Articles

Technical Article

Getting Started with R Services in SQL Server 2016 – Part 1

SQL Server 2016 brings native support to advanced analytics in the database itself, using R Services. In this article, Arshad Ali explains what R is, what the on-premise advanced analytics options from Microsoft are, and shows how to get started using R Services with SQL Server 2016.

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2016-12-29

4,325 reads

External Article

Importing Excel Data into Power BI Desktop

In any commercial setting, Excel Spreadsheets remain the preferred way of collecting and analysing data, and it makes sense that it should be easy to get the data into PowerBI so it can be made more generally available for sharing and further analysis. As well as the data, we'd probably need the other analysis components such as the Power Pivot tables, Power View visualizations, Power Query queries. It is all possible, and Robert Sheldon demonstrates how.

2016-12-28

2,896 reads

External Article

Managing Packages Using Windows PowerShell

Windows hasn't had a package manager in the style of the Advanced Packaging Tool (APT) of Linux distributions. Apt-get is a great way of installing packages and other software. We have Chocolatey, of course which has a growing library of software and even allows you to automatically update software. Now PowerShell has an 'official' way of using any system, such as NuGet, Chocolatey, GitHub or PSget. It is definitely useful and likely to mature into an indispensable tool for Windows users. Nicolas explains wh.

2016-12-23

3,951 reads

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The Empty Aggregate

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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