Tony Davis explains how to resolve simple merge conflicts, such as conflicting changes to the same stored procedure, using SQL Source Control and a merge tool such as Beyond Compare. Read more
With SQL Prompt and Phil Factor's chk code snippet, you can, with a few clicks, get a list of all the SQL statements executed within a batch, in SSMS, their execution plans, and their execution statistics, such as duration, CPU, logical reads and so on. Read more
Phil Factor shows how to monitor for the errors indicative of a possible SQL Injection attack on one of your SQL Server databases, using a SQL Monitor custom metric that uses diagnostic data from Extended Events. Read more
How to use SQL Data Generator, and PowerShell to obfuscate personal data (names), while retaining the same distribution of data, so that the test database behaves like the original. Read more
Avoid using the IsNumeric() function, because it can often lead to data type conversion errors, when importing data. On SQL Server 2012 or later, use the Try_Convert() or Try_Cast() function instead. On earlier SQL Server versions, the only way to avoid it is by using LIKE expressions. Read more
Phil Factor uses SQL Change Automation and PowerShell to verify that the source code for the current database version builds successfully and, if so, to generate web-based database documentation using SQL Doc. Read more
Data in relational tables is never guaranteed to be returned in a particular order, so adding an ORDER BY to an INSERT INTO statement is meaningless and, pre-SQL Server 2012, could cause performance issues. If you really need to impose a particular order on rows in the table, use a Row_Number() window clause instead. Read more
Grant Fritchey shows how to use Data Masker to create fake credit card data that not only looks like the real thing, but also has the right distribution, so will act like it too, when we query it. Read more
Chris Unwin explains how SQL Provision can create copies of multiple databases, each masked consistently, and deliver them as a group. This is useful when, for example, you are working with a Data Warehouse that contains several cross-database relationships. Read more
Starting from the object-level source code for a database, Phil Factor shows how SCA can create a NuGet build package, use it to migrate target database to the same version, and publish web-based database documentation, a report of what changed on the target and the results of a static code analysis assessment. Read more