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
1,627 reads
Transact-SQL
The difference between BIN2 and Case-Sensitive collations in SQL
Here you will learn about the key differences between the binary and SQL/Windows collations. You will see that even with all sensitivity flags enabled, SQL/Windows collation cannot behave the same way as the binary collations.
2024-03-15
1,868 reads
GENERATE_SERIES() Breaks Minimal Logging
tl;dr The title says it all. Prologue One of the keys to my personal learning is that, very early in my database career, I taught myself how to make lot’s of rows of Random Constrained Data in a comparatively short time. With the help of a few good folks over time, the method has been […]
2023-09-18
3,922 reads
Performance Tuning with SQLFacts Tools
The need for performance tuning your SQL Server workloads has never been more critical. As workloads are moved into cloud services, their efficiency has a direct impact on the recurring bills. A workload that consumes more resources than necessary costs more to host in the cloud and affects the bottom line for your organization.
2023-04-07
10,977 reads
Getting started with ROUND() and Its Use Cases
Learn the basics of the ROUND() function in this article.
2022-12-02
3,077 reads
How to get IO statistics of SQL Server database files
This article shows how you can query your database files to get metadata about them and use that to get the reads, writes, and other IO statistics.
2022-11-18
10,188 reads
Manage Your Business Rules in T-SQL Query
Motivation At some point in the carrer, we have come across the problem of hard-coded values in SELECT or WHERE clauses. And we all agree that these hardcoded values must be parametrised. This bad habit usually backfires when we need to troubleshoot a query. These hardcoded values are usually a business role baked in the […]
2022-10-18 (first published: 2022-09-02)
11,329 reads
Working with T-SQL function AVG ()
Learn about the T-SQL function, AVG(), and see how it is used in a few different cases.
2022-07-01
2,713 reads
SQL Server Monitoring Using Free Tools
You can do essential monitoring of SQL Server instances and databases with a FREE toolkit!
2022-01-28
7,075 reads
Playing popular game of Wordle using T-SQL
Popular and addictive game of Wordle is now written in Transact SQL script. With this script, you can now play this game on Microsoft SQL Server, using your favourite editor - SSMS, ADS, VS Code, and enjoy playing the game during free time, or whilst waiting for the other SQL query to complete.
2022-01-19
716 reads
Blogs
Don’t Miss Out – SQL Server Query Tuning Fundamentals Starts Next Monday!
Next Monday, February 9, 2026, my one-day live online training SQL Server Query Tuning...
Monday Monitor Tips: SQL Auditing Preview
By Steve Jones
One of the features we advocates have been advocating for is a better way...
SQL Server 2025 CU1 Fixes the Docker Desktop AVX Issue on macOS
Microsoft fixed the AVX instruction issue in SQL Server 2025 CU1. The container now...
Forums
25 Years of SQL Server Central
Comments posted to this topic are about the item 25 Years of SQL Server...
The Decoded Value
Comments posted to this topic are about the item The Decoded Value
Deploying SQL Server Developer Edition in Kubernetes: A Cost-Effective Alternative to RDS
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Deploying SQL Server Developer Edition...
Question of the Day
The Decoded Value
In SQL Server 2025, what is returned from this code:
DECLARE @message VARCHAR(50) = 'Hello SQL Server 2025!'; DECLARE @encoded VARCHAR(MAX); SET @encoded = BASE64_ENCODE(CAST(@message AS VARBINARY(1000))); SELECT BASE64_DECODE(@encoded)See possible answers