General program for PASS Summit 2024 now available

Did you know that the general program for PASS Data Community Summit 2024 (November 4-8) was recently unveiled? This year's lineup includes over 150 different sessions being delivered by over 140 speakers!

This year's program also includes 16 incredible full day pre-cons, taking place on November 4 and 5, plus 6 different learning pathways to choose from. Join PASS Summit on-site for a whole week of connecting, sharing and learning with industry experts. Register before July 16 to secure a 3-day ticket at the early bird rate.

What does SQL NULL mean and how to handle NULL values

This tip will help you understand what NULL means and different ways to handle NULL values when working with SQL Server data.

Choosing Between the Lakehouse and Warehouse in Microsoft Fabric

Microsoft Fabric is a new centralized, AI-powered cloud data platform hosted by Microsoft. It combines several services of the existing Azure Data Platform – such as Azure Data Factory – with Power BI, while also introducing new services.

Prevent Duplicate Records in SQL using Filtered Index

In this article, I share how an SQL Server filtered index solved the problem of preventing duplicates for new rows in a table.

Concepts and Issues in Test Data Generation

Data generation is the science and art of providing data for database development work that is as realistic and controllable as possible. The skills of generating realistic data are an essential part of being a database developer. It is important: you need plenty of data of exactly the right type, size and verisimilitude

Build Chatbot with Large Language Model (LLM) and Azure SQL Database

In this article, we look at how to enable a large language model (LLM) to answer questions based on data stored in Azure SQL Database.

Two Tweaks for Faster Backups with Ola Hallengren’s Scripts

Ola Hallengren’s free maintenance solution is widely used as a replacement for SQL Server maintenance plans. It’s a more powerful, flexible tool for backups, corruption checking, and index & statistics updates. If you’re using it for backups, there are two quick, easy changes that can dramatically reduce your nightly job runtimes.

Effective Strategies for Storing and Parsing XML in SQL Server

XML is a common storage format for data, metadata, parameters, or other semi-structured data. Because of this, it often finds its way into SQL Server databases and needs to be managed alongside other data types.

Query Exercise: Beat ChatGPT at Finding Good Question Times

What are the best days of the week and times of the day to post a question at StackOverflow.com?

SQL Server TRY CATCH, RAISERROR and THROW for Error Handling

Learn about SQL Server error handling using TRY CATCH, RAISERROR, and THROW for stored procedures, triggers, and user-defined functions.