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From Hairdresser to DBA – How to start a career in IT

Greg M Lucas from SQLServerCentral.com

In writing about his career change from hairdresser to DBA, Greg Lucas shares his experiences and offers advice for those looking to move into IT. More »

Objects, Relationships, Systems, And Processes

William Talada from SQLServerCentral.com

What is the difference between an expert DBA and a Master DBA? This piece from William Talada talks about Objects, Relationships, Systems, and Processes and how they may relate to your job as a DBA. More »

SQL Saturday #169 - Denver

Press Release from SQLServerCentral.com

Come join Steve Jones, Glenn Berry, and other Denver area MVPs and speakers for a free day of training in Denver on Sept 22, 2012. More »

SQL in the City - Boston 2012

Press Release from SQLServerCentral.com

A free day of training in Boston on Oct 8, 2012. Come join Grant Fritchey, Steve Jones and more to talk about SQL Server and how you can work more efficiently. More »

When we publish articles that look at the performance of T-SQL code, the pieces are very popular. It seems that people are always willing to learn how to write better code, and there is no shortage of people willing to discuss the methods, the results, and the implications of various techniques. It also seems there is no shortage of argument and debate that take place in the discussions as to the best way to solve problems.

However we don't really understand what will resonate with people, or what things they'd like to learn. What we would like is a system like Amazon's recommendation engine that might help us improve traffic, and also bring you information that is more relevant and interesting to your career. If you've ever purchased something from Amazon and then browsed their site, you might notice the recommendations appearing all over the site. If you've received an email from them, you might see some interesting items suggested to you.

Amazon knows their engine is valuable, and it's constantly being refined. We don't know exactly what they use to build the recommendations, but they are constantly analyzing the results and tweaking their system. That makes sense for their commerce oriented business, since they can easily measure the results by looking at sales, but it might also make sense for other businesses. Many of us have reports, and other queries used to perform analysis on our data. Do we regularly analyze the performance of those algorithms and look to tweak them?

I've found many employers in the past were content to develop a system and leave it alone until some new requirement arose. One company didn't like that approach, and regularly looked to tweak our systems to try and get more performance out of an inventory analysis application. It was frustrating to regularly rewrite a series of reports, but also challenging to try and find ways to solve a complex problem.

As more and more data professionals begin to work in the analysis and business intelligence areas, learning to build algorithms, and tweak them over time, will be more and more important. It will be challenging, but it should be fun if you are excited by the challenge of improving your algorithms over time.

Steve Jones from SQLServerCentral.com

» Join the debate, and respond to today's editorial on the forums

The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

We publish three versions of the podcast each day for you to enjoy.

• Watch the Windows Media Podcast - 21.5MB WMV
• Watch the iPod Video Podcast - 21.1MB MP4
• Listen to the MP3 Audio Podcast - 4.2MB MP3

The podcast feeds are available at sqlservercentral.mevio.com. Comments are definitely appreciated and wanted, and you can get feeds from there. Overall RSS Feed: or now on iTunes!

Today's podcast features music by Everyday Jones. No relation, but I stumbled on to them and really like the music. Support this great duo at www.everydayjones.com.

You can also follow Steve Jones on Twitter:

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Today's Question:

A database is in the bulk-logged recovery model. I am inserting data into a table using bulk import. At the time the bulk-import operation started, this table has one clustered index and the table already has data. In this bulk import operation, data and index pages are minimally logged in the transaction log.

By Ravi DBA

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Microsoft SQL Server 2012 High-Performance T-SQL Using Window Functions

Optimize your queries—and obtain simple and elegant solutions to a variety of problems—using window functions in Transact-SQL. Led by T-SQL expert Itzik Ben-Gan, you’ll learn how to apply calculations against sets of rows in a flexible, clear, and efficient manner. Ideal whether you’re a database administrator or developer, this practical guide demonstrates ways to use more than a dozen T-SQL querying solutions to address common business tasks.

Get your copy from Amazon today.

What is the output of both the queries on a database using case insensitive collation?

CREATE TABLE dbo.Zip_code
    (
    id    VARCHAR (10) NULL,
    Descr VARCHAR (max) NULL
    )
GO

INSERT INTO dbo.Zip_code (id, Descr)
VALUES ('1111', 'AAAA')
GO
INSERT INTO dbo.Zip_code (id, Descr)
VALUES ('2222 ', 'bbbb')
GO
INSERT INTO dbo.Zip_code (id, Descr)
VALUES ('aaaa', 'bbbb')
GO
SELECT count(*) FROM zip_code WHERE id = '1111'
SELECT count(*) FROM zip_code WHERE id = 1111

By Anal Patel

Answer: 1,error

Explanation: For the code:

SELECT count(*) FROM zip_code WHERE id = 1111

This will only work if your id column has all numeric values. If a single value contains a character then the code will return an error:

"Conversion failed when converting the varchar value 'aaaa' to data type int. Severity 16"

» Discuss this question and answer on the forums

Training Kit (Exam 70-461): Querying Microsoft SQL Server 2012

Check SQL Job timings

Shishir Tewari from SQLServerCentral.com

This script is useful to check how long jobs have been running. More »

Here's a few of the new posts today on the forums. To see more, visit the forums.

SQL Server 2005 : Administering

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Help!... Memory Use on Windows 2008 R2, SQL Server 2005 x64. The physical is 98% - Hello to everyone, first... sorry for my english... I'm from Colombia. I have a situation that i can't understand, a SQL...

SQL Server 2005 : Backups

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SQL Server 2005 : Business Intelligence

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SQL Server 2005 : Working with Oracle

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SQL Server 2005 : SQL Server 2005 Compact Edition

Minmize Down Time During Data Type Conversion - EDIT: Sorry, posted in wrong section. Updating.

SQL Server 2005 : SQL Server 2005 General Discussion

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OLE Automation in T-SQL - Hello, I have been trying to find any resources about OLE Automation in T-SQL. The problem right now is: I have...

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SQL Server 2005 : SQL Server 2005 Strategies

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SQL Server 2005 : SQL Server 2005 Performance Tuning

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SQL Server 2005 : SQL Server 2005 Integration Services

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SQL Server 2005 : T-SQL (SS2K5)

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SQL Server 2005 : SQL Server Newbies

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SQL Server 7,2000 : Administration

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SQL Server 7,2000 : SQL Server Agent

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SQL Server 2008 : SQL Server 2008 - General

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queries running faster after cached in the query plan - Hi Probly a quick on to answer Is it the more times you run a query the faster it gets? or is...

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Migration from SQL 2005 to SQL 2008 - Hi My friend wants to migrate his database in SQL 2005 to SQL 2008.He has some SSIS packages running on his...

Upgrade to 2008R Collation - Hi All, I am waiting for project in whcih I need to upgrade sql server 2000 to 2008R2. The main...

Parameter error - Hi All, I am week in write the query. Below query i am executing for upload the data to s3...

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SQL 2008 express DB Mail - I have SQL 2008 Express installed and running under windows 2008, with smtp service running as well. The mail could not...

image insert into SQL DB - Hi, What I have to do is creating a SQL image DB but instead of inserting the images themselves into it...

SSIS runs in debug but not from job - We have this SSIS where one of its components, reading a flat file and writing to a database table, runs...

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SQL Server 2008 Standard Installation failed - SQL server 2008....stand alone. Windows 2008 r2 SP1 I have been trying to install a SQL server default instance basically through out...

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SQL Server 2008 : T-SQL (SS2K8)

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SQL Server 2008 : Working with Oracle

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SQL Server 2008 : SQL Server Newbies

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SQL Server 2008 : Security (SS2K8)

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SQL Server 2008 : SQL Server 2008 High Availability

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SQL Server 2008 : SQL Server 2008 Administration

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Career : Employers and Employees

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Programming : XML

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SQLServerCentral.com : Anything that is NOT about SQL!

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Data Warehousing : Integration Services

capture oracles's (sequence.nexval) value in a column during data flow... - Hi all SQL server techies.. I have the following scenario I am doing an insert from sql server table to...

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Integration Services contain Analysis Services Processing Task. Fails but works in Analysis Services - The dimensions have processed Successfully prior to the updating of the SEN Cubes The attribute key cannot be found when processing:...

SSIS DT_NTEXT to DT_STR conversion failure unicode and non-unicode Excel - Just google "derived column dt_ntext to dt_str not working" and you will find numerous cases where people have difficuilties importing...

Data Warehousing : Analysis Services

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Microsoft Access : Microsoft Access

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