User-defined Data Type Basics
This article discusses an often-overlooked feature of SQL Server called user-defined data types.
2002-12-17
8,205 reads
Don Frazier
FirstDayOfMonth() and LastDayOfMonth() functions
Here are a couple of handy date functions that pretty much describe themselves. You can use these to figure out how many days are left in a month.
2002-12-08
625 reads
zPad() - add leading zeros to a number
This user-defined function converts a number to character format and adds leading zeroes to pad the field to a specified length. useful for displaying SSNs or other numeric fields where the leading 0's are significant but the field is stored as numeric.To use:select dbo.zPad(, )make sure your length includes an extra column for the sign. […]
2002-12-05
425 reads
Convert a number to words
This is a handy function that converts a number (integer) into its word format. This might be handy if you need to print a check formatted number in words. Currently it supports an integer but it would be almost nothing to convert to support a bigint or decimal.The components are1) a table named PlaceValue that […]
2002-12-04
365 reads
PACK() user defined function
Convert a decimal number to IBM EBCDIC packed decimal format. If for some reason you need to export a number to IBM systems in native format, you can define a SQL Server field as binary(8) and Pack() your decimal number into it. Then IBM mainframes and COBOL/CICS systems can read the numbers from your data […]
2002-12-04
547 reads
Blogs
“We love to debate minutiae”
By Brian Kelley
I am guilty as charged. The quote was in reference to how people argue...
Advice I Like: Knots
By Steve Jones
Learn how to tie a bowline knot. Practice in the dark. With one hand....
Shifting Mindsets: Why FinOps is Essential for Cloud Efficiency
By HeyMo0sh
As a DevOps practitioner, I’ve always focused on performance, scalability, and automation. But as...
Forums
Windows logins for users migrated from DomainA to DomainB
Hi, I have a SQL Server instance where users connect to via Windows Authentication,...
Multiple Deployment Processes
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Multiple Deployment Processes
How to Use sqlpackage to Detect Schema Drift Between Azure SQL Databases
Comments posted to this topic are about the item How to Use sqlpackage to...
Question of the Day
Upgrading Admin Queries
I have a query from a former DBA that we run on SQL Server 2025 to check on database metadata. This query references sys.sysaltfiles. I want to refactor this code to be more modern. Which DMV should I reference instead?
See possible answers