The Dangers of Dependencies
Single points of failure are bad, but what if an employee's action is the single point of failure for access to services? That would be a bad day for any organization.
SQL Server Table-Valued Parameter Join Issues in Stored Procedures
Learn how table valued parameter joins in SQL Server stored procedures can negatively impact query performance.
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What is New in SQL Server 2025
Learn about the latest version of SQL Server and get help installing it on your system.
How to pass Microsoft certification exams: tips and guidance
In my previous article, I discussed how to prepare for Microsoft certification exams. In this article, I’m covering what you should do when actually taking the exams.
What Are You Waiting For?
This editorial discusses how to help others take their first step into contributing to the community
A Tool is Better than a Script
Tools are important to DBAs, but they need to be reliable, both in what they do, and how they work.
Understanding Deadlock Victim Selection in SQL Server
A short introduction to how deadlocks work and how you can affect their behavior inside your system.
Blogs
AI Helps Me with My Sloppiness
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Automatic Index Compaction
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Index maintenance has always meant nightly jobs and a window you have to defend....
The Goldilocks problem – Materialized Views
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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