The case for "Understanding our business" training
Today we have a guest editorial reminding us that business knowledge is important, and we could all use some training.
2025-11-19
181 reads
David Poole
- Interests: Badminton, Cycling and Music. Keen piano player.
Why Standards are Important
There is something in the tech mindset that simultaneously loves and loathes a standard. Having standards is important, what those standards are is less so.
2025-01-22
2,439 reads
An introduction to Terraform
As a Data Engineer I found myself having to learn rather more about cloud infrastructure than I had expected.
2024-12-02
3,837 reads
NOSQL and RDBMSs
NOSQL and RDBMS are evolving and absorbing ideas from each other. Is this necessarily a good thing? Perhaps we should think again
2024-06-14 (first published: 2015-08-27)
923 reads
JQ - Tool for Querying JSON documents using the CLI
Learn how you can query JSON data from a CLI to check it before importing the data into a database.
2024-02-16
8,716 reads
Managing Change
Time has brought clarity for changes which could and should have been provided by its instigators. We compare a change where clarity was sought to those that were chaotic and the approaches that were taken at their two poles.
2023-08-16
1,544 reads
Using pre-commit to prevent simple mistakes
Git hooks are a useful way of triggering code quality scripts. The pre-commit tool provides us with a way of doing this and tapping into the huge library of scripts already in existence to ensure our code complies with general linting and formatting good practice.
2023-01-13
6,744 reads
Design your systems and processes for auditability
I have worked in more than one regulated industry, and since the banking crisis of 2008, I have witnessed a sea change in the approach to regulation. The UK Financial Services Authority (FSA) was seen to be a toothless tiger. The UK government replaced the FSA with two separate bodies, each with its own more […]
2021-10-25
1,641 reads
PostGres and SQL Server - Divided by a common language
A few lessons from a SQL Server DBA that is working on PostgreSQL. David Poole tells us where the similarities in the platforms can cause problems.
2021-07-30
4,117 reads
Documentation. The Under Recognised Skill
Documentation may not be something we aspire to do, but it is a valuable skill.
2021-04-30
483 reads
Blogs
The flight recorder: Replaying what an AI agent did on my SQL Server
By Arun Sirpal
“What exactly did it do on my server?” is the first question a DBA...
Announcements from the Microsoft Fabric Community Conference — Barcelona 2026
By James Serra
Microsoft shared a broad set of Fabric, Power BI, and SQL updates at FabCon...
Au Revoir for now
By Steve Jones
No, I’m not quitting or retiring. Just going on vacation, but I leave tonight...
Forums
Let's Talk Certifications
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Let's Talk Certifications, which is...
The Hidden Security Risks of Role Combination in SSAS Tabular
Comments posted to this topic are about the item The Hidden Security Risks of...
The Empty Aggregate
Comments posted to this topic are about the item The Empty Aggregate
Question of the Day
The Empty Aggregate
I have this table in a SQL Server 2025 database:
CREATE TABLE [dbo].[CustomerOrder] ( [OrderID] [int] NULL, [CustomerID] [int] NULL, [total] [money] NULL ) ON [PRIMARY] GOWhat is returned from this code? (answers are for the sum and then the count)
SELECT SUM(total) AS sum,
COUNT(total) AS count
FROM dbo.CustomerOrder;
See possible answers