2025-10-22
133 reads
Data Quality
The Fake Speakers
Someone generated a fake speaker profile for their conference, which Steve finds disturbing.
2023-12-02
534 reads
Email Validation Simplified with Web API and SSIS
Email based validation is more than just a simple RFC check, this is where Melissa's Global Email Verification with a web-based API and SSIS delivers valuable data to SQL Server Professionals.
2020-12-14
SQL Server Best Practices for Data Quality
Accurate data is imperative for an organization to conduct cost effective decision making. Like everything else, change is constant for your data. There is a need to cleanse and validate data when received and on a regular basis. Unfortunately, cleansing and validating data is difficult with the native SQL Server toolset. How do we leverage the SQL Server tool set to achieve these goals?
2020-01-03
Data Quality
Problems with data quality are easier and cheaper to prevent than to solve later. In this article, Joe Celko talks about data quality and where the issues tend to happen.
2018-12-20
2,693 reads
Data Quality - Addressing non-stated requirements
Producing a crib sheet for data quality drives a shared understanding of the data used to power the business.
2016-07-28
1,330 reads
Design : Find table with Identities with missing unique constraints
In an OLTP DB, other than an autogenerated Identity , there should be something else on the table which makes the non-identity data unique, as in, unique if you had to drop the ID column.
2016-02-03 (first published: 2016-01-22)
496 reads
Data Degradation
The other day at a conference, the subject of data degradation/corrosion arose. The speaker at the conference said that data in a database degraded or corroded over time. The statement was made as if degradation over time applied to all databases. I found this blanket statement to be misguided. Indeed, I think that data does degrade in some databases, but not all.
2009-05-14
2,180 reads
Getting A Clue About Your Databases
Got a new database you know nothing about? Here's my basic proposal on how to find interesting tables in it.
2009-01-09
10,736 reads
Taking the Temperature of Your Data
Enhanced model performance comes from extracting as much information content as possible… relative to the specific performance metrics you are using to measure success.
2008-02-12
2,257 reads
Blogs
Advice I Like: Ranch Rules
By Steve Jones
Leave a gate behind you the way you first found it. – from Excellent...
Fix Slow, Bloated MSDB: Purge Old History And Add Missing Indexes
By SQLPals
Fix Slow, Bloated MSDB: Purge Old History And Add Missing Indexes ...
Three Ways to Use Snowflake Data in Microsoft Fabric
By James Serra
Organizations increasingly want Snowflake and Microsoft Fabric to coexist without duplicating data or fragmenting...
Forums
25 Years of SQL Server Central
Comments posted to this topic are about the item 25 Years of SQL Server...
The Decoded Value
Comments posted to this topic are about the item The Decoded Value
Deploying SQL Server Developer Edition in Kubernetes: A Cost-Effective Alternative to RDS
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Deploying SQL Server Developer Edition...
Question of the Day
The Decoded Value
In SQL Server 2025, what is returned from this code:
DECLARE @message VARCHAR(50) = 'Hello SQL Server 2025!'; DECLARE @encoded VARCHAR(MAX); SET @encoded = BASE64_ENCODE(CAST(@message AS VARBINARY(1000))); SELECT BASE64_DECODE(@encoded)See possible answers