Working with the Registry
It's not often you'll need to access the registry from SQL, but when you do - these functions make it happen!
SQL Server 2005 Feature Survey Results
A week ago, we solicited readers to let Microsoft know which of the SQL Server 2005 announced features mattered most to them. We had a great response, with 890 of you answering the survey in three days. The answers were pretty interesting. The full results can be seen at the bottom of this article.
Yukon Passwords
Some good info on password changes in Yukon (SQL 2005). Based on the beta, but worth taking a look at.
Null Functions (Arent those Meetings?)
Dinesh did a little research on nulls and was kind enough to package it up for us. How many of you know or use NULLIF? Or COALESCE? Handy stuff!
Dump SQL Permissions
We saw a note from Chad about a tool he wrote in the forums and asked him to write up some notes. Not only did we get notes, we got the source code! See what a DBA can do with some DMO.
Review of Programming Microsoft SQL Server 2000 with Microsoft Visual
We get books in occasionally for review and have started making them available to our existing authors. Jim was interested in this one - turns out he didn't find much to like. If you're a beginner it might be a better fit. Or maybe you've read the book and disagree?
What You Don't Know
A very short article that discusses how nulls can ruin your day if you don't understand how they behave when you concatenate.
Review of ApexSQL Report v4.3
We had Mike take a look at this product recently and he found a lot to like. He also had some suggestions about ways the product could be improved - interesting since you get free upgrades for life with this product. This is a very good walk through of the product.
Yukon Delayed Again and Named
Microsoft confirmed today that it has delayed Yukon yet again. It also announced that Yukon has an official name and will have another beta added to the development cycle. Get all the info here and share with Microsoft your thoughts about what features are important to you.
Worst Practice - Not Qualifying Objects With The Owner
Regular columnist Chris Hedgate follow up on Andy's recent article about Worst Practices with one of his own. This is worth passing on to your development team.
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
Safe and Reliable Transport of Farm Machinery: Solutions of the Modern Agricultu
Ship A1 Auto Transport is a reliable provider of services who delivers safe and...
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