Why Don't You Upgrade in Place?
Is there a reason to upgrade your SQL Server in place instead of building a new instance? Andy Warren has a few thoughts today on why this might be the right choice.
2023-12-20
5,384 reads
Andy Warren
Restore With Standby; A Review and A Lesson Learned
A lesson learned when trying to restore backups with standby. You can't upgrade versions.
2023-09-25
9,233 reads
Monitoring the Number of Connections
Monitoring your SQL Server is important. This article examines one of the metrics you might want to keep an eye on.
2021-02-26 (first published: 2019-02-26)
46,339 reads
A Pattern Based Approach to Masking Errors
A few years ago I had a requirement to allow both developers and customers to see rows from a table used to store error information while making sure that any PII, PCI or similar sensitive data was not displayed. The tolerance for “oops” was low! This article presents one way to solve the challenge by […]
2020-04-27
1,763 reads
Worst Practices - Objects Not Owned by DBO
Last week Andy launched a new series about Worst Practices by talking about why the Hungarian naming convention is bad for column names. This week he's at it again, declaring that the practice of having objects owned by anyone other than dbo is BAD! Agree or disagree, we think you'll enjoy reading this article and adding your thoughts to the discussion!
2019-08-01 (first published: 2002-09-12)
38,418 reads
Worst Practices - Part 1 of a Very Long Series!
Andy starts a new series about Worst Practices - come find out why and read about the first one on his list - using Hungarian Notation for column names!
2019-08-01 (first published: 2001-10-09)
34,390 reads
Error Logging Gone Wild
Many of have applications that log errors to a table. Ever thought about what happens when an application starts to throw a lot of errors? This article looks at the problem and some of the responses you might consider having ready in case it happens to you!
2016-10-11
1,805 reads
If SQL Server Runs on Linux, What's Left for April Fools Day
It’s still a bit hard to believe that SQL Server will soon run on Linux. If you think back to the early days of SQL 7, 2000, even 2005, who would have bet any money on it ever happening?
2016-04-01
2,222 reads
Time to Rebrand
I became a SQL guy back in 1998 because the company that hired me used SQL Server. It’s been a good ride and it’s paid the bills, but after 15 years or so it’s time to do something different.
2015-04-01
6,297 reads
Solid State Tapes–Prelaunch News!
In the world of data it’s always been about speed. SSD’s have become very common on consumer machines and not unusual in corporate datacenters.
2014-03-31
3,135 reads
Blogs
Flyway Tips: AI Deployment Script Descriptions
By Steve Jones
With the AI push being everywhere, Redgate is no exception. We’ve been getting requests,...
A New Word: Fawtle
By Steve Jones
fawtle – n. a weird little flaw built into your partner that somehow only...
Post-quantum key exchange – Insurance policy for your packets
AWS recently added support for Post-Quantum Key Exchange for TLS in Application Load Balancer...
Forums
Where Your Value Separates You from Others
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Where Your Value Separates You...
Fixing the Error
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Fixing the Error
T-SQL in SQL Server 2025: Encoding Functions
Comments posted to this topic are about the item T-SQL in SQL Server 2025:...
Question of the Day
Fixing the Error
On SQL Server 2025, I have a database that has this collation: SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS. I decide I want to run this code:
SELECT UNISTR('*3041*308A*304C*3068 and good night', '*') AS 'A Classic';
I get this error:Msg 9844, Level 16, State 4, Line 24 The char/varchar input type uses an unsupported collation. Only a UTF8 collation is supported with char/varchar input type in UNISTR function.What is the easiest way to fix this error? See possible answers