Technical Article

Regular Expression Transformation

The regular expression transformation exposes the power of regular expression matching within the pipeline. One or more columns can be selected, and for each column an individual expression can be applied. If all columns selected pass their tests then rows are passed down the successful match output. Rows that fail to pass all tests are directed down the alternate output.

SQLServerCentral Article

No Outlook for Alerts!

SQL Server 2000 has a fantastic subsystem for alerting the DBA and keeping him or her informed as to the state of the server. However the email subsystem introduces a dependency on Outlook for alerts that can be a problem for some environments. Author Roy Carlson brings us an ingenious method for reading logs and sending alerts without Exchange or Outlook.

External Article

Software patents: stupid or insane?

Lest the headline mislead you as to my biases, I consider software patents to be both stupid and insane. I raise this issue because it is currently rearing its ugly mug in the world of open source software, but it has affected much development in the proprietary worlds of Windows as well.

First of all, patent laws were created long ago, which is not to say the thinking was correct then either, but we have to recognize the intellectual and technological climate back then.

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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