2025-11-21
149 reads
SQL Server
SQL Automate - A DBA's Time-Saving Toolkit
SQLAutomate is a lightweight PowerShell tool that simplifies SQL Server deployment by automating both installation and post-installation configuration. Whether you're setting up one instance or dozens, this guide shows how to use SQLAutomate to save time and reduce manual work.
2025-06-06
10,157 reads
Analyzing Tempdb Spills and Usage Across Recursive Queries
This article examines how tempdb is affected by recursive queries, using a few different methods.
2025-05-23
2,112 reads
How to Safely Remove a SQL Server Data File Without Downtime
Learn how to safely remove a SQL Server .ndf data file without any downtime using DBCC SHRINKFILE (EMPTYFILE). This hands-on tutorial walks through real-world Azure-based setup, data redistribution, and storage cleanup — ideal for DBAs managing enterprise SQL Server environments.
2025-05-16
2,749 reads
Elements of the SQL Server Update Statement
Learn how to use the UPDATE statement, along with a few things to be aware of when changing data.
2025-04-11
1,639 reads
Determining Whether Home Addresses Fall Within a Tornado Polygon Using Spatial Functions
Geographic information systems (GIS) play a critical role in emergency response planning and risk assessment. One of the key challenges in this field is determining whether a specific location falls within an area of interest. This capability is especially valuable for property and casualty (P&C) insurers, who need to assess their insured property exposure when severe weather events such as tornadoes occur.
2025-03-04 (first published: 2025-03-03)
2,689 reads
Enhancing SQL Server Searches with Elasticsearch and Python
Learn how to get started with Elasticsearch with data in your SQL Server database.
2024-10-14
2,452 reads
Set up a Windows Server Fail-over Clusters (As a Precursor to High Availability in Standard Edition)
Setting up High Availability in SQL server has some prerequisites. One of these is that the database servers must be members of the same Windows Server Failover Cluster. In this article I show how to succesfully set up WSFC and activate Cluster Aware Updating
2024-06-28
7,683 reads
2024-03-29
8,499 reads
Machine learning K-Means applied to SQL Server data
This article shows how to use Python to access data in SQL Server and produce a K-Means analysis with a chart.
2024-01-08
3,166 reads
Blogs
Presenting with Visual Studio Code
A while back I wrote a quick post on setting up key mappings in...
Advice I Like: In 100 Years
By Steve Jones
In 100 years a lot of what we take to be true now will...
dataMinds Saturday 2026 – Slides
At Saturday the 21st of February I’m presenting an introduction to dimensional modelling at...
Forums
AllocationType as ROW_OVERFLOW_DATA
Hello, I inherited a number of tables with like 20-30 column using nvarchar(256) in...
is it true we cant debug c# scripts in ssis anymore under vs
Hi, i'm running vs2022. I'm trying out a c# script that i'd like to...
Question of the Day
Missing the Jaro Winkler Distance
I upgraded a SQL Server 2019 instance to SQL Server 2025. I wanted to test the fuzzy string search functions. I run this code:
SELECT JARO_WINKLER_DISTANCE('tim', 'tom')
I get this error message:Msg 195, Level 15, State 10, Line 1 'JARO_WINKLER_DISTANCE' is not a recognized built-in function name.What is wrong? See possible answers