Great article Mark,

I was going to implement a manual "shrink file" solution for a client next year but this looks much a better solution for me. But we will modify...

First convert the date to a date time and then convert the result produces the expected result.

SELECT CAST ('29-Feb-2016' as datetime)

SELECT CONVERT (CHAR(20), CAST ('29-Feb-2016' as datetime), 108)

SELECT CONVERT (CHAR(8),...

Changing the CONVERT to CHAR(11) instead of CHAR(8) does the trick. This, I guess, is the real error that should be solved.

SELECT CAST (CONVERT (CHAR(11), '29-Feb-2016', 108) as Date)

I personally like to also add a version table to the database, so that you can track which scripts that have been executed and by whom.

When you have many...

Sorry, it was a bit drastic to say it always gives better performance, I should have said normally gives same performance or better. In the example case of the article...

Good comparison, David, thanks.

From a performance perspective, using NOT IN is "always" slower than using EXISTS. If you try running the below queries

-- INTERSECT

SELECT CustomerID

FROM Sales.Customer

WHERE TerritoryID=10

AND NOT EXISTS (

SELECT...