Understanding the difference between IS NULL and = NULL
This article by James Travis details the differences between IS NULL and = NULL. He also discusses the ANSI_NULLS setting.
2017-08-18 (first published: 2003-06-17)
143,611 reads
James Travis
- Interests: My Family, Programming (Go Figure), Movies, Guitar
PASS Summit 2004 - Another Look
Our longtime member and author, James Travis went with the SQLServerCentral.com crew to the 2004 PASS Summit in Orlando last month. For those of you that don't recognize the name, he goes by Antares686 in the forums and has been generous enough to post over 6,000 times, giving lots of his time and knowledge to helping others. He jotted down a few notes on the conference for those of you that weren't there and are considering going next year.
2004-10-14
3,479 reads
Hidden Dangers!
How many of you register a server in Enterprise Manager? Now how many of you click the "save password" box? Probably most of you. Are you aware of the security risks associated with this? James Travis looks at one of potential problems here and other security issues relating to SQL-DMO.
2004-05-04
7,612 reads
Review of Guru's Guide to SQL Server Architecture and Internals
If you are (or want to be) a power user, this book should be on your shelf. How many books have you read that have you using a debugger to step into the sql server process? James gives it a thumbs up!
2004-04-07
6,647 reads
Review of Programming Microsoft SQL Server 2000 with Microsoft Visual
We get books in occasionally for review and have started making them available to our existing authors. Jim was interested in this one - turns out he didn't find much to like. If you're a beginner it might be a better fit. Or maybe you've read the book and disagree?
2004-03-16
4,918 reads
What is the search order for Procedures prefixed sp_?
In this article, James Travis covers a common performance topic of prefixing stored procedures sp_. Does it really slow down performance?
2002-11-14
7,101 reads
How to Fix Inconsistent Metadata Errors
Why does changing a table on a SQL Server 7.0 server cause "OLE DB provider 'SQLOLEDB' supplied inconsistent metadata. An extra column was supplied during execution that was not found at compile time." to occur when query the table from a SQL Server 2000 server via link to other. In this article by James Travis, he shows you what the problem is and how to fix it.
2002-02-28
15,520 reads
Blogs
Identity Columns Can’t Be Updated: #SQLNewBlogger
By Steve Jones
I’m not sure I knew identity column values could not be updated. I ran...
Rolling Back a Broken Release
By Steve Jones
We had an interesting discussion about deployments in databases and how you go forward...
A bespoke reporting solution doesn’t have to cost the earth
By ChrisJenkins
You could be tolerating limited reporting because there isn’t an off the shelf solution...
Forums
Can someone please explain what happens?
I have mentioned this several times over several years. Can someone please help me...
SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT) returns null when nothing is found instead of 0
SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT Component) AS Found FROM tblComponents WHERE(Component NOT LIKE '%[a-z]%') AND(LTRIM(RTRIM(Component)) = 'GM13622')...
Remotely Engineer Fabric Lakehouse objects: The Fabric Modern Data Platform
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Remotely Engineer Fabric Lakehouse objects:...
Question of the Day
Creating JSON III
In a SQL Server 2025 table, called Beer, I have this data:
BeerIDBeerName 1Becks 2Fat Tire 3Mac n Jacks 4Alaskan Amber 8KirinI run this code:
SELECT JSON_OBJECTAGG(
BeerID: BeerName )
FROM beer;
What are the results? See possible answers