Why does a value that looks perfect fail a compare? Because of a line ending you cannot see. Five small demos make it visible.
SQL Puzzle – Unsolved CASE Expression
This Unsolved CASE puzzle asks you to predict its result before execution. The preceding bitwise challenge drew more than 125 responses.
SQL SERVER – Change Password at the First Login
MUST_CHANGE requires a SQL-authenticated login to change password at its first connection. Policy options and the client workflow must support it.
SQL SERVER – AdHoc Queries and Optimize for Adhoc Workloads
Optimize for AdHoc Queries reduces the first-use plan-cache footprint of ad hoc batches. A customer variable-query workload prompted testing.
Handling Duplicate Key Errors 2627 and 2601 in a CATCH Block
Handle duplicate key errors 2627 and 2601 in TRY CATCH, preserve unexpected errors, and avoid racing existence checks during inserts.
OS Thread of a Session: Map Session ID to Windows Thread ID
To find the OS thread of a session, join sys.dm_os_tasks to sys.dm_os_threads on the worker address. This post reads the map for your own session and for every user session. It explains why idle sessions have no row, why parallel queries have several, and how to follow a thread in Performance Monitor.
JDBC and sendStringParametersAsUnicode: The Hidden Index Scan
Diagnose sendStringParametersAsUnicode conversions, align JDBC parameters with varchar indexes, and preserve required Unicode data.