This month’s (#127) T-SQL Tuesday is brought by B | T ) and he asked about Non SQL Tips and tricks.

As a Windows user I know there are lots of shortcuts and small hacks, that I love, which make my life much easier! Here is my small contribution:

Windows tips & tricks and shortcuts

• WIN + X -> to access a lot of management stuff in a quick way
• WIN + V -> If you looking for a clipboard manager (keep multiple entries) since Windows 10 (build 1809) we can have it natively. However, I keep using ClipX .
• WIN + [0-9] -> The number is linked to the position of the apps on your taskbar.
• WIN + . -> Big fan of emoticons? Select one from this list
• Open PowerShell (or cmd) console from a windows explorer window. How many times have you wanted to jump to the PowerShell console already on a specific folder that you have already open on the windows explorer? Just type on the address bar “PowerShell” and a new PowerShell session will open right on that location.

Open “Add or Remove programs”

A way to open the “Add or Remove programs” menu quicker, you can SHIFT + DEL on the shortcut (example: Docker Desktop) on desktop and the prompt popup will have there a link to this option.

Continue reading

Almost all the applications we use have a lot of options. And, sometimes we even stumble across them by accident. Who’s ever heard something like “Normal user don’t even use 5% of Excel capabilities!”?

Other options, we know they exist but because the default value it’s ok (so far) we tend to forget it. It is just sitting there, waiting for the day we want/need to change it.

The oddity

Few days ago I was talking with a friend that show me some “odd behavior” when working with dates on SQL Server.

Continue reading

If you have been reading my last blog posts, you know that I’m currently working on a SQL code migration from Firebird to SQL Server.

The client provided the scripts with all modules (Stored Procedures, functions, etc) and the steps I’m following (roughly speaking) for converting are:

• Open new query window
• Copy and paste de object code
• Save the file This is how the file look like:
• Run a PowerShell script that does a find and replace based on a hashtable. Apply all the changes and save the file again.
• The file refresh on SSMS This is how the file look like after the find and replace:
• Unicode characters are broken :-(

So…what is happening?

The file that is used to create a new query window has ANSI encoding but when I save the file on the PowerShell script I save it as UTF-8 because the client have comments on the code with unicode characters.

Continue reading

I’m converting some Firebird database code to T-SQL and I’m seeing a lot of code that doesn’t work in the same way that SQL Server. No surprise - I already expected that but for those that still say that “all engines/databases are equal”…“is SQL right?” here is another proof that is not true.

On Firebird it is possible to use the CAST function using a DOMAIN (the equivalent in SQLServer is UDDT - User-Defined Data Types ) as target data-type, well turns out that on SQL Server…that is not possible.

Continue reading

I’m currently working on a SQL code migration from Firebird to SQL Server and I hit an error that I haven’t seen for some time.

The error message is the following:

Msg 206, Level 16, State 2, Line 4 Operand type clash: datetime2 is incompatible with int

This ringed the bell right away! Somewhere on the code someone was trying to do an arithmetic calculation without using the proper function.

Continue reading