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SQL Server Encryption: Always Encrypted

Is 'Always Encrypted' SQL Server 2016's most widely important new feature? It is significant that 'Always Encrypted' in SQL Server is in all editions of SQL Server. Because of the increasing importance of encryption to data governance, it allows encryption for the sensitive application data for everywhere beyond the application's client connection, including network, server, database and storage. Robert Sheldon explains what it is, why you should try it out, and how to set about it.

2017-04-10

4,486 reads

External Article

PowerShell Time Saver: Automatic Defaults

Because PowerShell needs to be usable as an immediate scripting language by IT professionals who type in commands at a console, there have to be language devices such as aliases that can make for terseness when appropriate. There are several ways of cutting down the verbiage in a script, and being able to specify default values via $PSDefaultParameterValues is one of the more generally useful ones. Michael Sorens explains how it can save you time in your daily work.

2017-04-05

5,035 reads

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Migrating a Disk-Based Table to a Memory-Optimized Table in SQL Server

The feature formerly known as Hekaton, now In-Memory OLTP can provide very useful performance gains where you carefully select the tables to become memory-optimised. How do you set about the job of converting existing tables to become memory-optimised tables? the process isn't entirely straightforward but the benefits that an In-Memory OLTP table delivers is worth your effort. Alex Grinberg takes you through the basics.

2017-04-03

5,510 reads

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Working with Windows Containers and Docker: The Basics

When you begin to work with containers, you will notice many similarities between a container and a virtual machine; but, in fact, these are two quite different concepts. Containers are going to change the way that we do Windows-based development work in the coming year, and they already underpin much of the devops work of speeding the delivery process. Nicolas Prigent explains how to use the Windows Containers feature.

2017-03-31

6,296 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?

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