Despite the neglect of the basic ODBC drivers over the years, they still afford a neat way of reading from, and writing to, CSV files; and to be able to do so in SQL as if they were tables is somewhat magical. Just to prove it is possible, Phil Factor creates a CSV version of AdventureWorks as a linked server.
Performance test of new SQL 2012 functions DateTimeFromParts and Format
Steve Jones attended a day out from the Red Gate offices recently and he talks about the value of those experiences.
I have data in a SQL Server database that I need to get to an older version of SQL Server. I tried the backup and restore method, but received an error indicating that this wasn't allowed. I also tried to detach and attach the database, but that operation failed too. I understand that typical methods I use to move the database around don't work when I have to work with an earlier SQL Server version. What can I do to get the data out? This is a simple database and I want to spend a minimal amount of effort.
Learn how you can set up a new SQL Server instance painlessly on Amazon's Relational Database Service (RDS)
Amazon now offers SQL Server 2008 R2 in their RDS service. It's an easy way to get working with SQL Server with a minimal investment.
Identify resource bottlenecks in a stressed transaction replication topology using PERFMON/PAL and system wait stats
SQL Server Reporting Services provides several ways to analyze the data; a few of them are creating reports with indicators and Gauges. Indicators are minimal gauges that convey the state of a single data value at a glance and are mostly used to represent the state value of Key Performance Indicator (KPI, a measurable value which has business significance with a specific target or goal that indicates whether things are going good or bad).
An outage at SQLServerCentral reminded Steve Jones that it's not "if" a disaster will occur, but "when" it will occur that should have you preparing for a disaster at some point in the future.
When writing T-SQL, a lot of developers use either COALESCE or ISNULL in order to provide a default value in cases where the input is NULL. The two functions do have quite different behavior and it is important to understand the qualitative differences between them when using them in your code.
By ReviewMyDB
Index maintenance has always meant nightly jobs and a window you have to defend....
I’m sure you’ve all heard the tale of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, but...
By Steve Jones
One of the things I’ve been requesting for a number of years is cost...
Comments posted to this topic are about the item SQL Art, Part 4: Happy...
Comments posted to this topic are about the item How We Handled a Vendor...
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Cognitive Coverage
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