Data is Not Always Enough
More data is better, but Steve Jones notes that even that isn't always enough to make decisions count for your organization.
Verify SQL Backup Integrity
Perform automated database restores and check the integrity of your backup files
We Don't Care about Data and IT Security
Most of us say we care about IT and data security. Our actions speak differently.
Practically Cloudy: SQL Server Disaster Recovery to Microsoft Azure - Backups
In the first in a series on the practicalities of using the Microsoft Azure Platform for the SQL Server professional, Buck Woody shows that, whatever your version of SQL Server, there is a way of storing offsite backups in the cloud.
How to Create a Corrupt SQL Server Database
This article details how to create a corrupt SQL Server database for testing purposes
SQL Saturday #327 - Johannesburg
SQL Saturday is coming to Johannesburg on August 30. Join in for a free day of SQL Server training and networking. Register while spaces are available.
The SQL of Membership: Equivalence Classes & Cliques
It is awkward to do 'Graph databases' in SQL to explore the sort of relationships and memberships in social networks because equivalence relations are classes (a set of sets) rather than sets. However one can explore graphs in SQL if the relationship has all three of the mathematical properties needed for an equivalence relationship.
Introducing the Columnstore Index
A brief overview of Columnstore index and its usage with an example
What do you consider important when performance testing?
What data specific considerations do you make when preparing for performance testing?
Blogs
Architecting Zero Downtime Deployments–Day of Data Boston
By Steve Jones
Here are the resources for my talk at Day of Data Boston. Slides –...
The Book of Redgate:A Prehistory
By Steve Jones
I’ve covered the values in a number of previous posts on the Book of...
Evidence-bound: what AgentDBA will and won’t link
By Arun Sirpal
When the evidence names the database, it says so. When it doesn’t, it stops....
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