For the sake of completeness:

To get the original string, you need to use

SELECT CONVERT(VARCHAR(100), BASE64_DECODE(@encoded))

which will return 'Hello SQL Server 2025!'

It's nice to have such a tool in the toolbox (just in case), but I find it hard to find a real use case.

Maybe to compare public names as for...

From the conclusion in the original article:

Keep in mind to delete all existing target backup files before you launch the next backup statement or backup job using a new compression...

Use the OUTPUT Inserted.* INTO #tmp on an INSERT when you need the IDENTITY / NEW_ID / SEQUENCE values for the new records (e.g. for further processing / creating referencing...

Before you all add now 16 other columns to your PK, please remind that you still must not have more than 900 bytes in a clustered index 🙂

Clustered Index:

Msg 1944,...

I'm not sure, if a check for >= @start_lsn would work, when there are multiple parallel inserts, each within its own session

E.g.

• session 1 uses 0x001 and  is very slow...

Well, MSSQL has several mechanics that can do something similar.

If you want to run a huge SELECT but don't care about the results open the Query Options  go to Results...

When you want it 100% correct, you should use ORIGINAL_LOGIN().

A sysadmin has the privilege to inpersonate another account (I use this sometimes to check permissions).

And only ORIGINAL_LOGIN() would return my...

• This reply was modified 4 months ago by Thomas Franz.

When you need to change an old procedure for the first time and decide to format it or make some other cosmetic changes, to this stuff first and check it...

• This reply was modified 4 months ago by Thomas Franz.

IS DISTINCT FROM or its counterpart IS NOT DISTINCT FROM are added in SQL 2022 and are very handy when comparing columns that may contain NULL

So instead of a slow

WHERE...

I doubt that anybody (besides some old, long retired boomer nerds that implented it decades ago) are using COLUMNS_UPDATED(), particularly since

• you could write  UPDATE(col1) OR UPDATE(col2) OR UPDATE(col3) to...

• This reply was modified 5 months, 1 weeks ago by Thomas Franz.

Seems to be an article based primary on the output of an AI - and even the caption of the article is wrong, since SSMS is just the GUI but...

The question is incorrectly formulated.

An INSERT on the end of a table (as with a clustered identity column) would usually just add new pages, while inserting into a table with...

I wonder, if someone is really using the COLUMNS_UPDATED() function - it is way to complex for 99% of the scenarios particularly when you need to shuffle bits and had...

• This reply was modified 7 months, 4 weeks ago by Thomas Franz.

No, you really don't want this...

• This reply was modified 9 months, 1 weeks ago by Thomas Franz.