Design and Theory

Technical Article

The CEO’s Guide to The Top 5 Issues that Misguide Business Intelligenc

  • Article

When considering business intelligence (BI) software, it is essential to be aware of underlying issues that can seriously impact on your bottom line. In a country where most businesses have information stored in several different databases, it’s no secret that the BI strategy you choose will effect your profit and loss target. From data collection and integration to data analysis, the holy grail of Business Intelligence software combines your disparate databases to provide a decision support system that will enable you to make key conclusions using all of the available information.

2006-01-20

2,455 reads

Technical Article

THE ROLE OF DATA DICTIONARY

  • Article

IT leaders from enterprises around the world have realized that acquiring and implementing commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) application packages is a smarter thing to do, than the traditional approach of developing home-grown applications. This may not be the fit-for-all solution, but it makes sense from a cost, time to market and resource standpoint. Selection and acquisition of the software package is just the first step. How the software package brings value through successful implementation, is critical to the business. Internal groups as well as industry analysts will closely watch COTS package implementation in the organization.

★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

You rated this post out of 5. Change rating

2006-01-05

2,981 reads

Technical Article

Dimensional Modeling 101 - Time vs Date

  • Article

When most DW designers begin developing a data warehouse, the Time dimension is the first dimension reviewed with the users. There are usually two or three different persectives on what the Time dimension should represent but, for the most part, it will be used for such calculations as Year-to-date Sales, Monthly Inventory Churn, etc. What most users are actually describing is a Date, or Calendar dimension.

★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

You rated this post out of 5. Change rating

2005-10-04

2,698 reads

Blogs

The flight recorder: Replaying what an AI agent did on my SQL Server

By

“What exactly did it do on my server?” is the first question a DBA...

Announcements from the Microsoft Fabric Community Conference — Barcelona 2026

By

Microsoft shared a broad set of Fabric, Power BI, and SQL updates at FabCon...

Au Revoir for now

By

No, I’m not quitting or retiring. Just going on vacation, but I leave tonight...

Read the latest Blogs

Forums

Let's Talk Certifications

By Grant Fritchey

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

By Pablo Echeverria

Comments posted to this topic are about the item The Hidden Security Risks of...

The Empty Aggregate

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Comments posted to this topic are about the item The Empty Aggregate

Visit the forum

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