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SQLServerCentral Editorial

Getting and keeping fit

Don't worry, this is a technical editorial, but the initial analogy starts a bit personal. For the past decade, I've been on a journey to get fit, facing setbacks along the way, such as surgery complications and broken bones, torn cartilage, and, most recently, broken metal implants. Throughout this time, my overall physical fitness has […]

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2024-08-10

83 reads

SQLServerCentral Editorial

The Danger of Safety Assistance Tools

During a speaker dinner the other week, a lot of topics were swirling around and a few caught my ear. One of these topics dovetailed nicely with a mistake I recently made. More on that later. The discussion was on the effect on safety that all the new safety-based tech is having on driving. Some […]

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2024-07-13

79 reads

SQLServerCentral Editorial

Is Perfect Software Attainable?

I was in a social media discussion the other day where someone said “Perfection isn’t real, but progress is.” This started me thinking, is there really no perfection? Can you not actually create a piece of software that is perfect? Of course you can. As long as your requirements are perfect, and the code does […]

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2024-06-08

106 reads

SQLServerCentral Editorial

Realities of Predictive Analysis

Or for short, “Why you have to play the game” “Don't tell me the odds”, cried out Han Solo just before doing something that seemed impossible. How on Coruscant did he do that? Well, as a certain director said about a certain floating door in a galaxy we all call home. ”It was in the […]

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2024-05-18

86 reads

SQLServerCentral Editorial

One more reason to use foreign key constraints

Since the title might be considered a bit vague, I don’t want you to wade through the article to figure it out. I will spare you the typical clickbait introduction, with me telling you what a foreign key constraint is, and why it and all the other constraint types provided by relational engines are useful. […]

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2024-04-27

254 reads

SQLServerCentral Editorial

Do you listen to music when you work?

I want to make this a participation topic. When you are working, do you listen to music or do you need quiet? And if it isn’t music, do you do something else? TV, movies? For me, it is almost always music. As I write my first Database Weekly newsletter editorial in a few months, I […]

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2024-04-20

163 reads

SQLServerCentral Editorial

Sharing the Work You Do 

During one my yearly review, I got one particularly interesting piece of feedback. “You need to share the work you are doing and share with the company.” This is basically a matter of letting people know about the stuff we are putting out on Simple-Talk.com. It is something that is regularly done here, but to […]

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2024-01-27

90 reads

SQLServerCentral Editorial

Being A Bit Less Comfortable in 2024

I hate coming up with ideas for editorials, but my last editorial of the year gives me a very simple topic just staring me in the face: New Year’s Resolutions. Love them or hate them (or it we are honest, a good bit of both,) this end of one year and the start of another […]

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2023-12-30

168 reads

SQLServerCentral Editorial

Love

Love is many a splendored thing. It is also a much-abused word with many different (and twisted) meanings. The type of love I wish to speak about today is not friendship, nor the kind of thing that makes your heart go pitter patter in the springtime, but rather the type of love known as storge, […]

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2023-12-09

69 reads

SQLServerCentral Editorial

You Are An Inspiration

Hero, Champion, Inspiration. These are words that are bantered around about people regularly. Joe was a hero when he saved that puppy. Betty was the champion runner and won the race. Pat was an inspiration; they work so hard. Hero and champion are universally understood as positive things. Inspiration is typically used as a positive, […]

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2023-11-25

91 reads

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Question of the Day

Fixing the Error

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