Advice I Like: The Main Thing
The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing. – from Excellent Advice for Living We can summarize this advice as focus on what’s important. I...
2025-03-21
10 reads
Blog Posts
Tally Table Alternatives: #SQLNewBlogger
We published an article recently at SQL Server Central on Tally Tables in Fabric from John Miner. In it he showed how this can be efficient. A day after...
2025-03-21 (first published: 2025-03-12)
6,961 reads
T-SQL Tuesday #184 Mentoring and Sponsorship
This month’s T-SQL Tuesday blog party is hosted by Deborah Melkin – Data Platform MVP, WIT co-lead and WITspiration founder. Deb’s invitation is to blog about mentoring and sponsorship. What...
2025-03-21 (first published: 2025-03-11)
6,656 reads
Sic Transit Gloria Community
When Covid took out the PASS organization, I had someone say to me, “Well, that’s the end of the data community.” My response was pretty simple, “Nope. The community...
2025-03-20
16 reads
DATEADD Truncates the Number Parameter: #SQLNewBlogger
This was an interesting thing I saw in a Question of the Day submission. I hadn’t thought about the issue, but apparently DATEADD truncates values rather than rounding them....
2025-03-19
135 reads
Deploy at Low Priority
Learn how to deploy schema changes in an always-online SQL Server environment without a maintenance window. This utility reduces blocking and improves deployment success.
The problem
I attempted to deploy a...
2025-03-19 (first published: 2025-03-07)
197 reads
Mistakes IT Shops Without a DBA Make
We get it. There’s no budget for a DBA on staff, or even a contract support firm like Dallas DBAs. You are not alone! There are thousands of firms...
2025-03-19 (first published: 2025-03-07)
608 reads
Our SQL Server is Slow! What Do I Do First?
Don’t Panic! It’s a vague but common complaint, frequently with no additional details. Before blindly restarting SQL Server, let’s walk through quick checks that don’t require deep DBA skills....
2025-03-19
254 reads
Using SQLFluff
I thought I didn’t care about linting, and lately, I haven’t written a lot of SQL, but for the SQL I do write, I have SQLFluff to help me...
2025-03-18
252 reads
A Couple Quick GENERATE_SERIES Tests
I had someone reach out about generate_series() recently, saying they hadn’t realized this was a new feature in SQL Server 2022. They were wondering if it was better than...
2025-03-17 (first published: 2025-03-05)
373 reads
Blogs
The Book of Redgate: Spread across the world
By Steve Jones
This was Redgate in 2010, spread across the globe. First the EU/US Here’s Asia...
Merry Christmas
By John
Today is Christmas and while I do not expect anybody to actual be reading...
Self-Hosting a Photo Server the Whole Family Can Use
By Bert Wagner
Until recently, my family's 90,000+ photos have been hidden away in the depths of...
Forums
Happy Holidays, Let's Do Nerdy Stuff
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Happy Holidays, Let's Do Nerdy...
UNISTR Escape
Comments posted to this topic are about the item UNISTR Escape
Celebrating Tomorrow
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Celebrating Tomorrow
Question of the Day
UNISTR Escape
In SQL Server 2025, I run this command:
SELECT UNISTR('*3041*308A*304C\3068 and good night', '*') as "A Classic";
What is returned? (assume the database has an appropriate collation)
A: 
B: 
C: 
See possible answers