Do we do enough?
Do we, event organizers, tool vendors, concerned SQL citizens, as a community, do enough to reach people who don't know about the training available to them?
TSQL Challenge 54 - Find the longest matching area code
Your job is to write a query that identifies the longest matching country/area code from each phone number based on the information stored in an area-code reference table.
Clean unused space when a variable-length column is dropped from a SQL Server table or indexed view
Whenever rows or columns are deleted from a table, SQL Server reuses space to accommodate new data. However, this is not the case when a variable length column is deleted. The space used by this type of column is not reclaimed automatically. Variable length columns can be of data types varchar, nvarchar, varchar(max), nvarchar(max), varbinary, varbinary(max), text, ntext, image, sql_variant, and xml. In this tip, I have tried to put forth a solution to reclaim this space and this should work for SQL 2005 and later versions.
SQL Transparent Hierarchical Processing of Relational, XML and IMS Data
The SQL-92 standard introduced the LEFT Outer Join operation which offers a powerful alternative to standard relational processing to perform full hierarchical processing naturally and inherently. This enables SQL to transparently integrate relational data with XML, IMS and other forms of legacy hierarchical data. This can also allow the so far overlooked integration of IMS and legacy data with the Internet and XML, and visa versa.
The DBA of the Future
Today we have a guest editorial from Andy Warren that talks about what DBAs might need to know in the future.
Read and Write Binary Files in SQL Server with CLR
You are a database developer looking for a common approach for handling read and write access to binary files. You may be a DBA wanting to read various information from binary files and collect it into tables. The code sample presented in this tip will get you started with binary file content handling in SQL Server.
PAAS
Platform as a service, a new way of looking at applications. It's analogous to SAAS and IAAS, which can improve the efficiency of the software purchase or the hardware acquisition process. Steve Jones notes that this is something he'd like to see for database platforms.
SQLServerCentral Best Practices Clinic: Part 2
In part 2 of our best practices clinic, Brad McGehee looks at a couple of the items that were misconfigured on the SQLServerCentral database instances.
Manage and Monitor Identity Ranges in SQL Server Transactional Replication
This article demonstrates how to prevent primary key violation issues in transactional replication.
Blogs
Moving On-Prem PostgreSQL to the Cloud: Picking the Right Path for Big Tables
Every PostgreSQL migration eventually hits the same fork in the road. The database is...
A Spread of Vacation
By Steve Jones
I’m off on vacation today. Which is a little weird as I just got...
How AgentDBA Identifies Backup Failures
By Arun Sirpal
Every DBA has a box like this. Sitting untouched for months. Nobody’s proud of...
Forums
Have you done a Mid year check in?
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Have you done a Mid...
From SQL Server On-Premises to Claude Desktop: How I built a Full MCP Pipeline
Comments posted to this topic are about the item From SQL Server On-Premises to...
Independence Day 2026
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Independence Day 2026
Question of the Day
Independence Day 2026
In the original Independence Day movie (1996), what type of computer did Jeff Goldblum use to connect to the alien mainframe? Take a guess, don't look it up or ask AI.
See possible answers