Performance Surprises and Assumptions: STRING_SPLIT
SQL Server 2016 RC0 introduces a new native string splitting function, STRING_SPLIT. In this article, Aaron Bertrand compares its performance to existing methods.
A SQL Server Patching Shortcut
This post on SQL Server patching illustrates a quick and simple way of safely extracting SQL Server installation files in advance of patching a SQL Server instance.
The 2015/2016 Simple-Talk Awards
Once more Simple-Talk invites its readers to vote on the top nominations for the Simple-Talk Awards. Find out who or what has been nominated for each of this year's nine categories, and cast your vote to decide the winners - voting closes tomorrow!
Code smells versus transgressions
The oddest SQL practices can be done deliberately for good reason, but are there any that are always wrong, that are so bad that that their use should be prohibited as a matter of policy?
Move an Existing Log Shipping Database to a New Monitor Server
How to move a log shipping database to a new monitor server without removing and rebuilding the log shipping setup.
Bad Cardinality Estimates from SSMS Plans – Redux
Aaron Bertrand shares some insight about early changes to Plan Explorer that help to provide you with the most accurate information we can.
The Database Transaction Unit (DTU) Decoded
In an Azure SQL Database, you pay for a certain number of DTUs, but what are these? Steve Jones explains.
Blogs
A bespoke reporting solution doesn’t have to cost the earth
By ChrisJenkins
You could be tolerating limited reporting because there isn’t an off the shelf solution...
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...
Forums
AllocationType as ROW_OVERFLOW_DATA
Hello, I inherited a number of tables with like 20-30 column using nvarchar(256) in...
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...
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