MIN and MAX text use collation ordering, not numeric magnitude. Compare digit strings, empty text and NULL using an explicit BIN2 contract.
SQL Server emergency? Email pinal@sqlauthority.com with URGENT in the subject line.
Monitoring With What You Already Have
Build useful SQL Server alerts with Agent, operators, failed-job notifications, and a review routine that verifies the whole delivery path.
Date Conversion Styles: Disambiguate Day and Month
Date conversion styles define how incoming text becomes a date. Compare month-first and day-first interpretations without guessing. Keep invalid dates separate from missing input.
SQLAuthority News – Author’s Birthday – Top 7 Commenters – Volunteers
It’s my birthday, so I am taking a break from tech posts to spend time with family and to thank my top 7 commenters who help readers on this blog.
SQL SERVER – 2008 – Copy Database With Data – Generate T-SQL For Inserting Data From One Table to Another Table
SQL Server 2008 lets you copy database with data: turn on Script Data in the Generate Scripts wizard to get INSERT statements for the rows in your tables.
XQuery string-length: Count Content Without Markup
XQuery string-length counts the selected element string value. Seven bounded cases separate content from markup, empty elements from missing elements, and missing XML from existing documents.
Finding Duplicates Before Adding a Unique Constraint
A unique constraint fails on the first duplicate it meets and tells you about only one. Here is how to list them all and clean up safely.
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