External Article

Bad Data and Dirty Databases

Many years ago, my wife and I wrote an article for Datamation, a major trade publication at the time, under the title, “Don’t Warehouse Dirty Data!” It’s been referenced quite a few times over the decades but is nowhere to be found using Google these days. The point is, if you have written a report using data, you have no doubt felt the pain of dirty data and it is nothing new.

Stairway to Advanced T-SQL

Stairway to Advanced T-SQL Level 9: Compare, Modify, Derive and Validate Date and Time Values

When you build applications that store data in SQL Server you will most likely have to store dates and times, and you’ll call functions to do date manipulations. It is important to understand the different date and time data types, and when to use one data type over another. In this level I will be exploring the different date and time data types and discussing when each type is appropriate.

External Article

EsProc SPL and SQL, Complimentary , But Different Technologies

Have you ever surfed the internet and felt overwhelmed by personalized advertisements that appear to know your every desire? Have you ever been amazed at how accurate some weather forecasts can be? These actions are based on data processing. EsProc SPL and SQL (note, SPL stands for Structured Processing Language and SQL stands for Structured Query Language). SQL is a major language widely encountered and used for data manipulation within relational databases. While EsProc SPL is another effective tool for data processing, especially suited for complex computations and in-memory operations, it is less commonly encountered.

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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