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Generating Data for Database Tests

It is more and more essential for developers to work on development databases that have realistic data in both type and quantity, but without using real data. It isn't exactly easy, even with third-party tools to hand. Phil Factor shows how it can be done, taking the classic PUBS database and giving it a more realistic set of data.

2012-04-11

4,244 reads

External Article

Renaming a Published SQL Server Database

I have transactional replication configured in production. I am wondering if we could rename the publication database in transactional replication without having to drop and recreate the replication set up. Also, is it possible to rename the database files of the publication database without affecting the replication configuration.

2012-04-10

2,618 reads

External Article

Bin Packing Problems: The SQL

The 'bin packing' problem isn't just a fascination for computer scientists, but comes up in a whole range of real-world applications. It isn't that easy to come up with a practical, set oriented solution in SQL that gives a near-optimal result.

2012-04-06

2,537 reads

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Question of the Day

Getting the Average

I have this data in the dbo.Commission table in a SQL Server 2022 database.

salesperson commission
Brian       12
Brian       16
Andy        7
Andy        14
Andy        21
Steve       20
Steve       NULL
All the data is a varchar, and I decide to run this query to get the totals for each salesperson.
SELECT SalesPerson
     , AVG(TRY_PARSE(Commission AS int)) AS TotalCommission
 FROM commission
 GROUP BY SalesPerson
GO
What average commission is calculated for Steve?

See possible answers