The new UNISTR function is well intentioned, but more problematic than beneficial

(last updated: 2024-11-01 @ 01:15 ET / 2024-11-01 @ 05:15 UTC ) On June 4th, 2024, Abhiman Tiwari published a blog post titled, "Announcing UNISTR and || operator in Azure SQL Database – preview". The first half of that post describes a new function, UNISTR (currently only available in Azure SQL Database; haven’t tried Azure… Continue reading The new UNISTR function is well intentioned, but more problematic than beneficial

How Many Bytes Per Character in SQL Server: a Completely Complete Guide

Image

A Completely Complete Guide to how many bytes are used to represent characters in the T-SQL string datatypes

Unicode Escape Sequences Across Various Languages and Platforms (including Supplementary Characters)

Image

Unicode escape sequences across various languages and platforms (including Supplementary Characters), with working examples

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!)

Image

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)

Image

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

Beware! Beware of Unintended Changes When Altering Columns!

Image

Beware of big green dragons, er, well, of unexpected changes when changing a column's datatype. You might be unpleasantly surprised! 🙀 Beware!

Native UTF-8 Support in SQL Server 2019: Savior or False Prophet?

Image

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.