Listing members of a group in SQL Server.
In SQL we are used to the GROUP BY and the type of result it produces. In real life, we...
2010-10-11
1,559 reads
Phil Factor
- Interests: Motorbikes, Beer, gardening, conservation, Local history.
The One True Script
Phil Factor less-than-fond memories of the days of the One True Source Script. However, despite recent advances, he wonders just how much smoother team-based database development really is.
2010-10-04
238 reads
Cleaning up excess contiguous spaces in strings. A mystery.
/* Have you ever come across the problem where you have to remove spaces from a string that has too many?...
2010-09-30
2,977 reads
SQL Server's implementation of Window Functions
Phil factor compares SQL Server 2008's implementation of Window Functions to PostgreSQL and finds SQL Server frustratingly lacking in some of the essentials.
2010-09-27
796 reads
COMPUTE: now it is going, what else will do it?
/*I'd be very surprised if you've ever used the old COMPUTE clause in SQL Server. It is a bit mad,...
2010-09-23
1,618 reads
Getting Fired from an Unpaid Job.
Phil Factor initially brooded about being fired from a job he was just doing unpaid to help out. Then he suddenly realized that they were probably right.
2010-09-13
346 reads
Houston, we have a problem
Phil Factor takes a sideways look at Houston, a new tool for building SQL Azure applications, and is somewhat underwhelmed by what he finds.
2010-08-02
222 reads
Ambiguities and the wild object.oriented brigades
--Whilst trying to design a more effective way of detecting dependencies in a SQL Server database, I was mulling over...
2010-07-29
2,010 reads
The Killer Backslash in TSQL
--it is
quite startling to see that this, in TSQL, executes.
Select \
/*
---------------------
0.00
(1
row(s) affected)
so does
this....
*/
Select null /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
/*
---------------------
NULL
(1
row(s) affected)...
2010-07-29
5,817 reads
The Great Forum Debate
Phil discusses the pros and cons of the traditional versus stack overflow-style model for forum debate, and wonders whether there is a database model that would support all these different forms of discussion, or cooperative work, so that we can simply fit the 'visualization' to the nature of the particular discussion.
2010-06-28
99 reads
Blogs
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...
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...
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