What's the Date?

Using REGEXP_COUNT to Count Strings in SQL Server 2025

We need to find out how many times certain strings appear in a column. We’ve used the LEN and REPLACE functions for years, but recently heard about REGEXP_COUNT and want to evaluate it, since we plan to upgrade to SQL Server 2025. How can we test this new feature?

How Filters and Sorting can Derail SQL Pagination Performance

In my previous tip, Pagination Performance in SQL Server, I showed how to make SQL pagination more predictable – turning O(n) into O(1). I materialized and cached row numbers to page through instead of calculating them on every request. It wasn’t the whole story, though; real pagination queries rarely get to sort without filtering. Users always want more control, and filtering can threaten that predictability.

Creating JSON I

Tame Those Strings (Series)

A series of articles that deal with string manipulation techniques.

The Decoded Value

Adding and Dropping Columns II

Encoding Strings

T-SQL in SQL Server 2025: Fuzzy String Search II

In the last article, we examined fuzzy string matching in SQL Server 2025 with a few new functions. We know comparing strings has always been hard when we don't have great data quality. If we need exact matches, SQL Server works great. However, we often expect users to enter values without typos and know what […]

Adding and Dropping Columns I