Canada Day 2020
It’s Canada Day here, the commemoration of the country’s confederation in 1867. Given events over the last few months such as the worldwide pandemic, followed by a number of politically-motivated movements for change across the…
Unsupported but working versions of SQL Server on Windows Server 2019
One of my hobbies is trying to break technology so that you don’t have to. I don’t consider myself a professional or hobbyist hacker, though if the shoe fits… Last year when Windows Server 2019…
How SQL Server stores data types: UNIQUEIDENTIFIER
This week we’re looking at how the database engine stores GUIDs (globally unique identifiers), specifically known as UNIQUEIDENTIFIER in SQL Server. If you would like to read about storage of other data types, here are…
How SQL Server stores data types: floating points
In this post we are looking at how SQL Server stores floating point values (FLOAT and REAL). If you’d like to read the previous posts in this series of how SQL Server stores data types,…
How should I store currency values in SQL Server?
On Twitter, Michael Dyrynda writes: ⚠️ Never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever…
How SQL Server stores data types: money
In this post we look at how SQL Server stores currency values using the MONEY and SMALLMONEY data types. If you’d like to read the previous posts in this series of how SQL Server stores…
An insidious form of SQL injection
As longtime readers know, I am also a software developer (we can’t call them engineers in Canada for legal reasons). I took over a complex codebase last year in a field I’m unfamiliar with, and…
How SQL Server stores data types: integers and decimals
This week we’re going to look at how numbers are stored. This post will cover integers (TINYINT, SMALLINT, INT, BIGINT), and decimals (DECIMAL, which is the same as NUMERIC). If you’d like to read the…
Negative identity values don’t suck
A quick(er) post this week, in response to Greg Low’s blog post from a few weeks ago titled “Don’t start identity columns or sequences with large negative values.” Greg writes that you shouldn’t use large…
PASS Summit 2020 pre-con time
In 2018, I entered Speaker Idol at the PASS Summit, and because I forgot to start my timer I was disqualified for running over the five-minute limit (say “five-minute limit” fast ten times in a…
How SQL Server stores data types: dates and times
This post dives into how SQL Server stores date and time data types in memory and on disk. But first, a note about endianness: CPUs manufactured by Intel and other vendors process binary values in…
Remember this if you want to use sp_
Erik Darling, of Erik Darling Data (blog | Twitter) recently posted a very interesting video (my YouTube playlist is all Erik Darling Data videos and Honest Trailers). In this video he demonstrates an easily repeatable…
Join me (virtually) in Adelaide!
I will be presenting a session to the Adelaide SQL Server User Group on April 15th, 2020, and if you’re awake at that time (it’ll be 9pm on April 14th for me), you’re welcome to…
Picking up the pieces after the DBA has left: taking ownership of a SQL Server instance
WARNING: This post contains information that can get you fired if you use it without express written permission. In some jurisdictions it might get you jail time as well. Let’s assume you are a consultant,…
sql2xls goes cross-platform
Last year I released sql2xls, a free open-source tool which lets you throw a bunch of scripts into a folder, run them automatically against SQL Server and get the results back in a nicely-formatted Excel…