Generating Test Data: Part 1 - Generating Random Integers and Floats
Learn how you can easily generate large amounts of test data efficiently in this new series from Jeff Moden. Part 1 covers integers and floating point values.
Make Meetings Fun
Today we have a guest editorial from Andy Warren as Steve Jones is at SQL Server Connections. Today Andy talks about how we can make those dreaded daily events, meetings, better.
The Clonesome Database
You need a quiet couple of hours poking about with DMVs, and checking execution plans to get to the bottom of the a query issue, but you can't make a copy the production database either. It's too big, and the data is private....
Using SQL Server's Output Clause
When you are inserting, updating, or deleting records from a table, SQL Server keeps track of the records that are changed in two different pseudo tables: INSERTED, and DELETED. These tables are normally used in DML triggers. If you use the OUTPUT clause on an INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE or MERGE statement you can expose the records that go to these pseudo tables to your application and/or T-SQL code.
Dealing with custom date formats in T-SQL
Should I be formatting dates on the database side? What tools can I use in SQL Server to format and parse dates? This article helps you decide which one best suits your needs.
The Maintenance Poll
This Friday Steve Jones asks about maintenance. Do you have regular windows? Flex time? Or is maintenance just added on whenever it is needed and added onto your work week.
Creating a Map Report in SSRS - SQL Server 2008 R2
SQL Server 2008 R2 brought several new features into the SSRS (SQL Server Reporting Services) arena. In the data visualization category, we now have three additional ways to display and visualize/analyze data in the reports.
A Demo of the Power of Powershell
This demo will show you the how powerfull is powershell. We will use cicles and the get-content command.
A Personality Test
Today we have a guest editorial from Andy Warren as Steve Jones is on vacation. Today Andy talks about personality tests and what they might tell you about yourself.
Managing and Connecting to AlwaysOn Availability Groups
From the previous AlwaysOn Availability Group article, we provided a name for the availability group listener which is simply a unique DNS name as a Virtual Network Name (VNN) to direct read-write requests to the primary replica and read-only requests to the read-only secondary replica.
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