How to use the Azure Emulator to create blob containers, queues and tables
Learn how to emulate Azure storage for files, blogs, and queues.
2025-02-24
1,611 reads
Uncategorized
Configuring Maintenance Plans in SQL Server
See a walkthrough of setting up a maintenance plan in SQL Server.
2025-02-21
3,290 reads
How to Resolve SQL Server Database Stuck in Recovery Pending State
Learn how to recover a database from a missing or corrupt transaction log file.
2025-02-19
7,802 reads
Limits, Not Goals
I just saw one of "those" questions. You know the ones: 'We're hitting an error with a stored procedure. What is the maximum number of parameters you can have?" <sigh> Look, I get it. Breaking the land speed record is cool. Getting the most people into a phone booth (look it up), also cool. Fastest, […]
2025-02-15
127 reads
Throwing Iron at the Cloud and AI
As organizations move to the cloud, the once essential role of the Database Administrator (DBA) as the guardian of system optimization, has been overshadowed, often viewed as a bottleneck to innovation. Yet, as technology evolves, the one thing I know is history repeats itself, and optimization skills are once again emerging as a critical necessity. […]
2025-02-01
91 reads
JSON in Microsoft SQL Server: A Comprehensive Guide
Introduction JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) has become a popular data format for storing and exchanging information. Microsoft SQL Server, starting from version 2016, introduced built-in support for JSON, allowing developers to work with JSON data more efficiently within the relational database environment. This article will explore how to store, retrieve, and manipulate JSON data in […]
2025-01-31
14,622 reads
Technical Pain Behaviors
In my family’s history of the past 10+ years, we have become well versed in nagging, ongoing, non-debilitating pain. In some ways, the lessons we have learned about physical pain correlate all too well to the types of pain that we technical people are involved with daily. But there is a huge difference, even if […]
2025-01-25
80 reads
Boosting Data Accuracy: Resolving Common Data Quality Issues Using SQL
Poor data quality significantly hinders large enterprises from deriving meaningful value. The variety of data is a crucial factor to account for when assessing & rectifying data quality, as diverse data types introduce unique challenges in maintaining accuracy and consistency. Good data quality and integrity are essential for accurate insights, good decision-making, and potential success of large enterprises. Inconsistent, incomplete, and inaccurate data significantly affect business operations, customer satisfaction, and financial performance. SQL provides robust functions to proactively identify and resolve these data quality issues, ensuring accurate, reliable, and consistent data for reporting and analysis.
2025-01-24
1,912 reads
Why Standards are Important
There is something in the tech mindset that simultaneously loves and loathes a standard. Having standards is important, what those standards are is less so.
2025-01-22
2,338 reads
The Weather Outside Is Frightful
Yeah, I know, holidays are over. It snowed about four inches overnight here and it's still coming down a little. You'll forgive me for having that song running through my head. Yesterday morning, before the storm started, we did a check through the house to make sure we were ready for a couple of days […]
2025-01-11
69 reads
Blogs
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...
dataMinds Saturday 2026 – Slides
At Saturday the 21st of February I’m presenting an introduction to dimensional modelling at...
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