I haven't done a puzzle for a long time so I figured let's do a simple one. Return the right 6 characters of the column but without using the RIGHT function. Here is what the table looks like CREATE TABLE #Puzzle(SomeCol CHAR(7)) INSERT #Puzzl…

Recently, while working on a personal project, I found myself needing a lightweight way to deploy database changes to multiple environments. In the past I have used a wide range of methods, ranging from applying the changes manually to applying changes via a diff tool (SQL Compare), to automatically applying manually created change scripts, to automatically applying diff scripts that were automatically generated, to working directly in production..er, pretend you didn't see that one.

Today I was checking an older server and decided to run sp_helpdb. On a bunch of databases I noticed that the owner was ~~UNKNOWN~~. The only reason I noticed this was when I tried to look at a specific database which is mirrored. I was greeted with thi…

SQL Server baseline collection is an important task that is too frequently overlooked.  Collecting information on how SQL Server is both providing data services and reacting to how those data services are being utilized, creates a foundation for efficie…

I had to change the account that some SQL Server boxes were using to run the SQL Server services. After I changed the account on one machine from DomainName\User to DomainName\NewUser SQL Server wouldn't start up In the error log I saw the following…