Read from the Right End of the Index: BACKWARD Scans
Optimizing queries is the most fun when you don’t need to add indexes. There’s nothing quite so nice as finding...
Help Us Help You
SQLServerCentral has a new place for discussions and Steve Jones hopes you use it. It's a forum built for critiquing and discussion the presentations that the SQL Server community shares with each other.
Is hyper-threading still relevant for SQL Server?
There still seems to be a lot of fear, uncertainty and doubt, in the community, with regard to use of Hyper-threading (HT) with SQL Server workloads. So, how and when should it be used?
TSQL Challenge 48 - Parse and evaluate Arithmetic Expressions using TS
This challenge is to parse and evaluate arithmetic expressions using TSQL.
Another Example of CPU Throttling Due to Balanced Power Plan in Windows Server 2008 R2
Here is another example CPU throttling from someone who had a server running with the default “Balanced” Power Plan in...
BIT of a Problem
The BIT data type is an awkward fit for a SQL database. It doesn't have just two values, and it can do unexpected things in expressions. What is worse, it is a flag rather than a predicate, and so its overuse, along with bit masks, is a prime candidate for being listed as a 'SQL Code Smell'. Joe Celko makes the case.
You Need Two SLAs for Disaster Recovery
Continuing on with my MCM prep, I was listening to the High Availability/DR prep module today and I was once...
Changing the Past
This Friday Steve Jones explores archived data. Can you restate past results or change old data? This week Steve Jones asks how data professionals feel about this and what guidance they give to their customers.
31 Days of SSIS – Environmental Variable(17/31)
31 Days of SSIS
It’s time to go back to discussing the environment when it comes to SSIS packages. For the...
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