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Power BI Quick Reference Guide

I need a structured reference guide to help me get started or expand on Power BI knowledge. I want to be able to bookmark a resource and then use it daily when needed as I build my data sets, reports, and dashboards. Can you please enumerate some common and helpful resources as a Power BI Quick Reference guide?

2026-01-28

External Article

Sending messages to Slack from SQL Server 2025

In an earlier tip, A history of accessing REST APIs and web pages from SQL Server, I talked about reaching out to external endpoints from SQL Server, including the new sys.sp_invoke_external_rest_endpoint procedure that hit the on-premises editions in SQL Server 2025. This seemed like an ideal use case to enhance our current solution for sending a message to Slack: using xp_cmdshell to call a PowerShell script that calls Invoke-RestMethod. In this tip, I’ll describe how we changed our implementation and why it is a marked improvement for us.

2026-01-23

External Article

Generating Shape Bound Random Points in SQL Server

Random number generation is vital in computer science, supporting fields like optimization, simulation, robotics, and gaming. The quality, speed, and sometimes security of the generator can directly affect an algorithm’s correctness, performance, and competitiveness. In Python, random number generation is well-supported and widely used. In this article, we will look how to we can use SQL to do this.

2026-01-09

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Adding and Dropping Columns II

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Question of the Day

Adding and Dropping Columns II

I have this table in my SQL Server 2022 database:

CREATE TABLE [dbo].[CityList]
(
[CityNameID] [int] NOT NULL IDENTITY(1, 1),
[CityName] [varchar] (30) ,
[Country2] [char] (3),
[stateprovince2] [char] (2),
[Country] [char] (3),
[stateprovince] [char]
) ON [PRIMARY]
GO
I decide to drop the stateprovince2 and country2 columns. What code should I use?

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