Down Tools Week
Sometimes it's important for a developer or DBA to be given the opportunity to 'shake up their brain'. What falls out is almost always worth having.
2010-04-05
298 reads
Tony Davis
- Interests: football, modern literature, real ale
Double-Entry Bookkeeping for SQL Programmers
All defensive programmers should, in general, avoid unsupported techniques. However, there is a balance to be struck between adherence to 'best practice' approaches to SQL programming, and the need to get the job done. Perhaps certain critical code would benefit from use of the age-old practice of double entry bookkeeping?
2010-03-22
992 reads
Democratizing the Microsoft MVP Award
Tony Davis believes that it's time for a little more openness and democracy in the MVP award. In short, it's time to introduce community voting.
2010-02-08
144 reads
How Oslo can you go?
Some developers have reacted with dismay to the recent news that Microsoft’s Oslo project is being integrated into the SQL Server platform and renamed SQL Server Modeling. The overwhelming feeling seems to be that their DSL dream is being snatched away.
2009-11-30
96 reads
A Wish list for the Microsoft Flying Squad
Microsoft is very willing to lend its ear to new feature requests, but sometimes forgets to finish off the ones we've got.
2009-10-19
61 reads
DBAs and the Fear of Maintenance Plans
The Maintenance Plan wizard offers a quick and simple route to make sure essential database maintenance tasks are performed and scheduled. However, it needs to be used with a lot of care, and is no substitute for the judgment, experience and common sense of a flesh and blood DBA.
2009-10-05
383 reads
Did Oracle buy MySQL by accident?
The wording of the statement about MySQL that came out from Oracle after the merger was downbeat. The implication was "Oh no! Another Blooming Database to deal with". But surely they don't plan to just let it drift?
2009-08-17
352 reads
Music for DBAs
Tony Davis explains his theory on why developers and DBAs listen to very different types of music, while working, and offers his list of "classic tracks" for all DBAs.
2009-07-07
325 reads
The Busman's Holiday
It's a holiday weekend, but for some DBA's it's hard to escape the unwanted clutches of IT...
2009-07-06
82 reads
What is the Best Way to Test SQL?
Over the past five or so years, encouraging progress has been made with regard to testing .NET application code...I wish I could say that the same progress had been made with testing SQL.
2009-07-01
554 reads
Blogs
AI Helps Me with My Sloppiness
By Steve Jones
I type fairly well. Well, I type fast, but I do wear out a...
Automatic Index Compaction
By ReviewMyDB
Index maintenance has always meant nightly jobs and a window you have to defend....
The Goldilocks problem – Materialized Views
I’m sure you’ve all heard the tale of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, but...
Forums
SQL Art, Part 4: Happy 4th of July — A British DBA's Guide to Celebrating a War We Don't Talk About
Comments posted to this topic are about the item SQL Art, Part 4: Happy...
How We Handled a Vendor Retry That Loaded Twice in Snowflake
Comments posted to this topic are about the item How We Handled a Vendor...
Cognitive Coverage
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Cognitive Coverage
Question of the Day
Getting the Average
I have this data in the dbo.Commission table in a SQL Server 2022 database.
salesperson commission Brian 12 Brian 16 Andy 7 Andy 14 Andy 21 Steve 20 Steve NULLAll the data is a varchar, and I decide to run this query to get the totals for each salesperson.
SELECT SalesPerson
, AVG(TRY_PARSE(Commission AS int)) AS TotalCommission
FROM commission
GROUP BY SalesPerson
GO
What average commission is calculated for Steve? See possible answers