2021-08-23 (first published: 2018-04-23)
417 reads
Editorials
2021-08-21
411 reads
A New Community Summit
The PASS Data Community Summit is coming back this November, and it's free to attend.
2021-08-20
171 reads
Better SQL is a Good Career Investment
Today Steve notes that learning to be better at SQL is a good career investment, more for you than your boss.
2021-08-18
442 reads
The Slow Upgrade of SQL Server Versions
It seems that instances are being upgraded about every ten years, according to Steve's interpretation of some reports. Do you agree? Let us know how often you upgrade.
2021-08-16
350 reads
What Counts for a DBA: Skill
Practice makes perfect:” right? Well, not exactly. The reality of it all is that this saying is an untrustworthy aphorism. I discovered this in my “younger” days when I was a passionate tennis player, practicing and playing 20+ hours a week. No matter what my passion level was, without some serious coaching (and perhaps a […]
2021-08-14
279 reads
What's Important to Your Organization
Some organizations see their IT organization as an expense, and not as valuable as it might otherwise be. Steve has a few comments on why this might not be a good idea, or a good place to work.
2021-08-13
291 reads
Digitizing Construction
One of the more analog industries is embracing digital change faster and faster./
2021-08-11
301 reads
How Paranoid Are You About Backups?
Sometimes just running a backup isn't enough, especially in this era of ransomware. Steve has a few thoughts on backup strategies and recovery skills.
2021-08-09
442 reads
Celebrating Lives
Steve is asking for others to contribute to the sqlmemorial site for our #sqlfamily.
2021-08-06
285 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