Articles

External Article

Better Ways to Build a Database

The purpose of a database build is simple: prove that what you have in version control can successfully create a working database, and yet many teams struggle with unreliable and untested database build processes that slow down deployments and prevent the delivery of new functionality. Grant Fritchey explains how to achieve an automated and reliable database build that is only as complex as the database system it needs to create.

2016-03-22

5,439 reads

External Article

SQL Server Integration Services SSIS Package Configuration

As you develop, test and deploy SSIS packages, you need to specify different parameter values for things like database connection strings, file and folder paths, etc. without having to edit the individual SSIS packages to make these changes. Ray Barley looks at how you can accomplish this goal by taking advantage of the configuration capabilities that SSIS provides, in particular the SQL Server package configuration.

2016-03-21

5,914 reads

External Article

Documenting SQL Server with PowerShell

SQL Server instances are generally poorly-documented. How easily can you tell if something has changed? How easily can you check that there is adequate space for growth? Are you up-to-date with licenses? What errors are happening? Who has accessing the system? Before PowerShell, it was difficult to be on top of all this. Now you can, with the help of Sander's database documenter.

2016-03-17

5,004 reads

Technical Article

Documenting SQL Server with PowerShell: PosH VC

Virtual Chapter meeting, Mar 16, 12pm EST. Documentation is mostly overlooked and only comes up when a problem arises. What if you'd have a tool or method to generate documentation for all your database servers? In this session, Sander Stad will show you show how easy it is to use PowerShell to retrieve information from your servers. He'll detail what can be used to document your servers, how to retrieve the information and what should be documented. In the end you no longer have an excuse not to document your servers.

2016-03-15

4,054 reads

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Question of the Day

The string_agg function

We create the following table and then insert some records in it:

create table t1 (
   id int primary key,
   category char(1) not null,
   product varchar(50)
);

insert into t1 values
(1, 'A', 'Product 1'),
(2, 'A', 'Product 2'),
(3, 'A', 'Product 3'),
(4, 'B', 'Product 4'),
(5, 'B', 'Product 5');
What happens if we execute the following query in both Sql Server and PostgreSQL?
select id, 
category, 
string_agg(product, ';')
                 over (partition by category order by id
                 rows between unbounded preceding and unbounded following) as stragg
from t1;

See possible answers