The trade-offs associated with low-code solutions
Low-code solutions often accelerate development and make tasks accessible to people who can’t or don’t want to write their own code. But it’s important to remember that it’s a...
2025-03-24
30 reads
Blog Posts
TSQL Tuesday #184: Mentoring and Sponsorship
Thank you to Deborah Melkin for hosting TSQL Tuesday this month! I’ve always considered mentoring and sponsorship very structured. Now, I wonder if they’re also small things we do...
2025-03-24 (first published: 2025-03-11)
6,593 reads
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
20 reads
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)
6,973 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)
6,662 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
18 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
144 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)
208 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)
610 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
267 reads
Blogs
No Shortcuts for the SQLCMD Batch Terminator: #SQLNewBlogger
By Steve Jones
I was messing around with SQLCMD and I realized something I hadn’t known. I’ve...
Where Is My SQL Agent? Running Scheduled Jobs Against Azure SQL Database
By gbargsley
One of the first things I review when I inherit a new SQL Server...
AgentDBA vs Critical SQL Server
By Arun Sirpal
It’s 07:43. Someone’s already left a message. “Something’s wrong with the DB server.” You...
Forums
Increment a number in a SQL Query based on a value
I have an issue where I have a Bill of Material list of items...
Follow Your Hunch
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Follow Your Hunch
What Happens When You Ask a Local AI to Query Your Database?
Comments posted to this topic are about the item What Happens When You Ask...
Question of the Day
Detecting Characters
I have a SQL Server 2022 English default installation on a server. I want to detect if there are any upper case characters in rows and I have this code:
SELECT CustomerNameID,
CustomerName
FROM dbo.CustomerName
WHERE CustomerName = LOWER(CustomerName)
Here is the sample data I am testing with:
CustomerNameID CustomerName 1 John Smith 2 Sarah Johnson 3 MICHAEL WILLIAMS 4 JENNIFER BROWN 5 david jones 6 emily davis 7 Robert Miller 8 LISA WILSON 9 christopher moore 10 Amanda TaylorHow many rows are returned? See possible answers