Upgrading Your Career
Certification is on Steve Jones' mind this week after quite a few training opportunities have popped up lately.
How to Document and Configure SQL Server Instance Settings
There are around seventy SQL Server instance settings, and a DBA needs to be aware of the effect that many of them have. Brad McGehee explains them in enough detail to help with most common configuration problems, and suggests some best practices.
Behemoths of the server room: An interview with Glenn Berry
At the last PASS summit, we cornered SQL Server MVP Glenn Berry, and found out his views on the impact of virtualization, solid state disks and SAN administrators on the life of a DBA, and what led him to write a book all about SQL Server Hardware.
Encryption in Production
This Friday Steve Jones wants to know if you are using encryption in your production system and if so, how is it working? Can you handle DR situations?
Relational Databases and Solid State Memory: An Opportunity Squandered?
The relational model was devised long before computer hardware was able to deliver an RDBMS that could deliver a fully normalized database with no performance deficit. Now, with reliable SSDs falling in price, we can reap the benefits, instead of getting distracted by NOSQL with its doubtful compromise of 'eventual consistency'.
API Changes
Steve Jones comments on predictions that we will see new types of APIs coming in the future, especially data APIs.
Query accounts, domain groups, and members who have admin membership.
This script leverages master.sys.server_principals and xp_logininfo to return accounts, domain groups, and members in a SQL Server admin fixed role.
Learn about SQL Server 2012 in the desert
Come see Brad McGehee, Grant Fritchey, Steve Jones, and more SQL Server speakers at the SQL Server Connections conference in Las Vegas this spring. Get away from the cold on Mar 26, 2011 and learn about the new version of SQL Server.
SQL Server 2008 and 2008 R2 Integration Services - Sort Transformation
SQL Server 2008 R2 Integration Services offer a wide range of pre-built components, which deliver generic functionality commonly required when performing extraction, transformation, and loading tasks. While most of them are fairly straightforward to deploy in their basic form, typically there are refinements or caveats that should be taken into account as part of their implementation. This principle becomes quite evident when considering use cases of Sort transformation, which is the subject of this article.
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