Grant Fritchey

Grant Fritchey is a SQL Server MVP with over 20 years’ experience in IT including time spent in support and development. Grant has worked with SQL Server since version 6.0 back in 1995. He has developed in VB, VB.Net, C# and Java. Grant has authored books for Apress and Simple-Talk, and joined Red Gate as a Product Advocate in January 2011. Find Grant on Twitter @GFritchey or on his blog as the Scary DBA.

SQLServerCentral Editorial

I Love Editorials

Why do I love editorials, I can hear you asking. The answer is simple. It's all about opinions. I have opinions. Lots of them. Lots and lots of them. I'm flying home from Hong Kong after visiting a Redgate customer. They are doing amazing work.. It's so cool getting to see how people are solving […]

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2025-10-18

50 reads

SQLServerCentral Editorial

Technological Dinosaurs or Social Dinosaurs?

You're going to have to bear with me on this one because my thoughts aren't fully formed. As I'm sure I've mentioned, I'm a little elderly (and you thought I was going to talk about radios). As such, I've seen the death of a few technologies. I may not have shared this widely, but my […]

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2025-10-11

151 reads

SQLServerCentral Editorial

The Yutes

I recently had the opportunity to talk a little PostgreSQL with the Salt Lake City PostgreSQL Meetup group (thank you for having me by the way). Great bunch of people who were really engaged and asked a lot of questions. On the way out of the event, I was chatting with one person (who had […]

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2025-09-13

195 reads

SQL Server 2022 Query Performance Tuning

Troubleshoot slow-performing queries and make them run faster. Database administrators and SQL developers are constantly under pressure to provide more speed. This new edition has been redesigned and rewritten from scratch based on the last 15 years of learning, knowledge, and experience accumulated by the author. The book Includes expanded information on using extended events, automatic execution plan correction, and other advanced features now available in SQL Server.

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2025-08-08 (first published: )

1,091 reads

SQLServerCentral Editorial

Hack Your Brain

Now, let's be really clear up front, I don't mean getting a surgically implanted chip in your head, done on your kitchen table. Brain hacks are generally either, forming habits that are good for learning and concentration, changing how you do things to help enhance your brains function, eating differently in support of brain health, […]

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2025-08-02

111 reads

Blog Post

Slide Decks

Hello everyone! Just a quick note. I’ve removed all my slide decks from SlideShare. I found they were inserting ads into the slides and I didn’t sign up for...

2025-08-02

30 reads

SQLServerCentral Editorial

Get Your Chores Done

I grew up in a pretty rural environment, in the southern US, in what's considered the Old West (Jesse James, reportedly, had a hideout a few miles from my current home, the Daltons, Belle Star, I can keep going, all came through this part of Oklahoma). Here, we call our daily tasks, like taking out […]

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2025-08-01

90 reads

SQLServerCentral Editorial

A Little Appreciation

I'd like to take a moment and simply voice my appreciation for Steve Jones. Steve's still on sabbatical, so I've been doing some of the work, along with my co-worker, Kellyn Gorman (who I also appreciate, very much). I'm sure you've noticed. Oh, not simply that the editorials are different. That's to be expected. Nah, […]

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2025-07-30

99 reads

SQLServerCentral Editorial

Planning for the Right Emergency Response

I'm currently testing a pair of POC radios <editor: can no one shut him up about the radios?> No, go away. So, where was I, oh yeah, POC radios. What are they, I hear you asking. <editor: no one asked that> Hush. Push-to-talk Over Cellular. POC or PoC. In short, you get a SIM card […]

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2025-07-28

79 reads

SQLServerCentral Editorial

Life's Little Frustrations

As with others, I've had to deal with death in the family recently. Some other family members are dealing with cancer (a few friends too). Happily none of us has recently been a disaster zone, but that's happened too. So yeah, big, nasty scary stuff happens in life. However, for most of us, most of […]

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2025-07-19

88 reads

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Specifying the Collation

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Comments posted to this topic are about the item Specifying the Collation

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Question of the Day

Specifying the Collation

I am dealing with issues on my SQL Server 2022 instance related to collation. I have an instance collation of Latin1_General_CS_AS_KS_WS, but a database collation of Latin1_General_CI_AS. I want to force a few queries to run with a specified collation by using code like this:

DECLARE @c VARCHAR(20) = 'Latin1_General_CI_AS'

SELECT  p.PersonType,
        p.Title,
        p.LastName,
        c.CustomerID,
        c.AccountNumber
 FROM Person.Person AS p
 INNER JOIN Sales.Customer AS c
 ON c.PersonID = p.BusinessEntityID
 COLLATE @c
Will this solve my problem?

See possible answers