Scripts

Technical Article

Script to sort by columns that may include NULLs

If you sort by in ASC order by column that may include NULLs and empty strings ( if type is varchar), the records with nulls will always appear before any others.This script will show how to chagne this pattern and move all records with NULLs to the bottom of your recordset

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2002-05-23

227 reads

Technical Article

Search for a value in a numeric variable list

When you have a variable that hold a comma separated numbers like '1,2,3' and you have a table with a column that has the value that should match a number in that list, you can use this script to avoid building a string and then executing it.You have to convert the columnID to varchar, the […]

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2002-05-20

388 reads

Technical Article

SQL Mail Stop and Start

Since SQL Mail periodically stops working and the simplefix is to stop and start it, this script does just that.It can be scheduled to run as a task as often as desiredusing an ISQL command (e.g. isql -U sa -P  -i "e:\dba\mailstopstart.sql" -o "e:\dba\mailstopstart.out")or as a stored procedure.  It has been tested on SQL 6.5 […]

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2002-05-16

1,188 reads

Technical Article

Get total file size of backup for last full backup

The information for backup size is stored in the backup_size column of the backupset table in the msdb database as the total bytes for that backup. This script allow you to look at the total back to tape or file so you can plan space needs for those devices. This is a simple piece of […]

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2002-05-14

4,646 reads

Technical Article

Procedure for Random Numbers

Here is handy procedure to generate random number.I find it useful when I generate large amount of test data in a database.For example if you need to create a Customer Data and what they have purchased in the last month to run perfrmance tests on large amount of data an set up necessary indexes.You can […]

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2002-05-13

702 reads

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Backing Up a DMK

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The Quiet Part

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BIT_COUNT in SQL Server

By john.martin

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Question of the Day

Backing Up a DMK

In SQL Server 2025, I have a database with a Database Masker Key (DMK). I want to back up this key and keep a copy offline. When do I have to open this key before running the backup?

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