Encryption and Data Protection Regulation
One of the reasons you may be considering encryption is due to the relevant data protection regulation: either because the regulation specifies that data should be encrypted or because...
2022-12-07
27 reads
Types of data consulting engagements and what you can expect from them
There are multiple ways organizations can engage with a data (DBA/analytics/data architect/ML/etc.) consultant. The type of engagement you choose affects the pace and deliverables of the project, and the...
2022-12-26 (first published: 2022-12-06)
224 reads
T-SQL Tuesday #157 – “End of Year Activity”
Welcome to the final T-SQL Tuesday for 2022. My ask is, what do you have planned for end-of-year activities for your SQL environment? Do you have annual processes or...
2022-12-06
24 reads
Daily Coping 6 Dec 2022
Today’s coping tip is to find a new way to tell someone you appreciate them. My daughter is away at school, but she has a prescription that is still...
2022-12-06
15 reads
What’s next: Job search burnout
I was given 4.5 months notice this past June and was fortunate to find a new job. I blogged about ... Continue reading
2022-12-06
34 reads
InvalidAbfsRestOperationException in Azure Synapse notebook
Problem The first issue that developers in my team noticed was when they tried to create database with Spark: Error message: org.apache.spark.sql.AnalysisException: org.apache.hadoop.hive.ql.metadata.HiveException: MetaException(meesage: Got exception: org.apache.hadoop.fs.azurebfs.contracts.exceptions.InvalidAbfsRestOperationException Status code:...
2022-12-05
29 reads
InvalidAbfsRestOperationException in Azure Synapse notebook
Problem The first issue that developers in my team noticed was when they tried to create database with Spark: Error message: org.apache.spark.sql.AnalysisException: org.apache.hadoop.hive.ql.metadata.HiveException: MetaException(meesage: Got exception: org.apache.hadoop.fs.azurebfs.contracts.exceptions.InvalidAbfsRestOperationException Status code:...
2022-12-05
471 reads
What do we want to achieve by encrypting our data?
On the face of it, this is a very obvious question with a very obvious answer. We want to prevent data from falling into the wrong hands. In practice,...
2022-12-05
24 reads
Daily Coping 5 Dec 2022
Today’s coping tip is to look for new reasons to be hopeful, even in tough times. My life is pretty amazing most of the time. There are some stressful...
2022-12-05
17 reads
Speaking at SQLSaturday MN 2022
Thanks all for joining me for two sessions at SQLSaturday Minnesota 2023, and for great feedback and questions. I'm always a big supporter of SQLSaturday events whenever I can...
2022-12-04 (first published: 2022-12-03)
34 reads
Blogs
A Last Minute Trip to the EU
By Steve Jones
My life has some crazy travel stretches for sure. Between speaking, office visits, customer...
Part 3 of 3: Tuning DiskANN — R, Alpha, L, Beam Width, Recall and Latency
In Part 1, we saw how ‘Vamana’ represents vectors as nodes, connects them with...
Automated SQL Server Benchmarking with HammerDB and Docker: A Complete Testing Framework
I’m excited to announce the release of a new open-source project that fully automates...
Forums
Optional Parameter Plan Optimization in SQL Server 2025: Fixing the Kitchen-Sink Search Procedure
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Optional Parameter Plan Optimization in...
AI Experience Gap that we keep talking about
Comments posted to this topic are about the item AI Experience Gap that we...
Question of the Day
ORDER BY alias
There is a table tmp_tab:
CREATE TABLE tmp_tab ( id int, val int );
INSERT INTO tmp_tab VALUES (1, 1), (2, NULL), (3, 3), (4, 4), (5, 5);You want to order the rows ids by the following expression:
ISNULL(val, id) + 1Which of the following queries produces the expected ordering and why? (Select all correct) See possible answers