SQL Server Development and T-SQL

Migrating changes made to SQL Server databases to production

Almost all developers use a dedicated development server where they make changes to data and schemas instead of changing production servers directly. Every company that uses SQL Server is faced with the challenge of migrating changes made on a development server to staging and production servers. Developers have to plan which method they should use to achieve a seamless migration. Read more…

Understanding DDL triggers in SQL Server 2005

Much like regular DML triggers, DDL triggers fire in response to an event happening on the server. However, DDL triggers do not fire in response to UPDATE, INSERT, or DELETE statements on a table or view. Instead, they fire in response to Data Definition Language (DDL) statements that start with the keywords CREATE, ALTER, and DROP. Read more…

Understanding VARCHAR(MAX) in SQL Server 2005

In SQL Server 2000 and SQL Server 7, a row cannot exceed 8000 bytes in size. This means that a VARBINARY column can only store 8000 bytes (assuming it is the only column in a table), a VARCHAR column can store up to 8000 characters and an NVARCHAR column can store up to 4000 characters (2 bytes per unicode character). This limitation stems from the 8 KB internal page size SQL Server uses to save data to disk. Read more…

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