Performance Surprises and Assumptions : GROUP BY vs. DISTINCT
Aaron Bertrand acknowledges that DISTINCT and GROUP BY are usually interchangeable, but shows there are cases where one performs better than the other.
2017-02-23
8,502 reads
Additional Articles
Questions About the Use of PowerShell That you were Too Shy to Ask
Let's forget the actual PowerShell code for a moment: Why is PowerShell important? Why should I use it? Where did it come from? Why did it take so long to arrive? These and many other basic questions are answered in William Brewer's latest addition to the series that answers those seemingly simple questions that you were too shy to ask in public.
2017-02-22
7,518 reads
Getting Started with Azure SQL Data Warehouse - Part 1
As the demand for data analytics grows so does the need for a technology or platform to process large amounts of different types of data in timely manner. Azure SQL Data Warehouse is a new enterprise-class, elastic petabyte-scale, data warehouse service that can scale according to organizational demands in just a few minutes. Read on to learn more about this data warehouse-as-a-service offering from Microsoft.
2017-02-21
5,158 reads
New CREATE OR ALTER statement in SQL Server 2016 SP1
Ahmad Yaseen explains what SQL Server 2016 SP1's new CREATE OR ALTER statement does, and how to use it.
2017-02-20
5,523 reads
Introduction to SAP HANA on Azure
Microsoft and SAP share a long history of working together on a variety of interoperability solutions, including SAP Fiori and Office 365. In recent years, this trend has been exemplified by advancements in support for SAP-based solutions on Microsoft Azure. Marcin Policht provides an overview, focusing in particular on support for SAP HANA on Azure.
2017-02-17
4,185 reads
Lists With, or Without, Ranges in both T-SQL and PowerShell
Whether you are working in a procedural language like PowerShell or in T-SQL, there is something slightly bothersome about having to deal with parameters that are lists, or worse with ranges amongst the values. In fact, once you have a way of dealing with them, they can be convenient, especially when bridging the gulf between application and the database. Phil Factor shows how to deal with them.
2017-02-16
4,920 reads
Compression and its Effects on Performance
Erin Stellato takes a look at the new COMPRESS and DECOMPRESS functions, comparing their impact on space and performance to traditional data compression.
2017-02-15
6,456 reads
Office Hours Webcast 2017/02/01
In this edition of Office Hours, Brent, Erik, and Richie discuss AlwaysOn Availability Groups, execution plans, speeding up log shipping, applying wrong service packs, their favourite high availability solutions, and more.
2017-02-14
3,764 reads
How to Build Your First SQL Server Virtual Lab in Windows Azure
If you are a DBA who hasn't so far dived in head-first into using Azure, it is worth setting up an Azure 'Virtual Lab' environment the easy way, using a template. This will then allow you to experiment, try things out with SQL Azure, and get familiar with Resource Groups. Joshua shows how to build a virtual lab, from the ground up in the first of a series that aims to give you a grounding in Azure.
2017-02-13
5,534 reads
Reconciling Data Across Systems Using a Reconciliation Hub
In many enterprises, where there are a number of separate systems engaged in processing data, there arises the daunting task of checking and reconciling data as it flows between systems. Discrepancies in data must be detected, tracked and corrected as quickly as possible: there is no room for error in doing this. A Reconciliation Hub can provide the answer, as Rahul Gupta explains.
2017-02-10
3,524 reads
Blogs
Rolling Back a Broken Release
By Steve Jones
We had an interesting discussion about deployments in databases and how you go forward...
A bespoke reporting solution doesn’t have to cost the earth
By ChrisJenkins
You could be tolerating limited reporting because there isn’t an off the shelf solution...
Presenting with Visual Studio Code
A while back I wrote a quick post on setting up key mappings in...
Forums
Remotely Engineer Fabric Lakehouse objects: The Fabric Modern Data Platform
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Remotely Engineer Fabric Lakehouse objects:...
Creating JSON III
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Creating JSON III
Testing is Becoming More Important
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Testing is Becoming More Important
Question of the Day
Creating JSON III
In a SQL Server 2025 table, called Beer, I have this data:
BeerIDBeerName 1Becks 2Fat Tire 3Mac n Jacks 4Alaskan Amber 8KirinI run this code:
SELECT JSON_OBJECTAGG(
BeerID: BeerName )
FROM beer;
What are the results? See possible answers