Azure-Sql-Db

It was great to catch up with Jess Pomfret today and to have her on a SQL Down Under podcast.

Jess is a Data Platform Engineer and a dual Microsoft MVP. She started working with SQL Server in 2011, and she says she enjoys the problem-solving aspects of automating processes with PowerShell.

Jess also enjoys contributing to dbatools and dbachecks, two open source PowerShell modules that aid DBAs with automating the management of SQL Server instances.

2026-05-05

This is a post in the SQL Interview series. These aren’t trick or gotcha questions, they’re just questions designed to scope out a candidate’s knowledge around SQL Server and Azure SQL Database.

Section: Administration Level: Advanced

Question:

You have a SQL Server server attached to multiple storage volumes. One of the volumes has been lost. It contained the files for the tempdb database.

You know that tempdb is recreated on each restart of SQL Server, but will SQL Server still start when the files are missing? Will it just automatically create new files? If not, how could you work around it?

2026-04-14

Most SQL Server developers are aware that the EXEC statement can be used to:

• Execute a stored procedure (system, user-defined, extended)
• Execute some dynamic SQL

And most understand that you can SELECT from a scalar user-defined function.

But the option that many people don’t seem to be aware of, is that you can also use EXEC to call a scalar function.

I remember noticing this in the documentation for the EXEC command some years back. Prior to that, it had never dawned on me that you could use EXEC to call a scalar UDF. It’s also in the oldest documentation that I was able to check, so I’d say it’s worked for a long time.

2026-04-12

The WITH EXECUTE AS clause was a great addition for defining stored procedures and functions, to change the execution context, just for the duration of the stored procedure or function. For example:

CREATE PROC SomeSchema.SomeProc
WITH EXECUTE AS USER = 'Fred'
AS
... 

Mostly I use this with the OWNER option:

CREATE PROC SomeSchema.SomeProc
WITH EXECUTE AS OWNER
AS
... 

It’s also useful during testing, where I can temporarily change my execution context during testing. For example:

EXEC AS USER = 'Fred';

\-- Try some code here while running as Fred

REVERT;

But the option that most people don’t realize is possible, is that you can set the execution context for a single execution like this:

2026-04-10

It’s common advice that most SQL Server tables should have a clustered index. There are some exceptions to this but it’s a pretty general rule, and if in doubt, you should follow it. (Note that this is not the same as having a primary key).

I regularly come across tables without clustered indexes for all the wrong reasons. So, in our free SDU Tools for developers and DBAs, we added a tool that can look for user tables that don’t have a clustered index. No surprise, it’s called ListUserHeapTables because a table without a clustered index is a heap.

2026-04-08

Our free SDU Tools for developers and DBAs, now includes a very large number of tools, with procedures, functions, and views. Version 27 adds the first set of views and functions for working with Nepali dates. These are useful in Nepal and in a number of Buddhist-related areas.

The first tool added is a view called NepaliMonths. It returns the Nepali names for months. You can see it in the main image above.

2026-04-06

Our free SDU Tools for developers and DBAs, now includes a very large number of tools, with procedures, functions, and views. The TokenSetSimilarity function calculates token set similarity for two strings.

It answers the question: Do these two strings contain mostly the same words, even if the order, spacing, or repetition differs?

It is useful where word order varies, or extra or missing words are common. It can also help where character-level typos are less important than the presence of words.

2026-04-04

Our free SDU Tools for developers and DBAs, now includes a very large number of tools, with procedures, functions, and views. The NormalizeForSearch function normalizes a string to make it ready for search operations.

It makes strings comparable by stripping away differences that are usually meaningless for search or matching.

It helps to answer the question: If two strings refer to the same thing, what differences should I ignore before I even start comparing?

2026-04-02

Our free SDU Tools for developers and DBAs, now includes a very large number of tools, with procedures, functions, and views. The LevenshteinDistance function calculates the Levenshtein distance between two strings.

It essentially answers the question How far apart are these two strings in terms of character edits?, where edits are inserting, deleting, or substituting a character. In this calculation, each edit has a cost of 1.

Empty and NULL values on input return NULL.

2026-03-31

Our free SDU Tools for developers and DBAs, now includes a very large number of tools, with procedures, functions, and views. The JaroWinklerSimilarity function that we have added calculates the Jaro Winkler similarity for two strings.

It essentially answers the question Do these two short strings probably refer to the same thing, even if they aren’t exactly the same?.

It can be used where typos are common, or characters are transposed, and where prefixes matter more than suffixes. Empty and NULL values on input return NULL.

2026-03-29