How to Create a FOR Loop in SQL Server

Learn different ways to create FOR Loops using T-SQL such as using WHILE loops, cursors, tally tables and more.

Variant Math

SQL Server instance startup type check by SQL script

I have developed the script to check SQL Server instances startup type, sometimes we didn't know all our SQL instances startup type correctly configurated, especially we cannot distinguish the Automatic and Automatic(Delayed Start) from the direct query, the only way is querying from the registry, you can use this script in your environment to bulk […]

BETWEEN the two of us

BETWEEN can be used in a SQL WHERE clause to filter on a range. Joe Celko explains the history of BETWEEN and also could be implemented.

Ordering String_Split()

Get backup folder sizes from shared Location

Got a message from the Operation team as below Hi Harsha, I'm seeing a larger than normal rate of change for a week day on the backups for the SQL2000 servers. Did anything run differently yesterday compared to Monday? I have 22 sql servers and all the Weekend and Monthly backups goes to the location […]

Trusting STRING_SPLIT() order in Azure SQL Database

Learn about the changes to the STRING_SPLIT function in Azure SQL Database that allows you to specify ordinal position of the output.

SQL Server Data Masking: a comparison with Gallium Data

Introduction In SQL Server 2016, Microsoft introduced a new feature called dynamic data masking, which allows you to mask the values of certain columns and keep that data hidden from certain users, without having to modify your applications. Let's take a look at how SQL Server does data masking, and compare it to the way Gallium Data […]

Creating Markdown Formatted Text for Results from T-SQL

Markdown documents are becoming increasingly more popular and relevant with the emergence of notebooks. Markdown is a markup language for creating formatted text. It is widely used in tools for collaboration, tools for creating documentation and notebooks. Formatting is easy to understand, readable, simple to adopt, and agnostic. I can use a markdown document on […]

A Funny Substring NULL