My latest presentations
I frequently present at user groups, and always try to create a brand new presentation to keep things interesting. We...
2016-03-29
911 reads
James Serra's Blog
Data loading into Azure SQL Data Warehouse
Azure SQL Data Warehouse (SQL DW) is a new platform-as-a service (PaaS) that distributes workloads across multiple compute resources, called massively parallel processing (MPP)....
2016-03-23
603 reads
Microsoft Azure Government
I’m sure you are aware of Microsoft Azure, but are you aware there is special version of Azure for U.S....
2016-03-15
700 reads
SQL Server on Linux!
Looks outside: pigs are flying!
In an announcement yesterday, SQL Server will be made available on Linux. The private preview of...
2016-03-08
905 reads
Cross-database queries in Azure SQL Database
A limitation with Azure SQL database has been its inability to do cross-database SQL queries. This has changed with the...
2016-03-02
693 reads
HP Superdome X for high-end OLTP/DW
No, Superdome X is not the name of the stadium where they played in the last Super Bowl. Rather, Superdome...
2016-02-25 (first published: 2016-02-24)
1,289 reads
Azure SQL Database security
Life we be so much easier if we could just trust everyone, but since we can’t we need solid security...
2016-02-17
967 reads
Azure SQL Database monitoring
Even though an Azure SQL Database stores all data on the Azure cloud, it does not mean that your options for managing...
2016-02-10
753 reads
Scaling Azure SQL Database
One of the advantages Azure SQL Database has over on-prem SQL Server is the ease in which it can scale. I’ll...
2016-02-03
785 reads
Microsoft Azure Stack in Preview!
Microsoft made available the first technical preview of its new Microsoft Azure Stack offering today. It was announced last week. Azure...
2016-02-09 (first published: 2016-02-01)
1,879 reads
Blogs
Identity Columns Can’t Be Updated: #SQLNewBlogger
By Steve Jones
I’m not sure I knew identity column values could not be updated. I ran...
Rolling Back a Broken Release
By Steve Jones
We had an interesting discussion about deployments in databases and how you go forward...
A bespoke reporting solution doesn’t have to cost the earth
By ChrisJenkins
You could be tolerating limited reporting because there isn’t an off the shelf solution...
Forums
Can someone please explain what happens?
I have mentioned this several times over several years. Can someone please help me...
SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT) returns null when nothing is found instead of 0
SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT Component) AS Found FROM tblComponents WHERE(Component NOT LIKE '%[a-z]%') AND(LTRIM(RTRIM(Component)) = 'GM13622')...
Remotely Engineer Fabric Lakehouse objects: The Fabric Modern Data Platform
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Remotely Engineer Fabric Lakehouse objects:...
Question of the Day
Creating JSON III
In a SQL Server 2025 table, called Beer, I have this data:
BeerIDBeerName 1Becks 2Fat Tire 3Mac n Jacks 4Alaskan Amber 8KirinI run this code:
SELECT JSON_OBJECTAGG(
BeerID: BeerName )
FROM beer;
What are the results? See possible answers