The Scientific Method: a call to action
Gail Shaw issues a rallying call for the SQL Community to adopt the Scientific Method when investigating and reporting on SQL Server behavior.
2019-09-09 (first published: 2015-05-25)
614 reads
Editorials
Your chance to speak at PASS Summit
When I decided to switch careers about 25 years ago, I had no idea how far I would go in tech. I just wanted to leave the profession for which I had trained and become a developer. My goal was to make the switch by the end of 1998. It actually happened in the summer […]
2019-09-07
136 reads
Turn Out the Lights
Today we have a guest editorial from Andy Warren that looks at the costs associated with our behavior.
2019-09-06 (first published: 2016-01-18)
435 reads
The Ongoing Costs of Building Software
There are lots of costs to building your own software, which Steve Jones notes might not be what you want to spend over time.
2019-09-05 (first published: 2016-01-13)
313 reads
20 Years of Compare
When we started SQLServerCentral, there were originally 7 of us. We all decided to "invest" $50 to get the site going. With this seed money, we paid for a VM that hosted both SQL Server and IIS. This was enough money to run the site for 6+ months, and we set about building an online […]
2019-09-04
269 reads
2019-09-03 (first published: 2015-08-25)
269 reads
Too much information can be counter-productive
If you want to be an effective communicator focus on what your audience need to hear rather than what you want to say
2019-09-02 (first published: 2016-01-29)
376 reads
Always Check on the Basics
The basics are important, especially with regards to backup and restore in SQL Server.
2019-08-31
354 reads
Do You Deal with UTF-8?
UTF-8 is coming to SQL Server. Steve wonders today how many of you look forward to this, or if you are aware of potential issues.
2019-08-30
324 reads
Grounded
Some laptops are being banned from flights. This could be a hassle, but more, how can anyone tell if you have a banned one?
2019-08-29
409 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