Share custom solutions in the MinionWare Community Zone
Since we released Minion Reindex over a year and a half ago, we’ve had a ton of wonderful feedback, praise, questions, and...
2016-06-07
633 reads
Jen McCown
Minion CheckDB Beta
Come meet Codex! We’ve had many of you asking to be part of the Minion CheckDB beta and now is...
2016-05-18
679 reads
See you Saturday in Houston!
Here’s your friendly neighborhood reminder to get free learnin’ at SQL Saturday Houston this weekend, where we’ll have the MinionWare booth, and sessions...
2016-05-12
522 reads
Easy SQL mistakes: Accidental Correlated Subquery
Just a fun note, because it was a moment of pure puzzlement for me. I’m writing a new SP for Minion Backup...
2016-04-25 (first published: 2016-04-18)
2,965 reads
XP_CmdShell isn’t Evil
Bonus summary: xp_cmdshell is limited to admins, unless you specifically grant permissions to users. And if you’re an admin, you have...
2016-04-14 (first published: 2016-04-09)
1,773 reads
Utility function: dbo.JobName(@job_id)
As often as I have to pull a job’s name based on its job_id in the MSDB system tables, I’m truly...
2016-04-08 (first published: 2016-03-28)
1,490 reads
Announcement: Backup(n.) vs Back Up(v.)
Let it be known that the word “backup” is a noun (it refers to a thing), and “back up” is a verb (it...
2016-04-07
525 reads
Catch The Enterprise Scripting Workshop in Orange County, Baton Rouge, Albany, or Atlanta this year!
Sean and I have put together our bazillion (read: like 30 combined) years of SQL Server DBA-ing into one big,...
2016-03-16
488 reads
Shrink a log file…AUTOMATICALLY?
Today let’s talk about shrinking log files, and Minion Backup – still totally & forever free – and how they go together. First...
2016-02-25 (first published: 2016-02-22)
2,635 reads
Well that’s just neat: Row Level Security, new in SQL Server 2016
SQL Server 2016 offers Row Level Security, which sounds awfully cool. It’s apparently been available in Azure for a while,...
2016-02-25
1,122 reads
Blogs
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