'Topping and Tailing' strings in database tables
/*
When you are having to extract just part of a string in TSQL, there are a number of techniques you...
2011-06-14
2,222 reads
Phil Factor
- Interests: Motorbikes, Beer, gardening, conservation, Local history.
Database testing. The ferret and the rabbit
Can one generalize from agile techniques of application testing to database testing. Phil isn't entirely convinced that it can do any more that remove the distracting trivial bugs in order to allow testers to concentrate on the important issues
2011-05-30
207 reads
There cometh a shower
Phil Factor speculates on the damage caused to Cloud providers by the Amazon and Sony Outages.
2011-05-09
173 reads
Serialising tabular and relational data.
Guest editorial by Phil who bemoans the difficulty of transferring tabular data by file between differing databases, spreadsheets and analysis tools.
2011-03-14
183 reads
Is Microsoft neglecting SMO?
Phil Fator, the self-confessed wild man of T-SQL, finally comes clean: he's a secret PowerShell user. But for the DBA, what is PowerShell without SMO? Is Microsoft giving the latter the care and attention it needs?
2011-03-07
506 reads
A Great Deal of Hot Air
Even though neither the science nor politics of climate change is fully established yet, the legislators and bureaucrats have smelt an opportunity to further tighten their grip on IT. A sign of things to come is the EU’s Code of Conduct for Data Centers on Energy Efficiency.
2011-01-31
102 reads
A Quick TRIM, Sir?
The other day, I was answering a question on the ASK.SQLSERVERCENTRAL.COM forum from a programmer who had hit a
problem...
2011-01-28
2,153 reads
Silly Billiseconds
You have to admire Microsoft for sticking to their guns, even when being palpably stupid. I refer, of course to...
2011-01-13
3,341 reads
When a Dogma has had its' day
Phil points out that the SQL Server community has a role to play in making sure that the wisdom of SQL Server Pundits is regularly tested and challenged.
2010-11-29
133 reads
No free lunch in the Orchard
Phil Factor finds much to admire in Microsoft's new Orchard application but is frustrated by a design decision that seems to limit its use to low-volume applications, with less stringent security requirements.
2010-11-08
153 reads
Blogs
AI: Blog a Day – Day 4: Transformers – Encoder, Decoder, and Attention
By Vinay Thakur
Continuing from Day 3 where we covered LLM models open/closed and their parameters, Today...
Flyway Tips: Multiple Projects
By Steve Jones
One of the nice things about Flyway Desktop is that it helps you manage...
What DevOps Look Like in Microsoft Fabric
By HeyMo0sh
Microsoft Fabric (not to be confused with the more general term “fabric” in DevOps)...
Forums
Can an Azure App Service Managed Identity be used for SQL Login?
I'm fairly certain I know the answer to this from digging into it yesterday,...
Azure Synapse database refresh
Hi Team, I am trying to refresh the Azure Synapse Dedicated pool from production...
how to write this query?
hi everyone I am not sure how to write the query that will produce...
Question of the Day
Fun with JSON I
I have some data in a table:
CREATE TABLE #test_data
(
id INT PRIMARY KEY,
name VARCHAR(100),
birth_date DATE
);
-- Step 2: Insert rows
INSERT INTO #test_data
VALUES
(1, 'Olivia', '2025-01-05'),
(2, 'Emma', '2025-03-02'),
(3, 'Liam', '2025-11-15'),
(4, 'Noah', '2025-12-22');
If I run this query, how many rows are returned?
SELECT *
FROM OPENJSON(
(
SELECT t.* FROM #test_data AS t FOR JSON PATH
)
) t; See possible answers