Fix Failures Fast
A new study from Microsoft Research looks at failures in PCs. Steve Jones thinks there are a few things worth talking about for DBAs.
Generating Non-uniform Random Numbers with SQL
Some FUNCTIONs to help generate non-uniform random numbers from uniform random numbers including Normal, Multinomial, etc.
Email Job Failures Report to DBA using PowerShell
MySQL introduced its own brand of job scheduling, called Events, in version 5.1. However, some Database Administrators (DBAs) feel that it isn't quite ready for prime time. This article presents a hybrid solution that uses MySQL Event Scheduling to manage the batch jobs and Windows PowerShell for the error handling.
Security and Honesty
Today Steve Jones talks security and the need for us to share information about issues, especially those that impact security.
Using a PowerShell Script to delete old files for SQL Server
Many clients are using custom stored procedures or third party tools to backup databases in production environments instead of using database maintenance plans. One of the things that you need to do is to maintain the number of backup files that exist on disk, so you don't run out of disk space. There are several techniques for deleting old files, but in this tip I show how this can be done using PowerShell.
SQL Server 2012 - New Service Broker Features
SQL Server 2012 came with bells and whistles for service broker, that give you plenty reasons to start using service broker in your applications.
The High Availability Poll
Most customers and clients wants highly available systems, with 100% uptime if possible. However most don't want to pay for them, and eventually tolerate some outages to keep costs down. This Friday, Steve Jones asks what is your environment like.
Password Help
Passwords control most of our access to computer systems and provide some level of authentication, but their security depends heavily on their strength and privacy. Steve Jones says you can set a good example for others and hemp improve security on all systems.
Transaction Replication Publisher failover to Mirror
Transaction Replication Publisher failover/failback to mirror standby with automatic redirection of the subscriber and client application.
Blogs
AI Helps Me with My Sloppiness
By Steve Jones
I type fairly well. Well, I type fast, but I do wear out a...
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...
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