Naming Is Hard
Naming objects and variables in software can create contention in a team. While there are good conventions and standards, ultimately a team just needs to agree on something.
Exploring SQL Server 2016 Dynamic Data Masking – Part Two - Masking and Exporting Data in Existing Tables
Dynamic Data Masking allows you to obscure your confidential data column values at the database engine level for both new and existing SQL Server data. Being able to alter the definition of an existing column to add a masking rule makes it very simple to obscure your existing column values without even changing your application code.
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.
Blogs
The SUM of Nothing: #SQLNewBlogger
By Steve Jones
I caught this interesting item over on Pinal Dave’s blog: Eleven Interview Questions that...
How to Move the SSMS Status Bar to the Top and Color-Code SQL Server Connections
By Hemantgiri
I use color-coded connections in SSMS to distinguish Production, Pre-Production, UAT, and Development. But...
Forums
Split Large Queries in Athena with a Simple Modulo Trick
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Split Large Queries in Athena...
Finding Trailing Spaces
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Finding Trailing Spaces
Question of the Day
Finding Trailing Spaces
I have some data in a SQL Server 2025 database. It looks like this for the dbo.Customer table:
CustomerID CustomerName PreferredName 1 Steve Steve 2 Andy Andy 3 Brian Brian 4 Allan Allan 5 Devin Devin 6 Steve Steve 7 Sally SallyI want to detect which names have a single trailing space. The CustomerName is a varchar() and the PreferredName is a CHAR(). Does this query detect the problem rows?
SELECT
CustomerID,
CustomerName,
PreferredName
FROM Customer
WHERE CustomerName <> RTRIM(CustomerName)
OR PreferredName <> RTRIM(PreferredName); See possible answers