On Looking and Acting the Part

• by Phil Factor

• SQLServerCentral

Phil Factor's offers tips for longevity in the world of IT consultancy: listen well, humiliate no-one and convince others that it was their expertise that solved the problem.

How Do We Prove Expertise?

• by Grant Fritchey

• SQLServerCentral

• Career

Today, Grant Fritchey talks about the two paths to expertise for database professionals and why it’s hard to really know if someone is an expert.

SSRS Audit: All reports executed/not-executed during previous 30 days

• by Stan Kulp

• SQLServerCentral.com

• Reporting Services (SSRS)

This article presents a pair of queries and reports that reads the ReportServer.dbo.ExecutionLog table to list all SSRS reports that were executed or not-executed in the past 30 days, how many times they were executed, and who executed them.

A simple use case for Columnstore Indexes in SQL Server

• by Additional Articles

• MSSQLTips.com

• Performance Tuning

In this article we look at different use cases for columnstore indexes like when performing SQL Server count * queries.

Data Categorization for AdventureWorks using SQL Data Catalog

• by Additional Articles

• Redgate

• data catalogs

Josh Smith shows how to use SQL Data Catalog to perform a 'first cut' data classification for one your SQL Server databases, identifying all columns that are likely to hold personal or otherwise sensitive data.

How to remove quote marks using SSIS and a little C#

• by glynjones1

• SQLServerCentral

Introduction If you import flat files and use double quotes as your Flat File Text Qualifiers, then it’s likely that you’ve encountered problems when importing data where speech marks have been entered manually. This is a common occurrence in free text fields, such as Name. e.g. Smith, James “Jim” Attempting to import a file with a […]

Why I’m Learning Git via the Command Line Interface

• by KendraLittle

• SQLServerCentral

• Git
• Version Control Systems (VCS)

Today Kendra discusses the advantages of using a command line interface for Git.

How to Complain Bitterly using SQL Data Generator

• by Additional Articles

• Redgate

• Data Generation

How to use reverse regex expressions in SQL Data Generator to fill a text column in SQL Server with fake, but very realistic complaints.

Introduction to Gaps and Islands Analysis

• by Additional Articles

• SimpleTalk

• T-SQL

T-SQL window functions simplify solving many complex queries. In this article, Edward Pollack demonstrates how the functions can be used to find gaps and islands in a dataset.

Let's Fix a Password Problem

• by Grant Fritchey

• SQLServerCentral

• Security

Grant discusses the need for password managers to help prevent security issues between different accounts.