How to migrate a SQL Server database to a lower version
A tip looking at a one time procedure which we can follow to downgrade the database from a higher version (SQL Server 2012) of SQL Server to a lower version (SQL Server 2008 R2) of SQL Server.
Always Canary
One way to make deployments smoother is to use a second system, but that's a challenge for databases, as Steve Jones notes.
Placing a Mark in SQL Server's Transaction Log for Fall Back
How many times have you had a programmer come to you and say they want you (the DBA) to restore their database to sometime prior to when they accidentally corrupted it? If you are doing FULL transaction logging you can do a point in time recovery to restore the database to just prior to when the corruption occurred. But in order to do that you need to know exactly when the programmer corrupted the data, which in a lot of cases is not known down to the second.
Using Dynamic SQL in Stored Procedures
Dynamic SQL allows stored procedures to “write” or dynamically generate their SQL statements. The most common use case for dynamic SQL is stored procedures with optional parameters in the WHERE clause.
Future Proofing an IT Career
Steve discusses the ways that you can ensure your IT career continues to move forward.
How much database normalization is enough?
Normalization is important for relational databases, but sometimes too much of a good thing can be bad.
Upgrade From SQL 2012 to SQL 2016 - Problem with Certificates
You may need to drop and recreate your certificates after migrating from SQL 2012 to SQL 2016+
How to be Accountable for Handling Personal Data
The GDPR is in full effect but meeting the requirements may still be confusing for many companies. In this article, William Brewer discusses what is needed to ensure compliance, including when a Data Protection Impact Assessment is required. He also explains the Data Protection Officer role.
How to change an Azure SQL Database Collation
In this tip we look at the steps you can follow to change the collation for an Azure SQL Database.
Blogs
Presenting with Visual Studio Code
A while back I wrote a quick post on setting up key mappings in...
Advice I Like: In 100 Years
By Steve Jones
In 100 years a lot of what we take to be true now will...
dataMinds Saturday 2026 – Slides
At Saturday the 21st of February I’m presenting an introduction to dimensional modelling at...
Forums
is it true we cant debug c# scripts in ssis anymore under vs
Hi, i'm running vs2022. I'm trying out a c# script that i'd like to...
Missing the Jaro Winkler Distance
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Missing the Jaro Winkler Distance
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