Author: Ian

How to Restore a SQL Server Database on a Mac using Azure Data Studio

Posted on by Ian

Restoring a database is a piece of cake with Azure Data Studio. It’s a similar process to doing it with SQL Server Management Studio.  Simply click Restore and follow the prompts.

This restore process allows you to navigate through the computer’s file system to locate the .bak file. This .bak file contains a backup of the database you want to restore. So when SQL Server restores the database, it’s using the .bak file to do so.

However, if you’re running your SQL Server instance inside a Docker container (which of course, you would be if you’re running SQL Server on Mac or Linux), there’s something you need to be aware of if your backup file is located outside the Docker container.

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How to Install Azure Data Studio on a Mac

Posted on by Ian

Azure Data Studio (previously known as SQL Operations Studio) is a free tool that you can use to manage SQL Server. It uses a graphical user interface (GUI) that helps you view the various databases and objects within a SQL Server instance. It can run on Windows, macOS, and Linux, and it’s also designed to be used with Azure SQL Database, and Azure SQL Data Warehouse.

Here I explain how to install Azure Data Studio onto a Mac, then how to use it to connect to SQL Server.

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What is Azure Data Studio?

Posted on by Ian

Microsoft Azure Data Studio is a free, cross-platform tool that can be used to manage SQL Server, Azure SQL Database, and Azure SQL Data Warehouse.

Azure Data Studio was formerly called SQL Operations Studio (while it was in preview release), and it was renamed to Azure Data Studio once it was moved to general availability (GA) on September 24, 2018.

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3 Ways to Detect if a String Matches a Regular Expression in MySQL

Posted on by Ian

MySQL has a number of functions and operators that allow us to perform operations using regular expressions (regex). This article presents two operators and one function that enable us to find out if a string matches a regular expression specified by a given pattern.

These regex functions and operators are:

These are all basically equivalent, as the operators (the second two) are both synonyms of the function (the first one). In any case, you can see examples of all three in action below.

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How the MATCH() Function Works in MySQL

Posted on by Ian

In MySQL, the MATCH() function performs a full-text search. It accepts a comma separated list of table columns to be searched.

The table/s must have a FULLTEXT index before you can do a full-text search against them (although boolean queries against a MyISAM search index can work — albeit slowly — even without a FULLTEXT index).

You can create a FULLTEXT index when creating the table (using the CREATE TABLE statement), or you can use the ALTER TABLE statement or the CREATE INDEX statement if the table already exists.

By default, the search is case-insensitive. To perform a case-sensitive search, use a case-sensitive or binary collation for the indexed columns.

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