Changing the Data Type of a Primary Key–#SQLNewBlogger
A client asked this question recently: How do I change my numeric PK to a character type? I decided to write a short blog on how to do this....
2023-12-01 (first published: 2023-11-20)
363 reads
Blog Posts
PostgreSQL Events – A Newbies Perspective: #PGSQLPhriday 014
For this month’s #PGSQLPhriday 014 blogging event, Pavlo Golub has asked a pretty simple question: What do you think about PostgreSQL events? Prior to this year, I’d never attended...
2023-12-01
63 reads
Using ThinOptics to Read Data
As I’ve aged, I find myself struggling to read many things in my life. It started with difficulties seeing menus, but moved on to other areas. During the pandemic,...
2023-12-01
50 reads
Cosmos DB – Monitoring performance
Cosmos DB has become my latest focus and I hope to start sharing more about ways you can use it. Cosmos DB doesn’t provide the same granularity of query...
2023-11-29 (first published: 2023-11-15)
236 reads
Is that the right question to ask?
This is not a “clickbait” title, but an important consideration when it comes to developing technical solutions. Let me give you an example between two questions for SQL Server...
2023-11-29 (first published: 2023-11-17)
250 reads
SQL Prompt Tips–Using $surroundtext$ in a Snippet
A user on the SQL Community Slack was asking about what the $surroundtext$ variable. This post looks at how this can be used in snippets. This is part of...
2023-11-29
83 reads
Force parameterization is powerful-feature
Force parameterization in Microsoft SQL Server is a feature designed to optimize query performance by converting literal values in Transact-SQL statements into parameters. This process helps in plan reuse,...
2023-11-27 (first published: 2023-11-13)
843 reads
Giving a Security Webinar this Wednesday
If you haven’t already signed up, on November 29, 2023, at 11 AM Eastern Standard Time, I’m presenting a webinar on how to harden SQL Server. Link to Register...
2023-11-27
16 reads
Part 1: The Modern Azure Data Warehouse – Choosing The Tech
With reports hitting the transactional databases, we were encountering performance issues. We needed to choose a path forward that would lighten the load on the prod database servers and...
2023-11-27 (first published: 2023-11-16)
606 reads
VMUG Ireland End of Year Event
This Thursday, November 30th, is the next VMUG Ireland event…our end of year social meetup! We’re going to be down in BrewDog Dublin: – THREE LOCKS SQUARE, 4, DUBLIN...
2023-11-27
16 reads
Blogs
A bespoke reporting solution doesn’t have to cost the earth
By ChrisJenkins
You could be tolerating limited reporting because there isn’t an off the shelf solution...
Presenting with Visual Studio Code
A while back I wrote a quick post on setting up key mappings in...
Advice I Like: In 100 Years
By Steve Jones
In 100 years a lot of what we take to be true now will...
Forums
AllocationType as ROW_OVERFLOW_DATA
Hello, I inherited a number of tables with like 20-30 column using nvarchar(256) in...
is it true we cant debug c# scripts in ssis anymore under vs
Hi, i'm running vs2022. I'm trying out a c# script that i'd like to...
Question of the Day
Missing the Jaro Winkler Distance
I upgraded a SQL Server 2019 instance to SQL Server 2025. I wanted to test the fuzzy string search functions. I run this code:
SELECT JARO_WINKLER_DISTANCE('tim', 'tom')
I get this error message:Msg 195, Level 15, State 10, Line 1 'JARO_WINKLER_DISTANCE' is not a recognized built-in function name.What is wrong? See possible answers