Sweeping out SQL Server 2005
Tony Davis on why the dusty corners of many organizations still hide numerous SQL 2005 instances.
Tony Davis on why the dusty corners of many organizations still hide numerous SQL 2005 instances.
One of the most certain ways of going wrong with any relational database is to get data conversion wrong. Implicit data conversion is a good feature for the expert but can cause a lot of trouble to the unwary. These boil down to seven ways of failing to get data conversion right. Rob Sheldon explains and gives sage advice on how to avoid the problems.
The job of a DBA requires a fusion of skill and knowledge. To acquire this requires a craftsman mindset. Craftsmen find that the better they get at the work, the more enjoyable the work gets, and the more successful they become. Deliberate practice, Specialization and an appetite for overcoming difficulty are good habits to deliberately adopt to successfully grow those craftsmanlike skills to the point that you become “so good they can’t ignore you”.
Using SQL to perform cluster analysis to gain insight into data with unknown groups
Often DBAs and developers might make quick data changes to correct user problems or application shortfalls. Steve Jones notes that we can make mistakes, and perhaps we should ensure we QA, or at least log, our changes.
There are times when you don’t what to return a complete set of records. When you have this kind of requirement to only select the TOP X number of items Transact SQL (TSQL) has the TOP clause to meet your needs. In this article Greg Larsen explores how to select a subset of data from a record set.
This stairway level will explore data protection through encryption, both when the data is in motion across the network or in memory and at rest in a table. You’ll learn about the encryption key hierarchy and the various kinds of keys you can use to encrypt data, as well as how you can manage the keys or let SQL Server do it for you.
Spatial Data in SQL Server has special indexing because it has to perform specialised functions. It is able, for example, to break down an indexed space into a grid hierarchy by using a technique called tessellation. This is a rules-based system that, when you compare a shape to an index, works out how many cells in the the grid hierarchy are touched by that shape , and how deep down the grid hierarchy to search. There is powerful magic in Spatial Indexes as Surenda and Roy explain.
Aaron Bertrand presents a more elegant to prevent developers from attempting to log into production databases using application logins (and to log any such attempts).
By Steve Jones
AI is a big deal in 2026, and at Redgate, we’re experimenting with how...
By Steve Jones
Another of our values: The facing page has this quote: “We admire people who...
By Ed Elliott
Running tSQLt unit tests is great from Visual Studio but my development workflow...
Comments posted to this topic are about the item No Defaults Passwords Ever
Hi, We have low latency high volume system. I have a table having 3...
Comments posted to this topic are about the item The Long Name
I run this code to create a table:
When I check the length, I get these results:
A table name is limited to 128 characters. How does this work?