Improve Query Performance when SQL Server Ignores Nonclustered Index
In this article, we look at why SQL Server may not use a non-clustered index over the clustered index and what you can do to improve performance.
Mastering a cloud migration: 10 video tips
If you haven’t had time to catch up on our latest full-length webinar on Cloud Migration, here’s an easy way to digest the tips from our experts in less than 20 minutes!
Learning with Sample Data
I just had my one-year anniversary working for Redgate, and I must tell you, it’s been one of the best years of my professional career of 25 years. People aside (and there are a lot of really great people!), one of the reasons I’ve enjoyed this year so much is that Redgate understands and believes […]
Be Valuable, Not Critical
One piece of advice for engineers is to be valuable, but not critical. It's a mistake Steve made early in his career, but he hopes you can do better.
First Normal Form Gets No Respect
Dr. Codd first described the relational model in a paper in Communications of the ACM (CACM 13 No 6; June 1970). Some more work followed up after that by other people, giving us normal forms and other things we have taken for granted for 50+ years.
Power Query Editor in Power BI for Formatting Text Columns
This article looks at ways to clean up text data used in Power BI reports and charts for a more meaningful and consistent message.
The Justification Database
Having a good process for managing security is important, but how many of us enforce that?
How We Ate Our Own Dog Food To Level-Up Internal Testing with Redgate Clone
Most applications have large and complex databases at the back end, making it hard for developers to adequately test their work before it goes out. Having a fast, repeatable process to deliver data on demand is an essential part of an effective software development lifecycle, ultimately leading to improved customer satisfaction. In this article, we’ll explore the journey our own engineering team went on to leverage our own tool, Redgate Clone, to spin up short-lived database instances in containers for automated testing.
Top 10 Methods to Improve ETL Performance Using SSIS
Extraction Transformation Load (ETL) is the backbone for any data warehouse. In the data warehouse world data is managed by the ETL process, which consists of three processes, Extraction-Pull/Acquire data from sources, Transformation-change data in the required format and Load-push data to the destination generally into a data warehouse or a data mart.
Bad Culture Bad Security
Another company has hard-coded credentials, which Steve feels are a sign of bad culture.
Blogs
Flyway Tips: AI Deployment Script Descriptions
By Steve Jones
With the AI push being everywhere, Redgate is no exception. We’ve been getting requests,...
A New Word: Fawtle
By Steve Jones
fawtle – n. a weird little flaw built into your partner that somehow only...
Post-quantum key exchange – Insurance policy for your packets
AWS recently added support for Post-Quantum Key Exchange for TLS in Application Load Balancer...
Forums
Where Your Value Separates You from Others
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Where Your Value Separates You...
Fixing the Error
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Fixing the Error
T-SQL in SQL Server 2025: Encoding Functions
Comments posted to this topic are about the item T-SQL in SQL Server 2025:...
Question of the Day
Fixing the Error
On SQL Server 2025, I have a database that has this collation: SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS. I decide I want to run this code:
SELECT UNISTR('*3041*308A*304C*3068 and good night', '*') AS 'A Classic';
I get this error:Msg 9844, Level 16, State 4, Line 24 The char/varchar input type uses an unsupported collation. Only a UTF8 collation is supported with char/varchar input type in UNISTR function.What is the easiest way to fix this error? See possible answers