Phil Factor illustrates the 'quirks' of the SQL_VARIANT datatype and why it's best to investigate when SQL Prompt alerts you to its use. It is only safe to store data as a SQL_VARIANT, if you explicitly convert it to its true type before you use it.
2019-08-08
The SQL Prompt Best Practice rule checks whether a comparison or expression includes a NULL literal ('NULL'), which in SQL Server, rather than result in an error, will simply always produce a NULL result. Phil Factor explains how to avoid this, and other SQL NULL-related calamities.
2019-07-30
Many production databases have failed embarrassingly as a result of INSERT code that omits a column list, usually in mysterious ways and often without generating errors. Phil Factor demonstrates the problem, and advocates a 'defense-in-depth' approach to writing SQL, in order to avoid it.
2019-05-28
If Prompt warns you of use of the asterisk, or 'star' (*), in SELECT statements, consider replacing it with an explicit column list. It will prevent unnecessary network load and query performance problems, and avoid problems if the column order changes, when inserting into a table.
2019-05-27
Last year I started to get alerts from Microsoft Repos that someone had put a piece of security information in their code that pertained to one of my Azure services. At first I was worried, but then I realized this was the public version of AdventureWorks we maintain in Azure. We've published the login so […]
2019-04-17
186 reads
There may be some people who enjoy repetitive typing, but Grant Fritchey doesn't. He's always preferred SQL Prompt. The standard snippets suit developers fine but aren't so DBA-oriented, so he set about asking the SQLServerCentral community what they typed in the most, and set about producing a set of DBA snippets with the results.
2015-11-20
4,144 reads
Extend SQL Prompt's functionality by connecting your snippets to version control
2015-07-09
1,911 reads
This SQL Prompt tip shows you how code highlighting makes it easier to find which items match up with each other.
2015-11-25 (first published: 2015-01-26)
3,276 reads
A quick SQL Prompt tip to automatically add semicolons to your code.
2015-11-18 (first published: 2015-01-20)
5,791 reads
Learn how a new feature in SQL Prompt 6.4 can help you avoid costly mistakes in coding.
2015-11-11 (first published: 2015-01-12)
7,391 reads
In this step-by-step tutorial, learn how to run MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, and other stateful...
By Steve Jones
The 11th episode is now live, recorded a few weeks ago at the PASS...
By Steve Jones
mornden – n. the self-container pajama universe shared by two people on a long...
Hi everyone My SSIS package does a bulk insert of csv files into a...
Dipping my toes into the waters of Azure and of course before I get...
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Announcing SQL Server 2025
Can you run this code in any of your SQL Server 2019 databases without error?
CREATE OR ALTER PROCEDURE [dbo].[StevesAmazingProc]
AS
SELECT Consumer_ID ,
Trend_Category ,
Bit_Trace
FROM NewWorldDB.dbo.MarketTrend;
GO See possible answers