SQL Server 2014 SP1 released, and revoked
Just a brief note today to point to an article by Time Ford on SQLMag.com announcing that SQL Server 2014 SP1 has...
2015-04-16
630 reads
Jen McCown
SSMS regular expressions: format text into a block
Sean’s RegEx for DBAs class must be finally sinking in for me. Today I was able to figure out a...
2015-04-07
509 reads
Connect the Nots
Today I learned that you can’t adjust the font size in SQL Server Management Studio’s Object Explorer pane. Nor registered...
2015-04-02
622 reads
“Thing IS NOT NULL” isn’t the same as “Thing != NULL”
I’ve talked about NULLs before. (Ref: Here’s a bit on ISNULL(), and here’s one about understanding NULL at a basic level.)...
2015-03-16
577 reads
Fun-fun-fun in the London sun (and Cardiff, and Exeter!)
We’re in London right now for SQLBits, which has been ABSOLUTELY LOVELY so far. If you happen to’ve seen our...
2015-03-06
444 reads
Powershell to Robocopy files (say, to back up your computer to protect against CryptoWall trojan)
We were having a good time on DBAs@Midnight, when Sean got a weird pop up message that said all his...
2015-02-07
1,122 reads
Minion Reindex 1.1 Release (and re-release)
We released Minion Reindex version 1.1 last week. The changes are fairly small: Made sure Minion Reindex handles all nonstandard naming...
2015-01-29
1,257 reads
Video: A Better Way to Reindex
Sean presented A BETTER WAY TO REINDEX for the Performance Virtual Chapter. Here are links to the video, and to...
2015-01-23
1,932 reads
Create a clustered index and a primary key on existing tables
It’s the simple things in life that can trip people up. I find that creating primary keys and clustered indexes...
2014-12-15
647 reads
Just an idea: Bare Bones SQL
I’m reading Andy Warren’s excellent essay “Thoughts on raising funds and spending funds for PASS chapters”, and it’s bringing together...
2014-11-13
863 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