If you’ve ever had to format dates and times in SQL, you’ve probably come across one of the most jarring realities of working across platforms: every major RDBMS does it differently and sometimes confusingly. What’s a TO_CHAR() in Oracle becomes FORMAT() or CONVERT() in SQL Server, and its sort of the same in PostgreSQL… but […]
2025-07-11
210 reads
Meta Description: App-level vulnerabilities can co...
2025-08-15 (first published: 2025-06-12)
80 reads
When you create something, do you think about the future? Steve asks the question today.
2025-01-29
140 reads
2025-01-17
150 reads
There are a number of ways to run SQL Server for free (or low cost) for development. Read a bit about how to do this.
2024-02-23
6,603 reads
One of the slowest parts of any application is data retrieval and in this article, we look at how to cache SQL Server data for a web application.
2023-05-22
When I first started work as a software developer, I knew that getting an environment set up where I could compile a project might take a few hours or a few days. The complexities of how people built software projects, the dependencies, and more were handled in a very immature manner. These days I can […]
2022-11-16
210 reads
Steve notes that there are differences between state based development and migration based development, but neither is necessarily better.
2021-10-06
389 reads
2020-11-13
121 reads
The challenges of state in databases can impact our development efforts.
2020-08-31
94 reads
By Steve Jones
If someone is trying to convince you it’s not a pyramid scheme, it’s a...
By Steve Jones
I was looking back at my year and decided to see if SQL Prompt...
In the era of cloud-native applications, Kubernetes has become the default standard platform for...
Hi experts, I have a 3+ TB database on a 2019 sql server which...
Comments posted to this topic are about the item The North Star for the...
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Multiple Escape Characters
In SQL Server 2025, I run this code (in a database with the appropriate collation):
SELECT UNISTR('%*3041%*308A%*304C%*3068 and good night', '%*') AS 'A Classic';
What is returned? See possible answers