Amazon RDs and the PaaS formerly known as Azure
Phil Factor welcomes SQL Server support by Amazon RDS, as an alternative to having Microsoft as service provider as well as software provider, via the PaaS formerly known as Azure.
Is Software Engineering Dead?
Software engineering is seen as a dead end career choice, at least by some people. Steve Jones disagrees.
Snapshot Isolation Level in SQL Server - What, Why and How - Part 1
Snapshot isolation levels improve performance but there are some things to take into consideration when using this feature. Arshad Ali discusses what snapshot isolation levels are, their variants, and why and when we should use them.
Guide to MCITP: SQL Server 2008 BI Developer
A guide to the SQL Server 2008 Business Intelligence exams.
Time for Your Career
This week Steve Jones wants to know if you can find time for your professional development. Regularly improving your skills is an important part of your career in technology, and the poll this weeks asks what time you can make for improvement.
The T-SQL of CSV: Comma-Delimited of Errors
Despite the neglect of the basic ODBC drivers over the years, they still afford a neat way of reading from, and writing to, CSV files; and to be able to do so in SQL as if they were tables is somewhat magical. Just to prove it is possible, Phil Factor creates a CSV version of AdventureWorks as a linked server.
Performance Test of New Date Manipulation Functions (SQL Spackle)
Performance test of new SQL 2012 functions DateTimeFromParts and Format
Teambuilding and Bonding
Steve Jones attended a day out from the Red Gate offices recently and he talks about the value of those experiences.
Export data to an earlier SQL Server version
I have data in a SQL Server database that I need to get to an older version of SQL Server. I tried the backup and restore method, but received an error indicating that this wasn't allowed. I also tried to detach and attach the database, but that operation failed too. I understand that typical methods I use to move the database around don't work when I have to work with an earlier SQL Server version. What can I do to get the data out? This is a simple database and I want to spend a minimal amount of effort.
Setup SQL Server on Amazon RDS
Learn how you can set up a new SQL Server instance painlessly on Amazon's Relational Database Service (RDS)
Blogs
A bespoke reporting solution doesn’t have to cost the earth
By ChrisJenkins
You could be tolerating limited reporting because there isn’t an off the shelf solution...
Presenting with Visual Studio Code
A while back I wrote a quick post on setting up key mappings in...
Advice I Like: In 100 Years
By Steve Jones
In 100 years a lot of what we take to be true now will...
Forums
AllocationType as ROW_OVERFLOW_DATA
Hello, I inherited a number of tables with like 20-30 column using nvarchar(256) in...
is it true we cant debug c# scripts in ssis anymore under vs
Hi, i'm running vs2022. I'm trying out a c# script that i'd like to...
Question of the Day
Missing the Jaro Winkler Distance
I upgraded a SQL Server 2019 instance to SQL Server 2025. I wanted to test the fuzzy string search functions. I run this code:
SELECT JARO_WINKLER_DISTANCE('tim', 'tom')
I get this error message:Msg 195, Level 15, State 10, Line 1 'JARO_WINKLER_DISTANCE' is not a recognized built-in function name.What is wrong? See possible answers