What Do You Include in Your Database Maintenance Plans?
A guest editorial from Brad McGeHee today talks about maintenance plans and his new book.
Data storage and retrieval for geospatial data in SQL Server 2008
The company I work for has migrated to SQL Server 2008 and we're ready to start planning for the use of geospatial data. One of the applications we want to use geospatial data in will assist order fulfillers in efficiently picking stock for orders. Our warehouse is fairly large, which geospatial data type should we use?
IN and NOT IN
One of the most common mistakes made in T-SQL is thinking that these behave identically. I've personally opened up a...
A Search and Replace Script when Moving Objects from Prod to Test
Recently Ben Kubicek created a script that would allow him to copy his production db to a test instance and correct the production specific SQL code in stored procedures and views.
Too Good to be True? The Story Behind SQL Search
A guest editorial today from Simon Galbraith, founder of Red Gate Software talking about SQL Search, a new product that was developed in an interesting way.
Are You Running the x86 Version of SQL Server 2005/2008?
If so why? Honestly, I am curious why people may still be running 32-bit versions of SQL Server 2005, 2008,...
Introduction to Security in Analysis Services
Join BI Architect Bill Pearson in this introduction to Security in Analysis Services 2008. Here we explore security concepts and implementation, and look forward to hands-on practice with security in other articles of this subseries.
Coding By The Sea
An interesting experiment at Red Gate, Coding By the Sea, produced results, and Steve Jones thinks this could be a great idea for other companies.
Easy Error Trapping When Using xp_cmdshell
Getting errors and output messages when using xp_cmdshell can be tricky. This method can solve your problems.
13 Things You Should Know About Statistics and the Query Optimizer
Fabiano launches into a sound technical explanation of the way that the query optimiser works in SQL Server with a mention of Brazilian Soccer stars and young ladies on Copacabana beach. You'll never quite think of statistics, execution plans, and the query optimiser the same way again after reading this, but we think you'll understand them better.
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