| A community of more than 1,600,000 database professionals and growing |
| | | The Best Ever Every few years, or every year now, we see a new version of SQL Server proclaimed as the best ever. A few weeks ago, I saw a number of people leaving hte MVP Summit, rating it as the best ever summit. At SQL Bits or the PASS Summit every year, there's no shortage of people posting about that event being the best conference. Is this a human view, that the latest one is often the best one ever if we enjoyed it? Perhaps we learn something and we're excited about the latest new SQL thing and so we're excited to proclaim it the best? What's the best SQL Server version? Is there one for you? Some of you might be new to SQL Server or have worked with few versions, but perhaps one stands out. I've had the opportunity to work with a lot of versions, so the choices are hard. I've written code for SQL Server: 4.2, 6.0, 6.5, 7.0, 2000, 2005, 2008, 2008R2, 2012, 2014, 2016, 2017. I have two votes here. You might like one, and likely will disagree with one. First, I'll say that I have a fondness for SQL Server 2000. This was a stable, long awaited version that dramatically improved my life from SQL 6.5. It was more reliable and faster, and since it came after a relatively short time after v7, I ended up standardizing on this at a few jobs. Most of my upgrades were to SQL Server 2000 and it lasted a long time as the standard version. It was 5 years before SQL Server 2005 was released, an eternity in today's software lifecycle. There were some bumps in the road (SQL Slammer), but a better security coding model came about at Microsoft during this version as well as SSRS (added later). My other choice, maybe the top one, is SQL Server 2016. A number of security changes (AE, RLS, etc) as well as the inclusion of many features in Standard Edition (with SP1) make this my favorite. We got stability from the second version of OLTP tables and the third version of Availability Groups. I think SQL Server 2016 was perhaps the best version of SQL Server I've seen. You might have other votes, and let me know today. Is there a version that's near and dear to your heart. Steve Jones from SQLServerCentral.comJoin the debate, and respond to today's editorial on the forums |
| | The Voice of the DBA Podcast Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 3.0MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and Libsyn. The Voice of the DBA podcast features music by Everyday Jones. No relation, but I stumbled on to them and really like the music. |
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| | | | | Additional Articles from Brent Ozar Unlimited Blog Brent Ozar explains that if you're going to do continuous integration or deployment, you've got a rocky road ahead of you. More » |
| | Additional Articles from Database Journal Greg Larsen shows you a quick trick to programmatically script a way to identify when SQL Server was last started. More » |
| | Devin Knight from SQLServerCentral Blogs In this module you will learn how to use the Enlighten Data Story. The Enlighten Data Story allows you to... More » |
| | Bert Wagner from SQLServerCentral Blogs Watch this week’s episode on YouTube. In this week’s video with Power BI expert Eugene Meidinger, we’re in the kitchen learning... More » |
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| | | Today's Question (by Steve Jones): I have this code to create and load a table: CREATE TABLE CastTest ( Myval VARCHAR(20) ); GO INSERT CastTest ( Myval ) VALUES ('A') , ('123') , ('123.5') , ('20180301') , ('Mar 23, 2000'); GO I now run this query. How many rows are returned? SELECT CASE WHEN TRY_CAST(ct.Myval AS INT) IS NOT NULL THEN CAST(Myval AS INT) END FROM dbo.CastTest AS ct; |
Think you know the answer? Click here, and find out if you are right. We keep track of your score to give you bragging rights against your peers.
This question is worth 1 point in this category: TRY_CAST(). We'd love to give you credit for your own question and answer.
To submit a QOTD, simply log in to the Contribution Center. |
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| Yesterday's Question of the Day |
| Yesterday's Question (by Steve Jones): I run this code: SET CONTEXT_INFO 12 GO SELECT CONVERT( INT, CONTEXT_INFO()) I get a result of 0. Why?
Answer: the data first needs to be converted to varbinary(4) Explanation: The problem is with converting binary data. The CONTEXT_INFO() returns 128 bytes, but the integer is just 4 bytes. If you run this code, you get 12. SELECT CONVERT( INT, CONVERT( VARBINARY(4), CONTEXT_INFO())) Ref: CONTEXT_INFO() - click here » Discuss this question and answer on the forums |
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| Database Pros Who Need Your Help |
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