Scripts

Technical Article

zPad() - add leading zeros to a number

This user-defined function converts a number to character format and adds leading zeroes to pad the field to a specified length.  useful for displaying SSNs or other numeric fields where the leading 0's are significant but the field is stored as numeric.To use:select dbo.zPad(, )make sure your length includes an extra column for the sign.  […]

You rated this post out of 5. Change rating

2002-12-05

433 reads

Technical Article

Convert a number to words

This is a handy function that converts a  number (integer) into its word format.  This might be handy if you need to print a check formatted number in words.  Currently it supports an integer but it would be almost nothing to convert to support a bigint or decimal.The components are1) a table named PlaceValue that […]

You rated this post out of 5. Change rating

2002-12-04

379 reads

Technical Article

Find SA password with public role-perm test DBA

Find SA Password (Brute Force) with Public RoleFindSApublic is a brute-force password cracker that requires only public role.Possibilities  returns how many different passwords are possible with 1 up to c characters from a universe of n different characters.Usage:FindSApublic nN is an integer which is the maximum length of the password to attempt cracking.Acknowledgmentsoriginal idea: David […]

You rated this post out of 5. Change rating

2002-12-04

973 reads

Technical Article

PACK() user defined function

Convert a decimal number to IBM EBCDIC packed decimal format.  If for some reason you need to export a number to IBM systems in native format, you can define a SQL Server field as binary(8) and Pack() your decimal number into it.  Then IBM mainframes and COBOL/CICS systems can read the numbers from your data […]

(1)

You rated this post out of 5. Change rating

2002-12-04

556 reads

Technical Article

Script to determine backup finish times

SQL Server provides the RESTORE HEADERONLY command which helps users determine backup completion times.  What if you have the need to use this completion time for comparison, perhaps to set up a job that only restores the file if it is xx hours old.  This script can be used to determine the maximum backup finish […]

You rated this post out of 5. Change rating

2002-12-04

420 reads

Technical Article

Dependencies on a specific table column

SQL Server provides a built-in stored procedure, sp_depends, that returns object dependencies.  Recently, I discovered a need for determining dependencies on a table column, not just the table itself.  For example, a table may be referenced by many stored procedures and views, but a specific column in that table may only be referenced in a […]

(1)

You rated this post out of 5. Change rating

2002-12-03

3,536 reads

Blogs

Accessing the Data API Builder MCP Server from VS Code

By

I recently started playing with the MCP Server for SQL Server, which is a...

From DBA or Data Engineer to AI Engineer: A Realistic Path

By

If you spend your days tuning queries, managing pipelines, or keeping a production database...

Asynchronous Replication of Snapshots from an ActiveCluster Pod to a Third Array

By

I’ve been rebuilding my three-site SQL Server demo lab, and I ran into something...

Read the latest Blogs

Forums

STRING_AGG DISTINCT

By Phil Parkin

Has anyone written a wrapper function (or similar) around STRING_AGG() to allow the retrieval...

In-place OS upgrade or migration to new OS?

By jasona.work

Putting this here as we're currently on SQL Server 2019 installed on Windows Server...

Never is Not the Policy

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Comments posted to this topic are about the item Never is Not the Policy

Visit the forum

Question of the Day

Rebuilding All Indexes

I have added a few indexes to one of my tables in SQL Server 2025:

ALTER TABLE dbo.CustomerContact
ADD CONSTRAINT PK_CustomerContact
    PRIMARY KEY (CustomerID);

-- Create index on CustomerEmail
CREATE INDEX IX_CustomerContact_CustomerEmail
ON dbo.CustomerContact (CustomerEmail);
CREATE INDEX IX_CustomerContact_CustomerPhone
ON dbo.CustomerContact (phone);
I then do this to disable one index:
alter index IX_CustomerContact_CustomerPhone on dbo.CustomerContact disable
I see this when I check the index status:Index status for CustomerContactI decide to rebuild all indexes with this command:
ALTER INDEX ALL ON dbo.CustomerContact rebuild
After I do this, what will I see for the index status?

See possible answers