Dreaming of Windows
This week Steve Jones dreams about the changes he would like to see in the next version of Windows, unveiled this past week at the Microsoft Build Conference.
Intertia
This editorial was originally published on August 22, 2006. Steve Jones looks at the pace of change in companies and notes it ought to be dictated by the business, not IT.
TSQL Challenge 65 - Solving the Running Total Problem
This challenge invites you to solve one of the most common calculation challenges seen in applications that deal with financial -transactions.
Come to the Charleston PASS SQL Server User Group
The Charleston, SC PASS chapter is looking for speakers and new members. Read more and come to the Sept 20 meeting if you are near the area.
Storing Windows Event Viewer Output in a SQL Server table with PowerShell
Laerte Junior was asked for a quick and easy way to save the output from the Get-EventLog cmdlet in a SQL Server table. Luckily, he already knew about Chad Miller's excellent Out-DataTable and Write-DataTable functions, and has laid out everything we need to use them like pros.
Dotted Line Relationships Are Everywhere – Get Good at Them!
Today we have a guest editorial from Andy Warren. Andy talks about the relationships we have at work with our management and how sometimes the indirect reports are hard to deal with.
Are you using Microsoft’s Azure platform?
We are conducting new product research and are keen to speak to people who have any experience (good or bad!) using Microsoft's SQL or Windows Azure. If you're interested and would like to get involved--tell us your frustrations, shape a new product, test-drive betas etc
Statistics on Ascending Columns
It comes as rather a shock to find out that one of the commonest circumstances in an OLTP database, an ascending primary key with most querying on the latest records, can throw the judgement of the Query Optimiser to the extent that perfomance nose-dives. Fabiano Amorim once again dons snorkel and goggles to explore the murky depths of execution plans to find out why.
Cloud Common Sense
Moving to the cloud, or any other type of outsourcing should be done with common sense, as Steve discusses today. That means keeping control of your backups.
Blogs
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...
Monday Monitor Tips: Virtual Machine Usage and Cost
By Steve Jones
One of the things I’ve been requesting for a number of years is cost...
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