of the scenarios where you can use AI has been...
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Missing the Jaro Winkler Distance
Comments posted to this topic are about the item 25 Years Later: What SQLServerCentral...
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Doing Good at SQL Server...
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