Free Tools for the SQL Server DBA Part 2
After a very popular first article on tools for the DBA, David Bird is back with a list of some utilities you might find very handy for working with SQL Server.
Self-Service BI with PowerPivot for Excel 2010
Thiago kicks off a new series of articles, taking us through everything we need to know to use PowerPivot effectively. First off, he walks us through the prerequisites, and getting started with our first basic data set.
Sound Off with Soundex
In this article, learn how to use phonetic algorithms such as soundex to make looking up names faster, easier, and more reliable.
How Do You Handle the Stress of Being a DBA?
How do you deal with all the pressures, stress, and problems in being a DBA? Today we have a guest editorial from Brad McGehee that asks the question.
The power of batching Transactions
This article analyzes the performance gains of batching multiple DML statements into a single transaction. New author Manor Lev-Tov examines the effect of grouping statements together instead of running them all as separate transactions.
How To Enable Caching in SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS)
We have many SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) reports that use our OLTP systems as data sources. We are always adding new reports and the number of users running these reports is also increasing rapidly. We would like to look at enabling report caching as a way to reduce some of the load on our database servers. In this tip I will go over the steps needed to enable report caching for SQL Server Reporting Services reports.
Help Others, Help Yourself
There is something to be said for helping others. However it isn't necessarily a selfless act. Guest writer Tim Mitchell talks a little about how helping others has helped him.
Retrieving Identities on set-based inserts
Learn a foolproof way to get identity values for multi-row inserts with the OUTPUT clause in SQL Server 2005 without using a cursor.
Full Text Index Queries using CONTAINS and CONTAINSTABLE
Recent installments of our SQL Server 2005 Express Edition series have been discussing its implementation of Full Text Indexing. This article focuses on the remaining two constructs, CONTAINS and CONTAINSTABLE.
Perfect is the Enemy of Good
Today we have a guest editorial from Andy Warren. We all would love to have perfect code, but is always worth the time? Andy Warren notes that cutting a corner or two might make sense at times.
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