Stairway to Data, Level 5: Types of Scales – Part I
Joe Celko discusses Nominal, Categorical, Absolute, Ordinal and Rank scales. These are the weakest scales we can use, starting with the weakest.
We Need a DBA Boot Camp
Today we have a guest editorial from Andy Warren. We often find that many DBAs fall into the job as accidental DBAs, and need more training. Is a boot camp the way to get them up to speed quickly?
Whether to use UNION or OR in SQL Server Queries
Recently I came across with an article on DB2 about using Union instead of OR. So I thought of carrying out a research on SQL Server on what scenarios UNION is optimal in and which scenarios OR would be best. I will analyze this with a few scenarios using samples taken from the AdventureWorks database
How Much Is It Worth?
This editorial was originally published on Nov 21, 2005. It is being re-run today as Steve is on holiday. How much money is it worth to compromise your ethics? Steve Jones asks today as many companies around the world seem to be doing that.
Raw Materials - Disapproval
: "It is a narrow mind that cannot see things from more than one point of view." —George Eliot
Top 10 Index T-SQL Statements That SQL Server DBAs Should Know
Indexes speed retrieval of rows from database tables or views. Here are the top index-related T-SQL statements that SQL Server DBAs should know.
Cloud Barriers
I'd like to hear the thoughts of DBAs out there on Windows and SQL Azure, and the prospects of moving applications and databases into the clouds. How many DBAs work for companies that have done it or are seriously considering it? What are the deepest concerns?
Independence Day 2011
A holiday in the US has most people away from work. Steve Jones leaves you a few thoughts and humor from his vacation.
The Difference between Truncate and Delete in SQL Server
This article explains the differences between the Truncate and Delete commands in SQL Server.
Remove HTML tags from strings using the SQL Server CLR
It is recommended that you remove all special characters and HTML formatting. This task can be handled in TSQL code, however in this case I have the opportunity to use .NET and the power of the regular expressions to manage the string. In this tip, I'll build a CLR function which cleans up a string of HTML tags and special characters. I'll use Visual Studio 2010 with C# as the programming language. Check out this tip for my solution.
Blogs
Narrow Task Decomposition in AI Pipeline Agents
A nightly load into sales_fact fails. Ask an orchestrating agent to break down the...
Car Update: August 2026
By Steve Jones
It’s been some time since I provided a car update, so I decided to...
Microsoft Fabric OneLake Shortcuts: When to Use Them and When Not To
By James Serra
An architecture scenario Imagine separate Sales, Finance, Shared Data, and Executive Analytics workspaces. Sales...
Forums
Searching for my own posts
I have a really stupid question... Is there an easy way to search for...
How to Work with On-Premises AI Models to Generate T-SQL Code
Comments posted to this topic are about the item How to Work with On-Premises...
Escaping Strings
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Escaping Strings
Question of the Day
Escaping Strings
The STRING_ESCAPE() function requires 2 parameters in SQL Server 2025. The first is a string of text and the second is the type of escape rules being used. What are the options for the second parameter?
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