The BASE model offers a completely different alternative to our traditional notions of database engineering. It abandons the relational database guiding principles of atomicity, consistency, isolation and durability in favor of a relaxed approach that allows the flexible, efficient storage of data.

Read more: Abandoning ACID in Favor of BASE

The TRY...CATCH statement in Transact-SQL allows you to detect and handle error conditions gracefully within your database applications. This statement is the cornerstone of SQL Server error handling and is an extremely important part of developing robust database applications.

TRY..CATCH works by allowing you to specify two Transact-SQL statements: one that you wish to "try" and another that you wish to use to "catch" any errors that might arise. When SQL Server encounters a TRY..CATCH statement, it immediately executes the statement included in the TRY clause. If the TRY statement executes successfully, SQL Server simply moves on. On the other hand, if your TRY statement generates an error, SQL Server executes the CATCH statement to gracefully handle the error.

Read more: Using TRY...CATCH to Handle SQL Server Errors

Have you ever wanted to combine information from multiple tables in your database in an efficient manner? Microsoft Access 2013 offers a powerful query function with an easy-to-learn interface that makes it a snap to extract exactly the information you need from your database. In this tutorial we'll explore the creation of a simple query.

Read the full story: Creating Queries in Access 2013

In a recent forum message, a user wrote:

"I am trying to find the neighbouring countries of a particular country say "Germany", using SQL. And all the countries and borders(the geometries) are stored in the same table making it difficult for me to use functions like 'Touches' and 'Boundary'. How do I go about situation like this?"

Can you help? Interested in answers to the same question? Visit the About Databases Forum and join the discussion!