Can a Certificate's Private Key be Restored From a Binary Literal / Hex Bytes? The Documentation Says, "No". What Does SQL Server Say?
Tag: T-SQL
SSMS Tip #3: Easily Access/Research ALL Unicode Characters (Yes, Including Emojis 😸)
Learn how to get a list of all Unicode characters to copy and paste, or use in queries / web pages / programs, or search by value, etc.
Uppercase All String Columns (and in a Single Query!)
Have you ever wanted to uppercase all string columns in a database? Probably not. But, this was still an interesting exercise 🙃
Differences Between the Various Binary Collations (Cultures, Versions, and BIN vs BIN2)
Come explore the actual differences between the seemingly not-so-different binary collations...
What Does the Undocumented UNCOMPRESS Function Do?
Ever notice how IntelliSense in SSMS lists functions that don't work or aren't documented? Here's documentation for one that works: UNCOMPRESS
How Does DBCC CHECKIDENT Really Work When Resetting the Identity Seed (RESEED)?
Does resetting an Identity Seed to a specific value via DBCC CHECKIDENT(..., RESEED, new_seed_value) work the way the documentation states? It depends 🙃
Beware! Beware of Unintended Changes When Altering Columns!
Beware of big green dragons, er, well, of unexpected changes when changing a column's datatype. You might be unpleasantly surprised! 🙀 Beware!
Prevent Full Script Execution (Understanding and Using PARSEONLY and NOEXEC)
Have you ever needed to prevent an entire script (or part of one) from executing? See how the session-level options PARSEONLY and NOEXEC can accomplish this.
Native UTF-8 Support in SQL Server 2019: Savior or False Prophet?
An in-depth analysis of the new native UTF-8 support in SQL Server 2019.
Changing the Collation of the SQL Server Instance, the Databases, and All Columns in All User Databases: What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
Need to change the collation at ALL levels? Prefer to avoid reloading all objects and data? Learn what the "sqlservr -q" option does, and doesn't, do.