The Technology Journey to Disaster
Phil Factor on a journey that started with a decision to introduce a new IT platform, and ended in a disaster that left TSB customers locked out of their accounts, experiencing problems such as zero balances, incorrect currencies, and massively inflated mortgage amounts.
Parking Garages And Predicates
You lost your car in a big parking lot. Erik Darling explains how this is just like an index scan.
Navigating Hadoop Resources
Learn where to get the latest installation and learning resources for the ever-evolving components of Hadoop ecosystem and how those components may complement Microsoft SQL Server common everyday tasks.
“But I don’t need to back up that database.”
Brent Ozar shares four stories of people who thought they could avoid backups - and got burned.
Reasons to Upgrade
There are always reasons to upgrade or avoid upgrading to a new version. Steve Jones has a few thoughts.
Scripting Objects with PowerShell
In the third installment of this series, Steve Jones uses PowerShell to source control code.
150 SQL Code Smells
Some time ago, Phil Factor wrote his booklet 'SQL Code Smells', collecting together a whole range of SQL Coding practices that could be considered to indicate the need for a review of the code. It was published as 119 code smells, even though there were 120 of them at the time. Phil Factor has continued to collect them and the current state of the art is reflected in this article. SQL Prompt is committed to cover as many as possible of them. Phil has also updated his book, which is free to download.
Packaged-Application Database Nightmares - A Horror Story
The business decides on a packaged application and buys it. After installation, you look at the schema and realize that is is a nightmare. How do you manage this nightmare?
Blogs
Advice I Like: Pyramid Schemes
By Steve Jones
If someone is trying to convince you it’s not a pyramid scheme, it’s a...
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...
Forums
Database file shrink issue.
Hi experts, I have a 3+ TB database on a 2019 sql server which...
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
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