There are a few methods of comparing strings in SQLServer. To start with, you can use normal comparison operators such as < and > and even =. I can not think of many useful reasons for doing this but let’s talk about what the results are of doing so. The exact results you will get are determined by the character set and collation you are using. There is also a dependency on the server you are using since some servers are case-sensitive. SQLServer however is not case-sensitive.

I would like to take this opportunity to point out a slight problem with the SQL-92 that some of you may not be aware of.

This weeks tidbit will be rehashing some things I learned about SQLServer dates. The biggest point of this conversation is making sure you are selecting the date type you actually need in order to minimize the space you are using. This is important because smaller data types take less space in memory and in index pages. Which means you can fit more records into the index pages.

A few months ago a co-worker and I decided to upgrade our local web development environments from SQLServer 2008 to SQLServer 2014 in order to shake out any major problems. We used the tools provided by MS to determine if we would have any breaking changes and the prospects were very promising. Things worked great for months with no sign of any problems

My latest adventures with SQLServer have been with being able to create some structured XML output from a query. I figured I might as well present some sample code and output in case it helps someone else.