Articles

External Article

Natural Language Query for SQL Server

Data is usually the most important asset in organizations, but only SQL developers can frequently access that data. Technical teams often write queries for non-technical users. This restricts agility, slows decision-making, and creates a bottleneck in data accessibility. One possible remedy is natural language processing (NLP), which enables users to ask questions in simple English and receive answers without knowing any code. Still, the majority of NLP-to-SQL solutions are cloud-based, which raises issues with cost and privacy.

2025-10-03

External Article

Unlocking the Power of FULL OUTER JOIN in SQL: Performance, Use Cases & Examples

The JOIN statement is one of the most common operations SQL developers perform. Yet in a world ruled by Inner and Left Joins, the poor Full Outer Join is like Cinderella before the ball – allowed out on only the rarest of occasions. In an (unscientific) survey I once performed of SQL developers at one Fortune 100 firm, half of the developers had never used a Full Outer Join in production code, and the rest had used it in a tiny handful of occasions.

2025-10-01

External Article

Building a Dynamic Countdown Timer in Power BI

A countdown timer can be a powerful visual tool in many Business Intelligence reporting scenarios. This could be for marketing campaigns, contract expiries, and business deals with clients. Real-time countdown visuals are not natively supported in Power BI. Although, there is the Count Down Timer custom visual, which is not dynamic in its configuration.

2025-09-29

External Article

Side by Side Upgrade to SQL Server 2022

As a SQL Server DBA, the migration of SQL Server from an existing version to the latest version is a usual activity. In today’s cloud-oriented world, many organizations still prefer an on-prem environment; my organization is one of them. There are multiple reasons to keep your data on-prem, like having more privacy and control of the environment. Currently, our major project is to migrate our existing Microsoft SQL Server 2019 to SQL Server 2022. Recently, we completed the POC. Today, let’s discuss the steps of the SQL Server 2022 installation and migration of our databases.

2025-09-24

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Happy Holidays, Let's Do Nerdy Stuff

By Grant Fritchey

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UNISTR Escape

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Comments posted to this topic are about the item UNISTR Escape

Celebrating Tomorrow

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

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Question of the Day

UNISTR Escape

In SQL Server 2025, I run this command: 

SELECT UNISTR('*3041*308A*304C\3068 and good night', '*') as "A Classic";
What is returned? (assume the database has an appropriate collation) A: B: C:

See possible answers