SQLServerCentral Article

Confessions of an IT Manager, 2nd Edition - Book

The software industry is, just occasionally, more absurd than one would dare to imagine. Having spent most of his working life in its clutches, Phil Factor has pretty much "seen it all" and what's more he's prepared to tell what he knows. The second edition of Phil's "Confessions of an IT Manager" contains Phil's full repertoire of tales of institutional mayhem and software projects gone awry.

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Database Backup and Recovery in the Age of Big Data

Big data is the latest craze. Hardware and software vendors have overwhelmed IT departments with high-speed analytical software, proprietary high-performance hardware, and columnar-based data stores promising quick access and lightning-fast answers to ad hoc analytical queries. Forgotten in this blast of technology are the database administrators' most important responsibilities: backup and recovery.

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SQL in the City Atlanta 2013

SQL in the City is coming to Atlanta on October 11. The second stop on the SQL in the City US Tour brings you SQL Server MVP experts including, Steve Jones and Grant Fritchey. Learn top tips and best practices for SQL Server database development and administration, discover the latest Red Gate tools, and network with fellow data professionals.

SQLServerCentral Article

The Fundamentals of SQL Server Replication by Sebastian Meine

Many of my clients need to make data that lives on one server available on another server. There are many reasons for such a requirement. You might want to speed up cross-server queries by providing a local copy of the data. Or you might want to make the data available to resource intensive reporting queries without impacting the OLTP load, maybe even with an intentional delay so you're always reporting against complete days only. Finally, you might be looking to implement high availability. In all these situations, SQL Server Replication is a viable option to look at when planning for the implemen­tation of such a requirement.

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String Similarity II

What is the range for the result from the EDIT_DISTANCE_SIMILARITY() function in SQL Server 2025?

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