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)
143,613 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
3,480 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
7,102 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
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Question of the Day
String Similarity I
On SQL Server 2025, when I run this, what is returned?
SELECT EDIT_DISTANCE_SIMILARITY('SQL Server', 'MySQL') See possible answers