SQL Server Adventures for the Oracle DBA
Oracle and SQL Server are both database platforms built on SQL, but there are vast differences between them. Janet Wong brings us a tale of her experiences in moving from Oracle to SQL Server as a developer.
Build molecular queries from atoms in SQL Server
Every SQL Server developer has a preferred method of doing things; mine is what I call molecular queries. These are queries assembled from atomic queries; by which, I mean that they address exactly one table. By combing atoms, I can create molecules.
Mind Your Manners
Whether you use the forums here or post questions in the venerable Usenet usegroups, there are some basic courtesies you should follow. Sushula Iyer takes a minute to list some things that might help you get your next question answered quickly and completely.
Low-Cost High Availability: Simple Database Monitoring in a Windows En
The .NET Framework 2.0 and Visual Studio 2005 make it easy to create a basic but extensible database-monitoring solution without a lot of complexity or coding.
Another Fall Book Sale
We've added a few more bundles to our sale, including a new book: The Best of SQLServerCentral.com - vol. 4. If you're not coming to the PASS 2006 Summit, this is your chance to snag this volume for your corporate bookshelf.
Implementing a T-SQL semaphore
SQL Server does a great job of handling concurrency & ensuring that users can make changes in multi-user systems without conflict. However there are times a strict calling order is needed.
Fine Tuning your Database Design in SQL 2005
Sanchan Saxena gets to grips with the new index-tuning tools and features in SQL 2005
A Guide to Application Memory Tuning
Working with memory in SQL Server and tuning your server for optimum performance gets more complex all the time, especially with the availability of 64-bit platforms. New author Paul Mu brings us a short guide to using the /3GB and PAE switches along with their implications for your server.
End to End Training
The training arm of SQLServerCentral.com is spinning off to its own company. This is the place to come for high quality custom training.
Design Challenge: Global Address
Are you up to the latest design challenge? A great way to sharpen our analysis and modeling skills is to continuously address real-world scenarios. A modeling scenario with suggested solutions appears each month in this Design Challenge column. The scenario is emailed to more than 1,000 modelers. The responses are then consolidated into this column.
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