Steve Jones

My background is I have been working with computers since I was about 12. My first "career" job in this industry was with network administration where I became the local DBA by default. I have also spent lots of time administering Netware and NT networks, developing software, managing smaller IT groups, making lots of coffee, ordering pizza for late nights, etc., etc.

I currently am the editor of SQL Server Central and an advocate/architect at Redgate Software. I am also the President of SQL Saturday, maintain the T-SQL Tuesday monthly party, and remember our colleagues at sqlmemorial.org.

You can find out more about me on my blog (www.voiceofthedba.com) or LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com/in/way0utwest)
  • Interests: yoga, reading, biking, snowboarding, volleyball

SQLServerCentral Editorial

Opening Day

Today is the opening day for the PASS conference here in Denver and it's kind of exciting. As many of you read this, I've hopefully gotten Simon Galbraith, owner of Red Gate software, and my boss, out here at the ranch shoveling manure. He's anxious to get on the ATV for a ride, so maybe I can work out a deal to reduce my workload šŸ™‚

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2007-09-18

133 reads

SQLServerCentral Editorial

Oh Lawd, it's the end of the world

There have been some strange things that have happened in this world that I would never have expected. The Red Sox winning the World Series, Macs with Intel processors, and are things I never thought I'd see. But none of the them seems as strange as this to me.

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2007-09-17

412 reads

SQLServerCentral Editorial

Unethical or Just Sneaky

One of the fundamental rules of a stable, controlled production system is that you apply updates singly, after they've been tested, and you document the change. This way you can ensure that if a problem occurs, you can do some backtracking to see what might have caused instability.

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2007-09-17

1,223 reads

SQLServerCentral Editorial

What's an Outage?

I caught this quote from Microsoft Watch, and thought it was very interesting. It definitely addresses an issue I've wondered about for some time. It talks about the WGA server issues and had this great quote from the WGA Product Manager:

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2007-09-14

127 reads

SQLServerCentral Editorial

Recruiters

Do you like recruiters? Do you use them? It's almost impossible not to use them these days when looking for a job. So many of the listings on online job boards are from recruiters and many have deals to place people, so chances are you'll at least deal with on even if they don't get you a job.

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2007-09-13

195 reads

SQLServerCentral Editorial

What Could Go Wrong?

It's the law of unintended consequences: things happening that you don't expect from a seemingly unrelated area. This article talks about a data center having leaks from carpet cleaning above. The concrete floor had aged and the carpet cleaners dumped water on the carpet to soak it through and it leaked. I'm not sure how people have data centers below office floors, but I know I've had a number of them at different companies where I've worked.

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2007-09-12

164 reads

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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;



See possible answers