“I sense you skipped SQL Server 2005 in you...  Skipping SQL Server 2005 leads to a bigger learning curve...  A bigger learning curve leads to not knowing the product as well...Not knowing the product as well leads to suffering..Running in compatibility mode 8.0 is the path to the darkside.. SQL Server 2008 (mode 10.0) is the force...May ...

April 1st 2008 is the day on which support for SQL Server 2000 ends (and it is also my birthday)     SQL 2000 SP4 - currently supported; support ends on either 12 months after SP5 is released or on 4/8/2008 whichever comes first. Extended support under which you get only break-fix assistance via Premier ends on 4/9/2013. I am not ...

A year in review, The 21 + 1 best blog posts on SQLBlog Best posts according to me, it might have been the content or it might have been the comments. Either way here are the 21 + 1 posts I enjoyed the most. But wait the year is not over yet. Doesn't matter no one will write anything good till next year anyway (prove me wrong and I WILL update ...

This is going to be a three part series. Part 1 The phone interview. Part 2 The face to face interview. Part 3 Some tips and observations   A while back I posted that we are looking for a SQL/.NET/FoxPro developer. I did this because we had a real hard time finding this person. I am happy to inform you that we did find this person and he ...

You need to return NULL only if the value of your data is a certain value. How do you do this? There are three different ways. NULLIFDECLARE @1 char(1)SELECT @1 ='D' SELECT NULLIF(@1,'D')REPLACEThis should not really be used, I just added it here to demonstrate that you can in fact use it.DECLARE @1 char(1)SELECT @1 ='D' SELECT ...

What do you think will be the output? DECLARE @d datetime SET @d = '20071010' SELECT DATEADD(yy, DATEDIFF(yy, 0, @d)+1, -1)

Drag And Drop Column Names In Query Analyzer you can save a lot of time by using this trick instead of typing all the column names of a table Hit F8, this will open Object Browser Navigate to DatabaseName/TableName/Columns Click on the column folder and drag the column folder into the Code Window Upon release you will see that all the column names ...

What will be the outcome of this script?First we create a table with a total of 6000 bytesNext we increase col2 from 1000 to 2000 bytes, this will give us a total of 7000 bytesFinally we add col3 which has 1000 bytes, this will give us a total of 8000 bytes First run these two statements--Total size = 6000CREATE TABLE TestSize (Col1 ...

This is for SQL Server 2000 only, SQL Server 2005 is a lot smarter which is another reason to upgrade.When running the following query you probably already know that 2 is converted to an int datatype.SELECT *FROM TableWHERE ID =2What about the value 2222222222? Do you think since it can't fit into an int that it will be a bigint? Let's test that ...

Microsoft SQL Server 2008 CTP 4 has been released on 20070831. So I have been sleeping for the last couple of days and missed this. Connect didn't email me either  ;-( This download comes as a pre-configured VHD. This allows you to trial SQL Server 2008 CTP 4 in a virtual environment. Get it here: ...