I am no Asimov
Rodney Landrum on finding the inspiration you need, somehow and from somewhere, to get yourself out of a tight corner.
2014-09-29
131 reads
Editorials
Testing in Production
The Apple fall keynote recently didn't work as planned, and it seems as though their systems weren't tested well enough.
2014-09-23
216 reads
Automate Yourself to a Coffee Break
A DBA should be working to automate their tasks, and find time to do things that are really important. Like keeping their coffee cup topped off 🙂
2014-09-22
301 reads
Watson Freemium
IBM has released a free version of its Watson service to help people perform analytics on their data.
2014-09-22
116 reads
No Compelling Reason
Steve Jones wants to know if you have compelling reasons to upgrade or not upgrade this week.
2014-09-19
127 reads
The 10 (.5) Commandments for IT Professionals
A list of the commandments, or at least suggestions, that Simon Holzman sees as important for IT professionals.
2014-09-18
512 reads
A Dearth of Comments
Steve Jones talks about one of the least favorite things for IT people: documentation. How much do you really need to do?
2014-09-17 (first published: 2009-01-05)
533 reads
The Need for Auditing
Is C2 auditing widely used? Should it be more widely used? Steve Jones talks about the subject of auditing in today's editorial.
2014-09-16 (first published: 2008-12-08)
667 reads
Swallowing the Camel
There is a paradox in the nature of the abstractions that many developers want when dealing with databases. They will strain at the gnat, but swallow a camel (Matthew 23:24). Whereas they will recoil with horror when a DBA suggests that an abstraction layer based on views, functions and procedures in a separate database schema […]
2014-09-15
190 reads
The Ten Commandments for DBAs
What should a good DBA do? Steve Jones came across a list he likes that showcases those things that should guide your efforts on a daily basis.
2014-09-15
413 reads
Blogs
Automatic Index Compaction
By ReviewMyDB
Index maintenance has always meant nightly jobs and a window you have to defend....
The Goldilocks problem – Materialized Views
I’m sure you’ve all heard the tale of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, but...
Monday Monitor Tips: Virtual Machine Usage and Cost
By Steve Jones
One of the things I’ve been requesting for a number of years is cost...
Forums
SQL Art, Part 4: Happy 4th of July — A British DBA's Guide to Celebrating a War We Don't Talk About
Comments posted to this topic are about the item SQL Art, Part 4: Happy...
How We Handled a Vendor Retry That Loaded Twice in Snowflake
Comments posted to this topic are about the item How We Handled a Vendor...
Cognitive Coverage
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Cognitive Coverage
Question of the Day
Getting the Average
I have this data in the dbo.Commission table in a SQL Server 2022 database.
salesperson commission Brian 12 Brian 16 Andy 7 Andy 14 Andy 21 Steve 20 Steve NULLAll the data is a varchar, and I decide to run this query to get the totals for each salesperson.
SELECT SalesPerson
, AVG(TRY_PARSE(Commission AS int)) AS TotalCommission
FROM commission
GROUP BY SalesPerson
GO
What average commission is calculated for Steve? See possible answers