Edward Pollack in Featured Regex in SQL Server 2025: All Seven REGEXP Functions Explained SQL Server 2025 adds native regex support with seven new REGEXP functions: REGEXP_LIKE, REGEXP_COUNT, REGEXP_INSTR, REGEXP_REPLACE, REGEXP_SUBSTR, REGEXP_MATCHES, and REGEXP_SPLIT_TO_TABLE.... 14 July 2025 18 min read
Edward Pollack in SQL Server Columnstore Index Improvements in SQL Server 2025 Learn about the improvements to columnstore indexes in SQL Server 2025, including detailed demonstrations for each of these new changes.… 30 June 2025 11 min read 51
Louis Davidson in T-SQL Programming DISTINCT and UNION: What happens when you use them together? UNION already removes duplicates, so what does adding DISTINCT do? Three tests at growing row counts, the execution plans, and... 26 May 2025 12 min read 4
Dennes Torres in T-SQL Programming Azure SQL Native JSON Data Type: Query Techniques Explore Azure SQL's native JSON data type with CHECK constraints, JSON_ARRAYAGG, JSON_OBJECTAGG, and JSON_OBJECT functions. These features are coming to... 07 May 2025 16 min read 2
Ben Johnston in SQL Server How to write an efficient SQL query: practical guidelines for faster, lighter queries Practical guidelines for writing efficient SQL queries: sargable predicates, set-based operations, index candidates, and how to read a query plan.… 19 October 2024 21 min read 3
SQL Server Ben Johnston in SQL Server Unmasking SQL Server Dynamic Data Masking, Part 5: Mitigations and Summary This is the fifth and final part of this series on SQL Server Dynamic Data Masking. In this article, I’ll... 30 July 2023 12 min read
SQL Server Ben Johnston in SQL Server Unmasking SQL Server Dynamic Data Masking, Part 4, Unmasking Formatted and Unformatted Text Continuing from the previous entry in this series on security concerns with using Dynamic Data Masking, in this article I... 27 June 2023 30 min read
T-SQL Programming Greg Larsen in T-SQL Programming SQL Subquery in SELECT: Examples & Syntax Guide Learn to embed subqueries inside a SELECT statement in SQL Server. Covers scalar subqueries, correlated subqueries, derived tables, and how... 26 June 2023 15 min read
T-SQL Programming Greg Larsen in T-SQL Programming Paging Data in T-SQL Sometimes when working with very large sets of data, you may not want to return all of the data at... 20 March 2023 10 min read
T-SQL Programming Greg Larsen in T-SQL Programming Summarizing data in SQL Server using GROUP BY and HAVING clauses You can summarize data to get counts, averages, sums, and more using GROUP BY in T-SQL queries. Greg Larsen shows... 27 May 2022 11 min read
T-SQL Programming Phil Factor in T-SQL Programming SQL Server Temp Tables: Types, Syntax & Best Practices Everything about SQL Server temporary tables: local (#temp), global (##temp), table variables, and when to use each. Includes creation syntax,... 01 August 2020 23 min read
Roy Ernest Introduction to SQL Server Spatial Data Many applications require the handling of geospatial data. Roy and Surenda take you through the basics of SQL Server spatial... 18 March 2020 22 min read
Other Dennes Torres in Other Graph Edge Constraints and a Crystal Ball When I read the list of new features in SQL Server 2019 I became very proud of my crystal ball... 08 December 2018 2 min read
Other Phil Factor in Other Spoofing Data Convincingly: Doing the Shuffle and Zip Having spent a lot of my working life trying to preserve the integrity of data, there was a certain intriguing... 13 August 2018 6 min read
Other Phil Factor in Other Generating Fake Credit Card Numbers in SQL Server with the Luhn Algorithm (for Test Data) Generate fake credit card numbers in SQL Server that pass Luhn checksum validation - useful for populating development and test... 08 August 2018 9 min read
Other Louis Davidson in Other Operator Precedence versus the Confusing Constraint Translation The other day, a person I work with was creating some fairly complex CHECK constraints to protect data in a... 30 April 2018 6 min read
Other Louis Davidson in Other Just What Exactly Will Cast to a Bit Value? I am working through my OneNote folder of blog ideas, and this one, while being one of the least consequential... 02 April 2018 4 min read
Other Phil Factor in Other Using Stored Procedures in SQL Server that return several results. Stored Procedures give you more freedom than functions, and so they would be the obvious way of developing processes in... 07 March 2018 3 min read
Robert Sheldon SQL Server System Functions: The Basics Every SQL Server Database programmer needs to be familiar with the System Functions. These range from the sublime (such as... 31 March 2016 22 min read
Robert Sheldon SQL Server Metadata Functions: The Basics To be able to make full use of the system catalog to find out more about a database, you need... 09 March 2016 21 min read
