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Scripts to use XML to insert and update rows in a SQL Server table

The following production code is what I used for inserting and updating database tables using XML as the input. These scripts are for processing data for any table to insert or update data. The support functions provided, retrieve the table schema with their data types, functions to deal with XML dates, primary keys of the table and what fields can be updated. The following article breaks down this process from beginning to end.

External Article

Standardize data storage for geography spatial data type in SQL Server

Geography is one of the spatial data types introduced in SQL Server 2008. One of the characteristic of the geography data type is that it can accommodate any supported geometry based on any supported spatial reference system in the same field. So if the data that is stored in a column of geography data type is not standardized, it can be a very tedious and resource intensive task to figure out the geometry and spatial reference system associated with each value. To deal with this issue, we need to standardize the data stored in a field of that has the geography data type and in this tip we will look at how to deal with this issue.

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Question of the Day

Backing Up a DMK

In SQL Server 2025, I have a database with a Database Masker Key (DMK). I want to back up this key and keep a copy offline. When do I have to open this key before running the backup?

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