Steve Jones

My background is I have been working with computers since I was about 12. My first "career" job in this industry was with network administration where I became the local DBA by default. I have also spent lots of time administering Netware and NT networks, developing software, managing smaller IT groups, making lots of coffee, ordering pizza for late nights, etc., etc.

I currently am the editor of SQL Server Central and an advocate/architect at Redgate Software. I am also the President of SQL Saturday, maintain the T-SQL Tuesday monthly party, and remember our colleagues at sqlmemorial.org.

You can find out more about me on my blog (www.voiceofthedba.com) or LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com/in/way0utwest)
  • Interests: yoga, reading, biking, snowboarding, volleyball

SQLServerCentral Editorial

SQL Server Licensing is Simple

Over the years I've had no shortage of licensing questions for SQL Server. At times it's felt a little crazy. Look at the licensing guide. Choose EE or SE and the number of cores. Then check if you're using VMs. Oh, and consider the cloud, and which cloud you're running a workload on. It's simple […]

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2025-12-03

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Blog Post

Advice I Like: Failure

If it fails where you thought it would fail that is not a failure. – from Excellent Advice for Living This is a great quote, especially for those of...

2025-11-28 (first published: )

416 reads

SQLServerCentral Article

T-SQL in SQL Server 2025: The PRODUCT Function

Earlier this year at SQL Saturday Austin 2025, Conor Cunningham gave a keynote that discussed the engineering efforts in the Austin office around SQL Server. One of the things he mentioned was PRODUCT(), which was written there and added to SQL Server 2025 to help with the GDP calculation for the US government. Yep, that's […]

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2025-11-28

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Blogs

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Forums

Where Your Value Separates You from Others

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Comments posted to this topic are about the item Where Your Value Separates You...

Fixing the Error

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Comments posted to this topic are about the item Fixing the Error

T-SQL in SQL Server 2025: Encoding Functions

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Comments posted to this topic are about the item T-SQL in SQL Server 2025:...

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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?

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