Bad data always seems to appear when, and where, one least expects it. Sam explains the great value of a defensive approach based on constraints to any team that is developing an application in which the data has to be exactly right, and where bad data could cause consequential severe financial damage. It is perhaps better seen as creating a test-driven database.
2012-01-09
2,574 reads
Microsoft Office Word is useful. There, I have confessed it, it's useful to me while I am working with TSQL. It's possibly only the search and replace function that I like but it's wrapped in Word so I have to take it like that. I use it a lot to help me capture the results of a stored procedure.
2012-01-06
4,436 reads
Frequently surveys ask yes/no questions and use a bit datatype. What are the effects of allowing this column to be NULL in a SQL Server table? Check out this tip to learn more.
2012-01-05
4,275 reads
Microsoft SQL Server is able to create very efficient query plans in most cases. However, there are certain query patterns that can cause problems for the query optimizer; this article describes four of these patterns.
2012-01-04
5,357 reads
The XML Data type has definite uses, but the way of interrogating, retrieving, and manipulating the values of properties and attributes within XML have been so foreign to the SQL language as to be somewhat of a barrier to their use. Fortunately, Robert Sheldon has once more managed to make the subject accessible to those of us who just need to get the job done.
2012-01-03
3,706 reads
Is there an easy/automated way to get information on SQL Server Agent jobs instead of connecting to each server and manually getting the information through the SSMS GUI?
2012-01-02
3,521 reads
Check out this tip to learn about the SELECT @@VERSION command in SQL Server.
2011-12-30
4,818 reads
There has been much debate over the need for the Lock Pages in Memory privilege, on 64-bit versions of SQL Server. Jonathan Kehayias presents a "warts and all" account of its history, the confusions surrounding its use, and why he believes it's still a good default configuration for 64-bit SQL Server instances, even when running Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008R2.
2011-12-29
2,878 reads
This blog, explores ideas for extending SQL Server with new, fast hash functions. As will be shown, the high speed, built in functions CHECKSUM and BINARY_CHECKSUM are not always optimal hash functions, when you require the function to spread data evenly over an integer space.
2011-12-28
2,595 reads
I have transactional replication configured in my production environment with multiple subscribers. The business team has requested that one of the subscriptions be reinitialized, because they think there is some missing data. In this tip we look at the different options that you can use to reinitialize a subscription for transactional replication.
2011-12-27
2,872 reads
By Steve Jones
I was looking over the CHOOSE() function while editing an article at SQL Server...
By Brian Kelley
Here is another short video (~ 15 minutes). This is by the author of...
By Steve Jones
I had a briefing for the 2026 PASS Data Community Summit, which is just...
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In SQL Server 2022+, what does the ##MS_DatabaseConnector## role allow?
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