SQLBalls

Bradley Ball is a Sr. Azure FastTrack Customer Engineer for Microsoft, and former Data Platform MVP. During his IT career Bradley has spent 8 years working as a Defense contractor for clients such as the U.S. Army, The Executive Office of the President of the United States for the Obama Administration, and is the former Data Platform Practice Manager for Pragmatic Works Consulting, now 3Cloud. He has presented at SQL Saturdays, SSUG's, SQL Rally, DevConnections, SQLBits, SQL Live 360, and the PASS Summit. Bradley co-hosts the Tales From The Field YouTube show https://aka.ms/TftF/youtube , he can also be found blogging on https://www.SQLBalls.com

All authors

Blog Post

Optimize For Unknown

Hello Dear Reader!  It's been a while.  I was working with a friend and we came across an interesting problem....

2016-12-21 (first published: )

3,319 reads

Optimize For Unknown

Hello Dear Reader!  It's been a while.  I was working with a friend and we came across an interesting problem.  They had a large amount of skewness/data skew.  This...

2016-12-05

5 reads

All authors

Blogs

A New Word: Etherness

By

etherness – n. the wistful feeling of looking around a gathering of loved ones,...

Vibe Coding a Login Tracking System

By

A customer was asking about tracking logins and logouts in Redgate Monitor. We don’t...

4 CPE Opportunity (Virtual) for Charity

By

Every year, the South Carolina State Internal Auditors Association and the South Carolina Midlands...

Read the latest Blogs

Forums

T-SQL in SQL Server 2025: The || Operator

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Comments posted to this topic are about the item T-SQL in SQL Server 2025:...

Your Value from a Conference

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Comments posted to this topic are about the item Your Value from a Conference

UNISTR Basics

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Comments posted to this topic are about the item UNISTR Basics

Visit the forum

Question of the Day

UNISTR Basics

What does this code return in SQL Server 2025+? (assume the database has an appropriate collation) 

SELECT UNISTR('Hello 4E16754C') AS 'A Classic';
A:   B:  

See possible answers