Use staging tables to preserve raw input, validate changes, separate extraction from publication, and make failed loads easier to diagnose and replay.
SQL SERVER – Technical Reference Guides for Designing Mission-Critical Solutions
While helping a friend, I found the Technical Reference Guides for Designing Mission-Critical Solutions, an interactive map of architecture guidance.
SQL SERVER – Various Leap Year Logics
Dividing by 4 is not enough to find a leap year. Readers shared various leap year logics in the comments, and here are the best of them.
Stopping a Trigger From Firing Itself With TRIGGER_NESTLEVEL
A timestamp trigger that updates its own table can loop until SQL Server gives up. Here is the small guard that stops it, with a demo you can run.
Naming Conventions for Tables, Columns and Constraints
Use naming conventions for readable SQL Server tables, columns, keys and indexes, then find exceptions and plan safe renames with sp_rename.
Leap Year in SQL Server: SQL in Sixty Seconds #004
To find a leap year in SQL Server, ask EOMONTH for the last day of February. I tested the method against the divisibility rule for every year from 1 to 9999 and found no disagreement. The post also shows an inline function, the errors for invalid years and a one-line TRY_CONVERT test.
Detect a Leap Year in T-SQL: Four Simple Ways
Detecting a Leap Year in T-SQL takes one rule or one date trick. This post tests four ways on SQL Server 2025: the calendar rule, EOMONTH, TRY_CONVERT and DATEDIFF. It shows that all four agree on 209 years, explains the century years that trip people up, and answers how leap years affect date math.