Additional Articles

Converting and Using Text Dates as SQL Server Dates

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MSSQLTips.com

Date Manipulation

This tip describes some T-SQL techniques for converting a mmddyyyy string to a SQL Server date, handling rows with missing date strings, and comparing converted date strings.

2015-05-28

7,705 reads

Using the T-SQL PERCENTILE Analytic Functions in SQL Server 2000, 2005 and 2008

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SimpleTalk

PERCENT_RANK

Percentiles give meaning to measurements by telling you the percentage of the population being measured who get higher or lower values. They are now easier to calculate in SQL, and are useful for reporting; but are the new analytic functions faster and more efficient than the older methods? Dwain Camps demonstrates, and investigates their relative performance.

2015-05-27

7,757 reads

Optimizing Batch Process in SQL Server

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SimpleTalk

batch processing

SQL Server batch processes are usually run from SQL Agent in the background. Often, the responsibility for creating these tasks belongs entirely to the developer. Dennes Torres demonstrates that DBAs can advise and assist with this type of batch job to help reduce their impact on the working system.

2015-05-25

7,564 reads

Developer-Tester Relationships

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SimpleTalk

Soft Skills

In a development team, there are times when the relationships between developers and testers can become strained. How can you turn this potential conflict into something more positive? Is it part of the skill of team-working to find ways of avoiding friction, or should one blame a system that relies on good social skills to work well?

2015-05-22

11,013 reads

PCI Best Practices Guide for SQL Server DBAs

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MSSQLTips.com

Best Practices

Tibor Nagy has put together some best practices to help SQL Server DBAs navigate the many different requirements around PCI compliance.

2015-05-21

6,930 reads

DevOps and the DBA

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SimpleTalk

DevOps and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD)

Michael Fal is a huge advocate of automation and many ways it can improve the lives of developers and DBAs alike, but you can’t just automate all your problems...

2015-05-20

8,468 reads

Testing SQL Server Backup Performance with Trace Flag 3042

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MSSQLTips.com

trace flags

Starting with SQL Server 2008 a new feature which allowed us to create compressed backup files by pre-allocating space. This tip will look at the performance impacts of disabling pre-allocation of space using the 3042 SQL Server trace flag.

2015-05-19

6,584 reads

Documenting your SQL Server Database

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SimpleTalk

Documentation

One of the shocks that a developer can get when starting to program in T-SQL is that there is no simple way of generating documentation for routines, structures and interfaces, in the way that Javadocs or Doxygen provides. To embed the documentation in the source is so obvious and easy that it is a wrench to be without this facility. Phil Factor suggests a solution.

2015-05-18

9,083 reads

Automating Day-to-Day PowerShell Admin Tasks - Jobs and Workflow

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ITKnowledge Exchange

Automation

If you are aiming to optimise the use of your time by doing as much as possible via scripting, you will soon want to run scripts in parallel to save time. PowerShell does not demand that you run jobs one after the other; It has the means to launch actions whenever you wish and to obtain the results when you want them.

2015-05-15

9,082 reads