If your development team needs to work on anonymised copies of the current production database, and if changes are being delivered rapidly as well, that could mean a lot of time and routine DevOps work copying databases. SQL Clone was designed for tasks like this. Grant Fritchey investigates whether you save time, effort and scripting over the more traditional approach, and at what point it makes sense to use it.
2017-10-10
4,465 reads
Erik Darling shows that if you take SQL Server's word when it asks for an index, things can go horribly awry.
2017-10-09
4,023 reads
SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) is the integration and ETL (extract – transform – load) tool in the Microsoft Data Platform stack. SSIS is typically used in data warehousing scenarios, but can also be used in common data integration use cases or just to move data around. SSIS is used behind the scenes in the Maintenance Plans of SQL Server and in the Import/Export wizard.
2017-10-06
4,301 reads
There are several obvious problems with poor SQL Coding habits. It can make code difficult to maintain, or can confuse your team colleagues. It can make refactoring a chore or make testing difficult. The most serious problem is poor performance. You can write SQL that looks beautiful but performs sluggishly, or interferes with other threads. A busy database developer adopts good habits so as to avoid staring at execution plans. Rob Sheldon gives some examples.
2017-10-05
6,056 reads
Azure Data Factory is a cloud based data integration service. This helps you to define, schedule and manage data pipelines to transfer and transform the data from disparate on premise and cloud data sources. Read on to learn more.
2017-10-04
2,470 reads
Microsoft (StreamInsight), and Azure Stream Analytics represent a very different model for processing data. They are concerned with processing complex event streams of data (CEPs) from such things as sensors to deduce significant patterns and apply filters. Joe Celko discusses the background to an intriguing technology of complex event processing to establish the difference between data at rest, and data on the move.
2017-10-03
3,971 reads
Brent Ozar looks at the similarities between SQL Server on Linux and SQL Server on Windows Core from back in 2012, and asks whether DBAs should bother learning it.
2017-10-02
4,169 reads
By default, SQL Prompt shows code auto-completion suggestions automatically, and continuously. 90% of the time this is exactly what you want, but there are other times where you just need a bit of space - Phil Factor shows how.
2017-10-02
2,880 reads
Deploying IaaS solutions in Microsoft Azure offers benefits that leverage agility, resiliency, and scalability built into the underlying platform. However, when dealing with business-critical workloads, customers typically want to also provide high-availability and disaster recovery capabilities in a manner that they can control. Trying to implement this approach in the cloud by following the procedures applicable in on-premises datacenters frequently presents challenges. This article focuses on these differences in the context of deployment of SQL Server Failover Clustering in Azure.
2017-09-29
3,141 reads
How difficult can it be to produce a simple hierarchical list in JSON, YAML, XML and HTML from a SQL Server table that represents a simple hierarchy within an organisation. Well once you know, it is easy and William Brewer is on a mission to tell you how.
2017-09-28
6,087 reads
By Steve Jones
With the AI push being everywhere, Redgate is no exception. We’ve been getting requests,...
By Steve Jones
fawtle – n. a weird little flaw built into your partner that somehow only...
AWS recently added support for Post-Quantum Key Exchange for TLS in Application Load Balancer...
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Where Your Value Separates You...
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Fixing the Error
Comments posted to this topic are about the item T-SQL in SQL Server 2025:...
On SQL Server 2025, I have a database that has this collation: SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS. I decide I want to run this code:
SELECT UNISTR('*3041*308A*304C*3068 and good night', '*') AS 'A Classic';
I get this error:Msg 9844, Level 16, State 4, Line 24 The char/varchar input type uses an unsupported collation. Only a UTF8 collation is supported with char/varchar input type in UNISTR function.What is the easiest way to fix this error? See possible answers