Cross Tabs and Pivots, Part 1 – Converting Rows to Columns
An "old" subject is revisted where "newbies" can learn the methods and veteran users can get more performance out of the code.
A Comparison of Database Drivers for MySQL
MySQL is "The world's most popular open source database" and it is widely-used to store and access your data. In fact, there are many cloud and on-premise databases (like MemSQL and Google Cloud SQL) that use the MySQL interface. Several native, open-source drivers are available for connecting to your MySQL data from other applications. In […]
The Complexity of Modern Systems
Building software is hard, and our systems are very complex these days.
Working with an Azure Data Factory Meta-data Driven Pipeline
This article shows how to create a data driven ADF pipeline.
Learn how to use Flyway for Automated Database Migrations
Here's your one-stop-shop for Flyway learning resources, curated by Tony Davis. Check out this handy learning pathway for managing and automating database deployments, from version control, using Flyway.
Ransomware: A world under threat
Ransomware has threatened many organizations over the past few years. In this article, Robert Sheldon explains the history of ransomware and what needs to be done to protect against it.
PASS Data Community Summit 2021 Report
The 2021 virtual PASS Data Community Summit was held from November 8th through the 12th. PASS Summit has always been the biggest yearly conference for database professionals, and this year’s virtual conference had over 18,000 individuals registered! If you signed up for the event, you may now stream the sessions on-demand. This is an exclusive […]
SQLFacts - A Free Toolkit for SQL Server Database Engineers
SQLFacts is a FREE suite of 26 (and counting) tools for SQL Server database development, database administration, and performance tuning. The toolkit is all T-SQL code and it includes the functionality of hundreds of short scripts.
Where is the Puck Going?
In which direction should you drive your career? Steve has a few thoughts today.
CRUD Operations on a SharePoint List using Python
This article explains which Python library provides create, read, update, and delete (CRUD) operations on a SharePoint list along with examples.
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