Robert Marda

I have worked for bigdough.com since 18 May 2000 as an SQL Programmer. My duties include backup management for all our SQL Servers, mentoring junior SQL Programmers, and serving as DBA while our DBA is on vacation. I develop, test, and deploy stored procedures and DTS packages as well as manage most major SQL projects. Our offices are located in Bethesda, Maryland. Before working for bigdough, I worked for Telos Corporation in Ashburn, Virginia. I started learning T-SQL and using SQL Server 7.0 on 22 March 1999. In April 1999 I was given the position of Senior Database Analyst/Administrator at Telos Corporation. I have been married to Leoncia Guzman since 23 Jul 1994. We met in the Dominican Republic where I lived for about 2 years as a missionary. We have 4 children, Willem (age 8), Adonis (age 6), Liem (age 4 and a half), and Sharleen (age 3 and a half). My hobbies include spending time with our 4 children (we play chess, dominos, mancala, and video or computer games together), keeping tropical freshwater fish, breeding and training parakeets, coin collecting (US and foreign), and geneology. I have a 55 gallon tank and 20 gallon tank. I have many kinds of fish (such as a pleco, tiger barbs, mollies, cichlids, tetras, and guppies) I also have a small aquatic turtle. I last updated my bio 30 Mar 2004.
  • Interests: Sailing, camping, computers, reading and writing sci-fi and fantasy books.

SQLServerCentral Article

Output Parameters

Regular columnist Robert Marda writes about the basics of using output parameters. If you're not using output params we hope this article will get you started - they are a great way to return less data to the client, perfect if you need only a few values and not a recordset/resultset.

(35)

You rated this post out of 5. Change rating

2007-10-26 (first published: )

32,954 reads

SQLServerCentral Article

How to Build Dynamic Stored Procedures

Robert is our expert on dynamic sql. This week he offers some good hints for planning the contruction of a proc that will use dynamic sql. He also adds some suggestions on how to format the code so that when you return to it later, you can figure out what you were doing!

(5)

You rated this post out of 5. Change rating

2007-10-02 (first published: )

51,032 reads

SQLServerCentral Article

Nesting Stored Procedures

We're pleased to announce that Robert will be writing for us each month - generally on stored procedures, but occasionally on a different topic. This article discusses how nesting stored procedures works and how to use @@NextLevel. Good reading! If there is a stored procedure topic you'd like to see covered, add a comment to the article or email us at articles@sqlservercentral.com

(2)

You rated this post out of 5. Change rating

2007-10-02 (first published: )

53,535 reads

SQLServerCentral Article

Manipulating And Using DateTime Data

Working with date and time data in SQL Server can be a bit cumersome using just T-SQL. With the separate datatypes being pulled from SQL Server 2005 for the time being, however, it is something that a DBA needs to get used to. Robert Marda brings us an instructional look at the different datetime data types and some things you should be aware of when developing with them.

(1)

You rated this post out of 5. Change rating

2004-10-27

16,789 reads

SQLServerCentral Article

Creating a System Stored Procedure

Creating a system stored procedure isn't hard. You're always cautioned from making changes to the system, depending on the system for a particular functionality, etc., and you should be cautious. However adding system stored procedures to your servers can be beneficial and make your administration much more convenient. Read on the see how easy this can be to do.

(2)

You rated this post out of 5. Change rating

2004-05-20

13,989 reads

Blogs

Presenting with Visual Studio Code

By

A while back I wrote a quick post on setting up key mappings in...

Advice I Like: In 100 Years

By

In 100 years a lot of what we take to be true now will...

dataMinds Saturday 2026 – Slides

By

At Saturday the 21st of February I’m presenting an introduction to dimensional modelling at...

Read the latest Blogs

Forums

AllocationType as ROW_OVERFLOW_DATA

By inHouseDBA

Hello, I inherited a number of tables with like 20-30 column using nvarchar(256) in...

connections vs apis

By stan

hi , i hear more and more that we have too many connections to...

is it true we cant debug c# scripts in ssis anymore under vs

By stan

Hi, i'm running vs2022.   I'm trying out a c# script that i'd like to...

Visit the forum

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