Mala Mahadevan

My name is Malathi, a.k.a Mala - I am a DBA turned BI/Data Science person, working with SQL Server since 6.5. I am also founder of the Louisville SQL Server user group, organizer of 8 SQL Saturdays, Regional mentor for northeast, and 14-year PASS conference attendee. In my spare time I love to garden, travel, read, paint, and do yoga.

All authors

All authors

Blogs

The flight recorder: Replaying what an AI agent did on my SQL Server

By

“What exactly did it do on my server?” is the first question a DBA...

Announcements from the Microsoft Fabric Community Conference — Barcelona 2026

By

Microsoft shared a broad set of Fabric, Power BI, and SQL updates at FabCon...

Au Revoir for now

By

No, I’m not quitting or retiring. Just going on vacation, but I leave tonight...

Read the latest Blogs

Forums

Let's Talk Certifications

By Grant Fritchey

Comments posted to this topic are about the item Let's Talk Certifications

The Hidden Security Risks of Role Combination in SSAS Tabular

By Pablo Echeverria

Comments posted to this topic are about the item The Hidden Security Risks of...

The Empty Aggregate

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Comments posted to this topic are about the item The Empty Aggregate

Visit the forum

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]
GO
What 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