State of the Business

External Article

SQL Server and .NET Training and Career Development

  • Article

In the past, it was common for an employer to work with their employees and pay to keep their skills current. While this still happens, in this age of high employee (and employer) turnover, many companies are more circumspect about how much they will spend to keep their employees keep up-to-date. At the end of the day, it is your responsibility to make sure this happens and there are many good reasons why you should strive to do so and many ways in which you can do it.

2006-03-09

3,546 reads

Technical Article

Loving to Hate the Data Administrator

  • Article

You can just hear it now: At the table down the hall, there’s a group of people having, (as it seems to you) yet another academic discussion on the merits of third-normal form and the structure of primary keys. You’ve heard many discussions like this before — it all seems so pointless. After all, doesn’t it just boil down to “create table” commands and a bunch of DDL? You mastered all that in your first DBA class. What could be so hard?

2005-10-31

3,688 reads

External Article

Software patents: stupid or insane?

  • Article

Lest the headline mislead you as to my biases, I consider software patents to be both stupid and insane. I raise this issue because it is currently rearing its ugly mug in the world of open source software, but it has affected much development in the proprietary worlds of Windows as well.

First of all, patent laws were created long ago, which is not to say the thinking was correct then either, but we have to recognize the intellectual and technological climate back then.

2005-09-09

2,760 reads

SQLServerCentral Article

Employee Retention

  • Article

A SQL Server DBA seems to be a stable job and many of us stick with the same job for an above average length of time. However employee retention in general is important to a strong and healthy company. Steve Jones starts a new series looking at this topic and why an employer might want to worry about retention.

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2005-07-27

12,919 reads

SQLServerCentral Article

Don't Get Left Behind

  • Article

Production DBAs may be a dying breed. At least according to some sources. While we're not sure that we agree with that, there is definitely a trend that should have you working on your career. The day of the DBA that only manages the operational data store is waning. Today's DBAs need to be flexible and have a number of other skills. Brian Knight looks at a few of the skills that you might to add to your arsenal to be prepared for the future of SQL Server.

4.33 (3)

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2004-05-21

10,937 reads

SQLServerCentral Article

Pro Developer : Throwing Money Out the Window

  • Article

It's common knowledge among programmers that most of the ills of the software industry, and most particularly the companies where we work, could be solved by simply letting the technical people make the technical decisions. Obviously, since this is so incredibly logical and sensible, it's a given that most companies leave management decisions to managers, and technical decisions to the computer guys.

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2002-12-18

3,422 reads

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Question of the Day

The Maximum Value in the Identity Column

I have a table with this data:

TravelLogID CityID StartDate  EndDate
1           1      2025-01-01 2025-01-06
2           2      2025-01-01 2025-01-06
3           3      2025-01-01 2025-01-06
4           4      2025-01-01 2025-01-06
5           5      2025-01-01 2025-01-06
I run this code:
SELECT IDENT_CURRENT('TravelLog')
I get the value 5 back. Now I do this:
SET IDENTITY_INSERT dbo.TravelLog ON
INSERT dbo.TravelLog
(
    TravelLogID,
CityID,
    StartDate,
    EndDate
)
VALUES
(25, 5, '2025-09-12', '2025-09-17')
SET IDENTITY_INSERT dbo.TravelLog OFF
I now run this code.
DBCC CHECKIDENT(TravelLog)
GO
INSERT dbo.TravelLog
(
    CityID,
    StartDate,
    EndDate
)
VALUES
(4, '2025-10-14', '2025-10-17')
GO
What is the value for TravelLogID for the row I inserted for CityID 4 and dates starting on 14 Oct 2025?  

See possible answers