At times, we might need to search a string in TSQL using LIKE operator for a special character (%,_,[,]). These special characters do have different meaning in normal string comparisons so we need to escape them for making them to be a part of search pa...

In some cases we tend to write ‘SELECT * …’ in our queries. Even though we have code maintenance issues with ‘SELECT * …’ query (say for example in case a new column gets in to the schema, application coding against this query breaks), most important is...

Sometimes we need to retrieve a list distinct values from within an xml instance or even distinct nodes and this is relatively straight forward using XQuery. It gets a bit more complicated if you have attributes in the xml, but it is still possible to r...

Year 2012 was super special for me in many ways. Made lot of new friends, Attended SQLPASS Summit 2012 and had the privilege to meet and greet #SQLfamily members, New learnings, Multiple SQL2012 deployments, Lot of writing and Loads of fun !!! All about...

Fragmentation:- Fragmentation can be defined as condition where data is stored in a non continuous manner. In can be defined into two types 1. Internal Fragmentation 2. External Fragmentation Internal Fragmentation:- In this fragmentation, there exis...

Rebuild and Reorganization of Indexes:- SQL Server has the ability of maintaining the indexes whenever we makes changes (update, Insert, Delete) in the tables. Over a period of time, the may causes the fragmentation on the table in which the logical ...

Happy New Year 2013 May this new year bring lots of Happiness in all of your life. Let welcome 2013 together with lots of Hopes and happiness. ...

Sometimes, we might need to have a copy of database running on a different server for testing purpose. In that scenario creating a backup and restoring it in a different server would help. In this short tip, I am going to narrate on how to backup an exi...

Replication is a way of distribution of database and their objects from one master database to one or more recipient databases which can be on the same server or on the remote server.It is a set of technologies for copying and distributing data and...

Log Shipping:- Log Shipping is a process of keeping the latest copy of the database of the primary database server on the secondary database server with the help of transaction logs backup. It is done on a regular basis to minimize the loss of the data...