PowerShell is a powerful scripting tool that allows you to automate routine tasks, and script administrative tasks, allowing you to automate a lot of the routine work in a SQL environment. Ben Miller's Stairway Series introduces PowerShell from the beginning, guiding you through how to configure and get started with the framework before working towards more advanced scripting.
2012-06-14
12,146 reads
The SQL language has developed many dialects over the years, with MySQL, PostgreS and Oracle all popular extensions of the core language. This Stairway Series gives an overview of how SQL dialects formed and looks at some of the most commonly-used dialects in detail.
2012-04-13
1,297 reads
Data Analysis Expressions (DAX) can be used in formulas or expressions to calculate and return information from data already in our Power BI models. This Stairway series serves as a progressive introduction to DAX within the context of Power BI, examining the functions, operators and values involved, and examining their operation in practice examples. As a part of introducing DAX functions and overall capabilities, the Levels of the series will also offer a wealth of practical exposure to Power BI features as a part of putting DAX to work in our data models and visualizations.
2024-01-16 (first published: 2011-08-09)
19,590 reads
When things are going well, there is no need to be particularly conscious of what the transaction log does or how it works. You just need to be confident that every database has the correct backup regime in place. When things go wrong, an understanding of the transaction log is important for taking corrective action, particularly when a point-in-time restore of a database is required, urgently! Tony Davis gives just the right level of detail that every DBA should know.
2011-05-19
5,755 reads
IT projects can hit problems that turn out to be due to an insufficient understanding of the basic data and data-types, rather than the database design. It is a sorely neglected topic that might seem to be trivial, but certainly isn't. The DBA, with a broad perspective on corporate data can do a great deal to help application developers to avoid the common mistakes that so often happen, and Joe Celko's Stairway gives the busy IT professional a crash course to understanding the nature of the data being processed.
2019-03-26 (first published: 2011-04-07)
4,981 reads
A series by Joe Celko that examines the craft of designing a database to meet your needs.
2010-12-06
12,942 reads
By Steve Jones
I had a customer ask about analyzing their Test Data Manager (TDM) usage to...
By Steve Jones
I had an idea for an animated view of a sales tool, and started...
Next Monday, February 9, 2026, my one-day live online training SQL Server Query Tuning...
Think there's a reason why this is still in preview, but have someone manage...
Comments posted to this topic are about the item SQL Server 2025 Query Performance...
This is a generic question. To the moderators, I wasn't sure where to place...
On SQL Server 2025, what happens when I run this code:
SELECT JSON_OBJECTAGG( 'City':'Denver') GOSee possible answers