After an almost catastrophic 48 hour downtime with my existing hosting provider I decided to move my business, which involved moving a number of websites and their corresponding databases to my new hosting provider.
Now, the thing that I liked about my existing provider was that they supported SQL Server 2014. My new one doesn’t (and neither do a LOT of providers for some reason), so this meant having to downgrade my databases from SQL Server 2014 to SQL Server 2012. Continue reading →
So it’s pretty simple but, for some reason, the posts on MSDN that I initially read didn’t include this small but immensely important step. Continue reading →
A bit of a lengthy title that one but I couldn’t think how to limit it without losing the purpose of the post.
So, this post is all about how to go about exporting CSV data from SQL Server with data encapsulated within double quotes when it is required. Continue reading →
I’ve just installed SQL Server 2014 and want to check what might break in my current SQL Server 2008 database when I upgrade it.
Thomas LaRock has written a great article providing a list of a dozen things to check before upgrading and I would definitely suggest making this your first port of call if you’re planning an upgrade. Continue reading →
I do a lot of work in SQL Server and one of the things I dislike the most is trying to find all instances of a specific piece of text in Stored Procedures, Functions, Views, Triggers, Constraints etc. Continue reading →
I’m a fan of the SQL Server project type that ships with Visual Studio having used it over the years with a number of projects. I’ve been away from it for a couple of years though having been working with a company that preferred Redgate’s SQL Source Control offering, so coming back to SQL Server projects again my memory’s been a bit hazy and I’ve struggled how to remember to do some things.
One of these things was how to manage static data Continue reading →
As far as I’m concerned remembering server names is a pain in the backside especially when you have no control over how they are named. Is abc123.sql.domain.net the development environment, or is it the UAT environment, or is it production?
The good news is that you can set up aliases in SQL Server 2008 to help you out and it literally only takes a couple of minutes to do. Continue reading →
Having recently gone through the process of moving a number of databases to new servers I was met with the annoying issue of having my list of recent servers in SQL Server 2008 being cluttered with servers that were no longer active. Although you can’t clear this list directly through the SQL Server GUI (apparently this is possible in SQL Server 2012) it is straight forward enough to get rid of your unwanted servers.
Before you start though, make sure all instances of SQL Server are closed. Continue reading →
Simple:
SELECT NEWID()
So, why bother with this post? Well, I spend most of time working within Visual Studio so whenever I think about creating a new GUID I automatically think Continue reading →
I’ve recently been working on an application which has to make use of data from within two databases (one onsite and one remote) with SQL generated to query the two databases along the lines of:
SELECT a.*, b.* FROM [TableA] a INNER JOIN [DatabaseB].[SchemaB].[TableB] b ON a.ID = b.ID
Referencing the second database using its full name is annoying to type but also limiting. Imagine if you were working on a couple of projects, each of which used the same version DatabaseA, but which needed to reference different versions of DatabaseB. If you were developing each of these databases in SQL Server you’d have to call the second version of DatabaseB something different which would end up breaking your SQL as it specifically references DatabaseB by name. Continue reading →