Ways to Determine the Version and SP of SQL Server
There may be more ways than you realize to determine the version and service pack of SQL Server. This quick article by Dinesh Priyankara will show you 3 of those methods.
Freeware : DDL Source Safe Archive Utility
If your shop is even close to the typical Micosoft SQL Server environment there are several people that can (and do!) make changes to the production environment, a change management system is in place, that change management system uses Source Safe to store database scripts, and what's in Source Safe does not match what's on the SQL Server. This utility by Bill Wunder will archive your SQL scripts and DDL into Source Safe easily and efficiently. All for the price of $0 (yes, free!).
Pro Developer : This is Business
In his travels, Christopher Duncan has come to recognize a great many similarities between programmers and musicians. Both have the fire, passion and soul of the artist. And all too often, both are aweful when it comes to the business end of things. Business - you know, that aspect of your work where they actually pay you at the end of the day?
Auditing Your SQL Server - Part 1
A new series that examines how you audit activity in SQL Server. The first part looks at simple data auditing in a table.
Saving Space To Increase Performance
Disk space is getting cheaper everyday. Why should you worry about the amount of space your data is consuming? This article by Neil Boyle presents some great reasons why you should be concerned.
A Lookup Strategy Defined
Most databases designs nowadays seem to have at least a few if not many lookup or reference tables. This article helps you define a strategy in how to design, approve, and deploy them.
Reusing Identities
Ever wanted to know how to reuse identity values after they're deleted? In this example by Dinesh, he shows you two methods to reuse the wholes in identity rows.
Y2K Strikes Again
Steve Jones recently got bit by a bug the reminded him of the Y2K fiasco. Read about the problem and how Steve solved the problem.
Free Utility : EnforcePass
These sets of scripts will add minimum password enforcement when a login is created or its password changes.
Managing Jobs - Part 2
Jobs are pretty basic aren't they? They are until you get a couple hundred, or a thousand. Andy continues talking about managing jobs by standardizing how you handle notifications and failures, and talks about an interesting idea to monitor jobs separately from SQL Agent. Worth reading!
Blogs
Setting PK Names in Redgate Data Modeler
By Steve Jones
A customer was testing Redgate Data Modeler and complained that it auto-generated PK names....
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...
Forums
Connecting Power BI to SSAS and effective user not working
Hi everyone, Below is a consolidated summary of what we validated Architecture & data...
High Availability setup - has anyone seen this method?
Hi all, I recently moved to a new employer who have their HA setup...
Semantic Search in SQL Server 2025
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Semantic Search in SQL Server...
Question of the Day
Encoding URLs
I have this data in a SQL Server 2025 table:
CREATE TABLE Response ( ResponseID INT NOT NULL CONSTRAINT ResponsePK PRIMARY KEY , ResponseVal VARBINARY(5000) ) GOIf I want to get a value from this table that I can add to a URL in a browser, which of these code items produces a result I can use? See possible answers