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Database Build Automation – The First Step to Continuous Integration

So you're keen to take the first steps to the continuous integration of your database. You have to start by getting your database into source control. You can then begin to automate your build processes in order to generate and test a database. By doing this regularly, you'll be much better prepared for the deployment process because you'll have solved integration issues when they happen, and facilitated the broader testing process.

2014-12-30

9,861 reads

External Article

Getting Started with HDInsight - Part 2 - Introduction to Azure HDInsight PowerShell

PowerShell is a very popular and powerful feature in the Microsoft stack. It is extensively used for development, deployment and administration across various ecosystems like SQL Server, SharePoint, Azure Cloud and others. PowerShell cmdlets are available for HDInsight as well and in this tip we will take a look at fundamental aspects of Microsoft Azure PowerShell for HDInsight.

2014-12-26

7,675 reads

External Article

SQL Server Data Aggregation for Data with Different Sampling Rates

In the emerging "Internet of Things", there are multitudes of devices collecting data at differing sampling rates. Integrating this data so the data has a common granularity in time is important to not only allow for accurate analysis and mining, but it will also aid in reducing the amount of data to be stored and processed.
In this tip, we will demonstrate how to use the T-SQL AVG function and GROUP BY clause to transform data collected from two devices sampling at 100Hz and 40Hz to one row per second.

2014-12-24

7,922 reads

External Article

Practical PowerShell Unit-Testing: Mock Objects

Pester allows you to automate the testing of PowerShell scripts. It can test the output of a function as you develop it by validating simple data (scalars) and arrays, and allows you to focus on the one function you want to test by using 'mocking' to fake all the other functions and Cmdlets.

2014-12-23

7,027 reads

External Article

The Big Database Freeze

When a hospital’s mission-critical database fails at Christmas, disaster for the hospital – and its hapless DBA – seems certain. With less than an hour to spare before catastrophe, can the DBA Team save the day? This is a fictionalized true story.

2014-12-23 (first published: )

17,000 reads

External Article

Using the MERGE Statement to Perform an UPSERT

The term UPSERT has been coined to refer to an operation that inserts rows into a table if they don’t exist, otherwise they are updated. To perform the UPSERT operation Microsoft introduced the MERGE statement. Not only does the MERGE statement support the UPSERT concept, but it also supports deleting records. Greg Larsen discusses how to use the MERGE statement to UPDATE, INSERT and DELETE records from a target table.

2014-12-22

13,060 reads

External Article

Questions About T-SQL Transaction Isolation Levels You Were Too Shy to Ask

Every time you access a relational database to make a query, you have an important decision to make: What is the appropriate isolation level for your query? If you get this wrong, the consequences can be serious. Deadlocks, Dirty reads, Non-repeatable reads, or poor performance. We're in luck, because Robert Sheldon once more answers those questions that are awkward to ask in public.

2014-12-18

12,150 reads

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Question of the Day

String Similarity I

On SQL Server 2025, when I run this, what is returned? 

SELECT EDIT_DISTANCE_SIMILARITY('SQL Server', 'MySQL')

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