Connect with your SQL Community on Slack
Slack is a popular tool for team interaction. To describe it quickly, it's a feature-rich persistent chat room, with threads,...
2025-09-25 (first published: 2017-05-04)
593 reads
Will Assaf
Easily query your GitHub Contribution activity
For a variety of reasons, including your Microsoft MVP activity reports, you might want to summarize your GitHub activity across multiple repos. For contributors to Microsoft open-source docs on GitHub,...
2025-06-20 (first published: 2025-06-05)
281 reads
Migrate datetime data to datetimeoffset with AT TIME ZONE
I recently reviewed, worked on, and added a similar example to the DATETIMEOFFSET Microsoft Learn Docs article at the recommendation of my colleague Randolph West, who guessed (accurately) I...
2024-05-22 (first published: 2024-05-03)
399 reads
Tips, ideas, and recommendations on your technical blog
This technical blog is hardly the ideal, but I'll use this space here to summarize some of the guidance that my colleague Randolph West and I presented at a...
2023-11-13 (first published: 2023-10-27)
373 reads
Updated training list for a new DBA
Met an eager young volunteer at SQLSatBR over the weekend who inspired me to update a blog post that hadn't been refreshed in a few years. See the [UPDATED] Training...
2023-08-18 (first published: 2023-07-31)
601 reads
SQLSat Baton Rouge 2023!
Looking forward to #jambalaya at #SQLSatBR on July 29! Register today: sqlsatbr.comI hope to see as many people as possible that weekend, I'll be there at the Friday night...
2023-07-22 (first published: 2023-07-21)
22 reads
SQL Server 2022 Administration Inside Out
SQL Server 2022 Administration Inside Out is now available for pre-order from Microsoft Press. This book is far more than a quick update. We've rewritten and refreshed large portions of...
2023-03-25 (first published: 2023-03-24)
120 reads
30 Interview Questions for a Database Administrator and Developer
This blog post summarizes the type of technical questions I would ask candidates for a Microsoft SQL Server data platform administrator and database developer role.Hopefully this helps both candidates...
2023-03-08 (first published: 2023-02-28)
1,171 reads
Q&A on certification exams, exam prep, and test-taking skills
Part 2 of 2. This blog post is co-authored by Ajayi Anwansedo, PhD and William Assaf, who met and worked together at The Futures Fund, a STEM non-profit which offers introductory coding and...
2023-02-03 (first published: 2023-01-23)
269 reads
Exam Cram with DataWeekender talk - Think Like a Certification Exam
Fresh off of a two-part, co-authored blog series on certification exams and test-taking prep, I've got a fresh batch of fun sample questions for the January 2023 Data Weekender Exam...
2023-01-24
14 reads
Blogs
Flyway Tips: AI Deployment Script Descriptions
By Steve Jones
With the AI push being everywhere, Redgate is no exception. We’ve been getting requests,...
A New Word: Fawtle
By Steve Jones
fawtle – n. a weird little flaw built into your partner that somehow only...
Post-quantum key exchange – Insurance policy for your packets
AWS recently added support for Post-Quantum Key Exchange for TLS in Application Load Balancer...
Forums
Where Your Value Separates You from Others
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Where Your Value Separates You...
Fixing the Error
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Fixing the Error
T-SQL in SQL Server 2025: Encoding Functions
Comments posted to this topic are about the item T-SQL in SQL Server 2025:...
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