Experimenting with Go-SQLCMD
Steve takes a look at go-sqlcmd, the newest evolution of the sqlcmd command line tool.
2023-04-21
7,915 reads
Tools for development
Azure Automation With Visual Studio Code
Microsoft combined the power of two powerful tools by announcing the public preview of Azure Automation Visual Studio Code Extension. This article will show you how to get started.
2023-02-22
5,852 reads
7 DB Forge SQL Studio Features Discovered in Less Than 2 Hours
dbForge SQL Studio gives you a few advantages over SSMS. See what Kenneth discovered during his first use of the tool.
2022-04-27
4,679 reads
Performance Tuning Using Free Tools, Part 2
You can do essential performance tuning on your SQL Server databases using a FREE toolkit!
2022-01-14
5,544 reads
2021-03-30
441 reads
Tool Limits
Today Steve asks about the tools you use for your job and if they help or hurt your productivity.
2021-03-19
176 reads
Your Favorite IDE
SSMS is, well, it's what we mostly have from Microsoft. It's been around a long time, but it is getting regularly released. There are new versions about every quarter, and there are bug fixes and minor enhancements. Azure Data Studio appears to be where Microsoft would like most of us to move, but I, and […]
2020-12-04
300 reads
The Separation of Tools
SSMs and ADS are the new tools for SQL Server and the data platform, both of which are now available separately from SQL Server.
2020-11-02
515 reads
Other IDEs
Most of us use SSMS (SQL Server Management Studio) to manage our SQL Server instances or to write database code. However, Microsoft does give us database options with Visual Studio, VS Code, and Azure Data Studio. It does seem as though Microsoft would prefer more of us move to ADS, but I'm not sure I'm […]
2020-06-17
301 reads
Microsoft SQL Server Utilities and Tools
Useful free and paid utilities and tools for Microsoft SQL Server - complete list of 275 Utilities
2020-06-02 (first published: 2020-05-26)
38,730 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