Experimenting with Go-SQLCMD
Steve takes a look at go-sqlcmd, the newest evolution of the sqlcmd command line tool.
2023-04-21
7,746 reads
Tools for development
Azure Automation With Visual Studio Code
Microsoft combined the power of two powerful tools by announcing the public preview of Azure Automation Visual Studio Code Extension. This article will show you how to get started.
2023-02-22
5,808 reads
7 DB Forge SQL Studio Features Discovered in Less Than 2 Hours
dbForge SQL Studio gives you a few advantages over SSMS. See what Kenneth discovered during his first use of the tool.
2022-04-27
4,663 reads
Performance Tuning Using Free Tools, Part 2
You can do essential performance tuning on your SQL Server databases using a FREE toolkit!
2022-01-14
5,527 reads
2021-03-30
441 reads
Tool Limits
Today Steve asks about the tools you use for your job and if they help or hurt your productivity.
2021-03-19
172 reads
Your Favorite IDE
SSMS is, well, it's what we mostly have from Microsoft. It's been around a long time, but it is getting regularly released. There are new versions about every quarter, and there are bug fixes and minor enhancements. Azure Data Studio appears to be where Microsoft would like most of us to move, but I, and […]
2020-12-04
298 reads
The Separation of Tools
SSMs and ADS are the new tools for SQL Server and the data platform, both of which are now available separately from SQL Server.
2020-11-02
510 reads
Other IDEs
Most of us use SSMS (SQL Server Management Studio) to manage our SQL Server instances or to write database code. However, Microsoft does give us database options with Visual Studio, VS Code, and Azure Data Studio. It does seem as though Microsoft would prefer more of us move to ADS, but I'm not sure I'm […]
2020-06-17
296 reads
Microsoft SQL Server Utilities and Tools
Useful free and paid utilities and tools for Microsoft SQL Server - complete list of 275 Utilities
2020-06-02 (first published: 2020-05-26)
38,475 reads
Blogs
Finding the Last Last Name in SQL: #SQLNewBlogger
By Steve Jones
I wrote a piece on the new SUBSTRING in SQL Server 2025 and got...
SQL Server 2025 GAs Today
By Steve Jones
If you aren’t watching the Ignite keynotes today, then you might have missed the...
Run SQL Server 2025 and SQL Server Management Studio on macOS Tahoe
Short version You want to get this running as fast as possible. Do these...
Forums
Email change does not work
I changed my email address in Edit Profile page, but it has no effect...
The case for "Understanding our business" training
Comments posted to this topic are about the item The case for "Understanding our...
Specifying the Collation
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Specifying the Collation
Question of the Day
Specifying the Collation
I am dealing with issues on my SQL Server 2022 instance related to collation. I have an instance collation of Latin1_General_CS_AS_KS_WS, but a database collation of Latin1_General_CI_AS. I want to force a few queries to run with a specified collation by using code like this:
DECLARE @c VARCHAR(20) = 'Latin1_General_CI_AS'
SELECT p.PersonType,
p.Title,
p.LastName,
c.CustomerID,
c.AccountNumber
FROM Person.Person AS p
INNER JOIN Sales.Customer AS c
ON c.PersonID = p.BusinessEntityID
COLLATE @c
Will this solve my problem? See possible answers