Roland Alexander was an application developer for the first half of his 20+ year career in IT – then he came over to the Dark Side of SQL Server development, and is now diving headfirst into the deep end of the DBA pool. This blog is about his observations, discoveries, trials, and tribulations, and he hopes you enjoy reading it, learn a thing or two, and (hopefully) teach him a thing or two while you’re at it.

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How to Clear the SSMS Cache (SSMS 21 and Later)

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How to Clear the SSMS Cache (SSMS 21 and Later) Updated...

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

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

Announcements from the Microsoft Fabric Community Conference — Barcelona 2026

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

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Let's Talk Certifications

By Grant Fritchey

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The Hidden Security Risks of Role Combination in SSAS Tabular

By Pablo Echeverria

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The Empty Aggregate

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

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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;

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