The Log Shipping Standard
Log shipping is a tool that has more benefits than just recovering from a major disaster. Steve Jones thinks this might be a tool that DBAs should use for all their critical databases.
SQL Server Geography Data Type
We are working on the migration to SQL Server 2008 and have geospatial data that we would like to move over as well. As part of our application we house information on locations across the globe. Which data type should we use?
Essential Software
For this Friday's poll, Steve Jones asks if there is a set of essential software that every DBA needs to have installed on their machine.
Retrieving Data from an Audit Table
This article examines the various methods for retrieving data from an Audit table.
SQL Server Intellisense VS. Red Gate SQL Prompt
Fabiano Amorim is hooked on today's Integrated Development Environments with built-in Intellisense, so he looked forward keenly to SQL Server 2008's native intellisense. He was disappointed at how it turned out, so turned instead to SQL Prompt. Fabiano explains why he prefers to SQL Prompt, why he reckons it fits in with the way that database developers work, and goes on to describe some of the features he'd like to see in it
Office Cleaning
A guest editorial from Andy Warren today looks at choices in time management, as well as work accomplished.
SQL Server 2008 Spatial Index Performance
The institution I work with has decided to migrate their database system to SQL Server 2008. One of the applications uses geospatial data, which consists of millions of rows. I understand that their are indexes that can be used for geospatial data, but have not worked with them. What's the scoop on them?
Date Manipulation with DATEADD/DATEDIFF
Learn how to use Dateadd/Datediff functions to manipulate dates in this short article from Seth Phelabaum.
Don’t Change Anything
Being responsible for data integrity as well as the cleaning of data can be a problem for an organization. Steve Jones reminds us today that we should be careful about changing the data we work with.
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