Articles

External Article

SQL Data Aggregation Aggravation

When we have to deal with and store a lot of data, it makes sense to aggregate it so that we store only the information we actually need. If we get this right, this works well, but the design of the system takes care and thought because the problems can be subtle and various. Joe Celko describes some of the ways that things can go wrong and end up providing incorrect, inaccurate or misleading results.

2017-09-12

3,866 reads

Technical Article

What Mail Items Have Been Sent With Database Mail

Have you ever wondered how much database mail you have sent in the past day or week? What about those database mail items that were not successfully sent. In this tip, Greg Larsen shows you how to review the database mail items that have been processed by SQL Server.

★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

You rated this post out of 5. Change rating

2017-09-11

3,430 reads

External Article

SQL Graph Objects in SQL Server 2017: the Good and the Bad

Graph databases are useful for certain types of database tasks that involve representing and traversing complex relationships between entities. These can be difficult to do in relational databases and even trickier to report on. Until now, we have had the choice of doing it awkwardly in SQL Server or having an ancillary database to tackle this type of task. SQL Server 2017 will be bringing graph capabilities to the product but will these features prove to be good enough to allow us to dispense with specialised Graph databases? Dennes Torres decided to find out.

2017-09-07

3,818 reads

Blogs

The flight recorder: Replaying what an AI agent did on my SQL Server

By

“What exactly did it do on my server?” is the first question a DBA...

Announcements from the Microsoft Fabric Community Conference — Barcelona 2026

By

Microsoft shared a broad set of Fabric, Power BI, and SQL updates at FabCon...

Au Revoir for now

By

No, I’m not quitting or retiring. Just going on vacation, but I leave tonight...

Read the latest Blogs

Forums

Let's Talk Certifications

By Grant Fritchey

Comments posted to this topic are about the item Let's Talk Certifications, which is...

The Hidden Security Risks of Role Combination in SSAS Tabular

By Pablo Echeverria

Comments posted to this topic are about the item The Hidden Security Risks of...

The Empty Aggregate

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Comments posted to this topic are about the item The Empty Aggregate

Visit the forum

Question of the Day

The Empty Aggregate

I have this table in a SQL Server 2025 database:

CREATE TABLE [dbo].[CustomerOrder]
(
[OrderID] [int] NULL,
[CustomerID] [int] NULL,
[total] [money] NULL
) ON [PRIMARY]
GO
What is returned from this code? (answers are for the sum and then the count)
SELECT SUM(total) AS sum,
       COUNT(total) AS count
FROM dbo.CustomerOrder;



See possible answers