Using sp_addalias
SP_addalias isn't a well known stored procedure to most DBA's - do you know what it does? In what situations you might use it? This short article gives very quick and clean answers to both of those questions.
Where Do I Want To Go Today? - From the Field 2
Where should SQL Server go in the future? What enhancements are needed? Steve Jones takes another break from his wishes to include some more feedback from users who have some wishes of their own. Read about what real users of SQL Server would like to see included in future versions.
Best of SQLServerCentral.com 2002 Launch
We've had a soft launch under way for the past week, but now we'd like to sell the rest of the books stacked up at Andy's house! $15 plus shipping will get you a book that you'll be proud to put on your bookshelf. Read this to get latest pricing and answers to the most recent questions we've gotten.
Build a lot of DSN's in a hurry!
This article by Andy Warren offers a free utility that will generate DSN's for all or just a subset of the databases on a server in seconds.
Problem Solving With Information Schema Columns
Directly accessing system tables is discouraged - so what's the alternative? Using the Information Schema should allow you to create code that survives upgrades. Beyond that, what can you do with it? Joe has four great examples to get you started.
SQL and Java Go on a Date
Chris discusses some issues he had trying to use SQL dates from within Java. Interesting stuff and brings up the point that if you have dates stored in local time, having users in multiple time zones can be a large headache.
Where Do I Want To Go Today? - Included Indexes
Where should SQL Server go in the future? What enhancements are needed? Steve Jones continues to explore his wish list for future versions of SQL Server.
Review: Data Compare v3.01
Andy reviewed v1.51 almost two years ago, this week he looks at the latest release that includes one feature he really wanted - the ability to compare and sync text columns.
Upgrading to Windows 2003
Chris has been working through the process of upgrading to Win2003 and has the start of a great checklist along with few lessons learned - stuff that will come in handy it's time for you to do your own upgrade.
A Brief History of SQL
Frank has been part of our community for a while now, posting more than 1000 times (wow!) in our discussion area. He's decided to contribute more of his time by putting together an article that discusses how SQL has evolved.
Blogs
Using Prompt AI for a Travel Data Analysis
By Steve Jones
I was looking back at my year and decided to see if SQL Prompt...
FinOps for Kubernetes: Leveraging OpenCost, KubeGreen, and Kubecost for Cost Efficiency
In the era of cloud-native applications, Kubernetes has become the default standard platform for...
2025 Wrapped for Steve
By Steve Jones
I’ve often done some analysis of my year in different ways. Last year I...
Forums
The North Star for the Year
Comments posted to this topic are about the item The North Star for the...
Multiple Escape Characters
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Multiple Escape Characters
reaching ftp thru winscp but erroring in ssis ftp task connection
Hi, below i show various results trying to reach our ftp site (a globalscape...
Question of the Day
Multiple Escape Characters
In SQL Server 2025, I run this code (in a database with the appropriate collation):
SELECT UNISTR('%*3041%*308A%*304C%*3068 and good night', '%*') AS 'A Classic';
What is returned? See possible answers