Happy Memorial Day 2012
It's Memorial Day in the US and Steve out is paying tribute to our soldiers and cutting grass on the tractor. He's left you a blooper reel to enjoy.
To Specialize or Not to Specialize: that is the $132,000 Question
In a guest editorial, Rodney Landrum reflects on his career path as a an information-hungry generalist.
Simple step by step process to import MS Access data into SQL Server using SSIS
Sometimes we need to import information from MS Access. We could use the Microsoft SQL Server Migration Assistant, but sometimes we need to add custom transformations and it is necessary to use more sophisticated tools. In this tip, we are going to walk through step by step how to migrate a MS Access table to SQL Server using SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS).
A Break from Data
This Friday, before the Memorial Day holiday in the US, Steve Jones wants to know how you would spend your break from work.
The User Defined Server Roles in SQL Server 2012
This article describes how to create user defined server roles and use stored procedures and queries related.
Backups, What Are They Good For?
We've heard the confessional story from Pixar that Toy Story 2 was almost lost due to a bad backup, but sometimes there is no 'almost'. Grant Fritchey casts a sympathetic eye over some catastrophic data losses, and gives advice on how to avoid what he has termed an RGE (résumé generating event).
Making New Infrastructure Investments
One of the areas where the cloud may have the most impact is with new infrastructure improvements. Steve Jones talks about a few companies that are using the cloud in different ways.
SQL Server 2012 Integration Services - Package and Project Parameters
In SQL Server 2012, Microsoft introduced SQL Server Data Tools to accommodate the dynamic nature of SSIS constructs in the form of package and project parameters. This approach lets you combine multi-package projects into a single unit, eliminating the possibility of breaking dependencies between parent and child packages during subsequent deployments.
Work around for calculating age using the SQL Server DateDiff function
Have you ever wanted to compute age, but the results from the DATEDIFF function seemed to be wrong some of the time? This tip covers why the DATEDIFF function does not always reliably compute age.
New features in SQL 2012, the contained database
This article describe the problems about the migration of the databases and logins and the new feature contained databases
Blogs
No Shortcuts for the SQLCMD Batch Terminator: #SQLNewBlogger
By Steve Jones
I was messing around with SQLCMD and I realized something I hadn’t known. I’ve...
Where Is My SQL Agent? Running Scheduled Jobs Against Azure SQL Database
By gbargsley
One of the first things I review when I inherit a new SQL Server...
AgentDBA vs Critical SQL Server
By Arun Sirpal
It’s 07:43. Someone’s already left a message. “Something’s wrong with the DB server.” You...
Forums
Increment a number in a SQL Query based on a value
I have an issue where I have a Bill of Material list of items...
Follow Your Hunch
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Follow Your Hunch
What Happens When You Ask a Local AI to Query Your Database?
Comments posted to this topic are about the item What Happens When You Ask...
Question of the Day
Detecting Characters
I have a SQL Server 2022 English default installation on a server. I want to detect if there are any upper case characters in rows and I have this code:
SELECT CustomerNameID,
CustomerName
FROM dbo.CustomerName
WHERE CustomerName = LOWER(CustomerName)
Here is the sample data I am testing with:
CustomerNameID CustomerName 1 John Smith 2 Sarah Johnson 3 MICHAEL WILLIAMS 4 JENNIFER BROWN 5 david jones 6 emily davis 7 Robert Miller 8 LISA WILSON 9 christopher moore 10 Amanda TaylorHow many rows are returned? See possible answers