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Control Flow Task Errors – Step 9 of the Stairway to Integration Services

Andy Leonard from SQLServerCentral.com

Step 9 of the Stairway to Integration Services looks at control flow tasks and error handling. More »

SQL in the City - Seattle 2012

Press Release from SQLServerCentral.com

Start the week in Seattle off with a free day of training on Nov 5, 2012 with SQL in the City. Grant Fritchey, Steve Jones and more will be talking SQL Server in the Pacific Northwest. Join us and debate and discuss SQL Server the Red Gate Way. More »

Improve Your Database Unit Testing Skills and Win Free Stuff

Additional Articles from Other

As the SQL Developer community grows to embrace the benefits of test-driven development for databases, so the importance of learning to do it properly increases. One way of learning effective TDD is by the use of code kata – short practice sessions that encourage test-first development in baby steps. I have a limited number of licences for SQL Test to give away free – just for practicing a bit of TDD and telling me about it. More »

This editorial was originally published on Sep 28, 2007. It is being re-published as Steve is out on the SQL in the City US 2012 tour.

I saw this article showing Sun bragging about their green data center, and being someone that is interested in alternative energy, paying attention to the environment, and conserving our use of natural resources, I thought this was pretty cool. I remember seeing a similar announcement from Sun years ago when they finally moved off a mainframe (or mini) for their internal financial and administrative systems and onto their own boxes (Solaris or SunOS).

This has been an interesting week here at SQLServerCentral.com. We released a new version of our site last Saturday and have been dealing with complaints, bugs, and even a few complements throughout the week. We are working through issues and trying to tailor our site to the needs and wants of the community. I'm not drifting off track here, so bear with me.

I've had a few people question whether we did much testing on the new site, or if we did, how could there be so many bugs. I feel a little like Microsoft employees must feel after spending a long time working on a product and then having people tell us that we didn't do a good job. We worked on the final product long and hard and there was lots of testing.

However testing doesn't really cover all the issues with the software. Things like search "work", but they just don't work the way many of you want them to work. That's because you have a different usage pattern than we do and than our testers. So with that in mind, I have an interesting poll:

Should software companies "dog food" their own products?

It's easy for Microsoft to do it. Everyone uses Windows, so they can just slip in new versions, people do their daily job and report on issues. Dell can run their own management software in data centers, and Google can require everyone to use Gmail and Google Reader.

But what if you're Adobe?

Most of your people probably don't edit images or build movies and it isn't really practical to pay the network guy to do that. And you might get him trying things, but not really "using" the product.

So I'm kind of wondering what makes sense to you or what flaws you see in "dog fooding" things. I know at Peoplesoft we ran their platform internally, but no one really seemed to care about our complaints in using the product. At End to End Training, where I'm a founder, we built our own platform to support user groups and ended up running it ourselves as the first "customer." As much as we appreciate feedback from other groups, we've learned a lot internally as wll.

If you build commercial software, do you run your own products? Does it make sense to do so? Let us know what you think.

I'm getting into the podcasting business (maybe) and there's a link below to the audio cast of today's editorial. Comments (good and bad) are welcome.

Dog Food (Podcast 3)

Music for today's Podcast from:

Steve Jones from SQLServerCentral.com

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

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Today's Question:

When I execute the following T-SQL

SET ANSI_PADDING ON

DECLARE @a VARCHAR ='xyz'    

SELECT 
  LEN(@a) AS 'Declared'
, LEN(CONVERT(VARCHAR,'xyz')) AS 'Converted'
, LEN(CAST('xyz' AS VARCHAR)) AS 'Cast'

What values are returned (returned values are in Declared, Converted and Cast sequence). For example: 4, 5, 6

By bitbucket

Think you know the answer? Click here, and find out if you are right.

This question is worth 1 point in this category: declare. We keep track of your score to give you bragging rights against your peers.

We'd love to give you credit for your own question and answer. To submit a QOD, simply log in to Contribution Center.

SQL Backup and Restore

A DBA's tasks, from day-to-day, are rarely constant; with one exception: the need to ensure each and every day that any database in their charge can be restored and recovered, in the event of error of disaster. In this book, you'll discover how to perform each of these backup and restore operations using SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS), basic T-SQL scripts and Red Gate's SQL Backup tool.

Get it from Amazon in print  or download the ebook for free from Red Gate. 

What 4 values are returned by the following:

DECLARE @Date1 DATETIME = '2012-08-28 11:53:00'
      , @Date2 DATETIME = '2012-08-29 13:25:00'

SELECT 
  DATEDIFF(day, @Date1, @Date2)
, CAST(@Date2 - @Date1 AS INT)
, CAST(@Date2 AS INT) - CAST(@Date1 AS INT)
, CAST(CAST(@Date2 AS FLOAT) - CAST(@Date1 AS FLOAT) AS INT)

By Dwain Camps

Answer: 1,1,2,1

Explanation: When CASTing a DATETIME to INT, times after 12:00 are rounded up to the next day number. All others return one as you'd expect, where CASTs truncate the result.

REF: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms187928.aspx

» Discuss this question and answer on the forums

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.

Aggregating Intervals

Michael LeClair from SQLServerCentral.com

create intervals from effective dates and aggregate like and adjacent intervals More »

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