I don't think that there is any easy answer.

One of the examples in the "Update your development skills to SQL2005" course uses a CLR datatype to hold an IP address.

I...

Thanks, but the WHERE Oct_1 IN () clause doesn't really provide an easy solution.

I can't remember the specific IP address range for the Google ROBOT but similar exclusions look for...

Our data analysts wanted to build a model that excluded IP addresses in a pretty obscure range

The problem was coming up with a simple query that would work on...

The IP Address problem is one that I am facing.

When stored as a string it is a VARCHAR(15), it is human readable but difficult to do range searches.

When stored as...

I was in two minds as to whether to submit this article to SSC. My concern was that it was a little simplistic. Given David Vaughan's response suggests...

Along time ago I came across something that said that VB always stored integers as 32 bit values regardless of whether they were Byte, Short, or Long (long in those...

I think this sort of thing can fundamentally affect the employee/employer relationship.

As an employee I have a duty of care for company resources. An employer has a duty of...

Sorry Jon, but it is a common use case in a sales order system.

You are right that the example was contrived. I did say in the article that it...

I use SET NOCOUNT ON wherever possible. There seems little point gain in stored procedures only to lose in triggers.

Back in time of ADO (NOT .Net) the returned message sometimes was treated as a Recordset...

I didn't come across this problem with ADO but at one place I worked they...

It doesn't matter what the system is there will always be someone who tries (and suceeds) to crack it.

In the UK there is a government database that has been set...

I have seen cursors out-perform a non-cursor method of looping through records.

The key is knowing exactly when a cursor is necessary or alternatively, when some nifty set based SQL will...

I am wary of anything that involves string manipulation because strings are immutable.

If you do something that says @YourString = @YourString + 'Some text' then what really happens is that

@YourString...

I worked on government sites that required Urdu, Bengali, Gujarati, Punjabi etc.

The problem with those languages is that there is NO standard font for them and therefore you are at...

I think the important thing is not what the standard is but the fact that there is a standard.

Company A may have a totally different standard than Company B but...