Hints Are Not Always Better
This week Steve Jones reminds us that improving performance in T-SQL is not always obvious. Those little nuggets of knowledge can be very handy, which is why you should be regularly looking to acquire more of them.
Negotiating Your Raise Before Your Annual Review
Today we have a guest editorial from Andy Warren. Andy talks about your annual review and how you might want to think about negotiating for a raise in advance.
PATINDEX Workbench
The PATINDEX function of SQL Server packs powerful magic, but it is easy to get it wrong. Phil Factor returns to the Workbench format to give a tutorial of examples, samples and cookbook ideas to demonstrate the ways that this underrated function can be of practical use. It is intended to be pasted into SSMS and used as a basis for experiment.
Upgrade Strategies for SQL Server 2008
If you make the decision to upgrade to 2008, there are a number of tools that make the process easier, but you still need to understand what things you should consider. We have a new article from Arshad Ali to help you understand the process and what you should consider.
Which Bugs Do You Find?
This Friday Steve Jones wonders what types of bugs you find in software. Are there more prevalent because of design or coding?
NewSQL: The Relational Model Meets Distributed Architectures
Research firm The 451 Group coins "NewSQL" to categorize a new breed of database designed for distributed environments -- like the cloud.
SQL Server Blocking Monitoring
Monitoring blocking can be problematic when you cannot catch it in the act. This article will show you an easy way to configure a SQL Server Profiler Trace to monitor blocking
The Three Percent Difference
Today we have a guest editorial from Andy Warren. Most people get an annual review that determines what their salary change might be for the next year. Does 3% make a difference? Andy Warren asks the question today.
Scaling Up Your Data Warehouse with SQL Server 2008 R2
SQL Server 2008 introduced many new functional and performance improvements for data warehousing, and SQL Server 2008 R2 includes all these and more. This paper discusses how to use SQL Server 2008 R2 to get great performance as your data warehouse scales up. We present lessons learned during extensive internal data warehouse testing on a 64-core HP Integrity Superdome during the development of the SQL Server 2008 release, and via production experience with large-scale SQL Server customers. Our testing indicates that many customers can expect their performance to nearly double on the same hardware they are currently using, merely by upgrading to SQL Server 2008 R2 from SQL Server 2005 or earlier, and compressing their fact tables. We cover techniques to improve manageability and performance at high-scale, encompassing data loading (extract, transform, load), query processing, partitioning, index maintenance, indexed view (aggregate) management, and backup and restore.
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