Advent of Code
If you want your skills to be sharp, you practice. If you want to get yourself to actually do practice, you call it a “challenge”. This is what the...
2015-12-23
29 reads
Simple SQL Server
Use Compression to Combine Data Quality and Performance
We’ve been using the wrong data types for all the wrong reasons. DBAs, developers, data architects, etc. have all been...
2015-12-21
991 reads
Indexing Strategy
What do I care about when I’m playing with indexes? That’s easy. I want as few indexes as possible efficiently referenced...
2015-12-28 (first published: 2015-12-16)
3,552 reads
Picking a Clustered Index
A Clustered Index is not another term for Primary Key, and more thought should be put into the key columns...
2015-12-16 (first published: 2015-12-14)
2,592 reads
Data Compression
Data compression is often misunderstood to cost CPU in exchange for smaller size on disk. Somewhat true, but that simple...
2015-12-08
1,150 reads
Querying the Plan Cache
I love working with indexes, and I need to know what’s using them to work on them intelligently. Most of...
2015-12-08 (first published: 2015-12-01)
2,020 reads
SQL Server Error Log Reader
Reading the SQL Server Error Log is miserable. It contains very useful information you should address as soon as possible,...
2015-11-16
709 reads
Give More Feedback
I write on my blog and get a couple comments at best. I talk at conferences and a large part of...
2015-11-06 (first published: 2015-11-02)
652 reads
Extended Events Intro
Extended Events is supposed to be taking over for most of Profiler and server-side tracing functionality, but there were people...
2015-10-26
1,612 reads
Technical Interviews – How to Thrive
There’s a trick to technical interviews. Every question is looking for integrity first, and intelligence and energy second. This is...
2014-05-23 (first published: 2014-05-13)
2,788 reads
Blogs
The flight recorder: Replaying what an AI agent did on my SQL Server
By Arun Sirpal
“What exactly did it do on my server?” is the first question a DBA...
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