Custom Rounding and Truncation of Numbers in MDX
MDX applies "bankers' rounding" algorithm in its ROUND() function. This article shows you how to avoid that and round like in T-SQL and Excel.
Is Your Server Vendor Providing the Quality, Innovation, and Support You Need?
We should get help from vendors, as well as support, but what about innovation? Today's guest editorial from Brad McGeHee asks if the third party tool vendors for SQL Server are doing enough to provide value for the cost of their tools.
The SQL Connectivity Team wants your opinion
Take this survey from the SQL Server developer team at Microsoft.
Installing SQL Server
Because installing SQL Server is so easy it is tempting to cut corners, fail to plan properly and blindly accept default options without considering the alternatives.
On demand creation and destruction of a Linked Server for SQL Server
Create a linked server on the fly in this tip.
DBAs and the Fear of Maintenance Plans
The Maintenance Plan wizard offers a quick and simple route to make sure essential database maintenance tasks are performed and scheduled. However, it needs to be used with a lot of care, and is no substitute for the judgment, experience and common sense of a flesh and blood DBA.
Using SSIS to Capture the File Name
This article will show how to use SSIS to capture the file name during the load process and later remove bad data from your warehouse. New Author J.D. Gonzalez has an interesting approach that you might find useful.
Collecting Query Statistics for SQL Server 2005
With SQL Server 2005 DMVs, we can easily find query performance statistics. Every DBA has a favorite script to find query performance stats. I also have one. But, are all the queries captured by the DMVs? In this tip I will walk through capturing some of this data and show what is capture and what is not captured by the DMVs.
Eliminating Empty Output Files in SSIS
So you’ve got some packages that regularly extract data to one or more text files, but you know that from...
Support The Boss
Providing support for your manager or boss in getting his or her job is a good thing. Steve Jones comments on what benefits you might get and why this could enhance your career.
Blogs
Advice I Like: Respect
By Steve Jones
“Don’t aim to have others like you; aim to have them respect you.” –...
Blue Sky Programming – The Optimism Trap
Many years ago, before I joined Oracle, I was working on a major modernisation...
Setting Up a Mac for Data Engineering and AI Work
If you work with data pipelines, SQL, notebooks, or machine learning models, a Mac...
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...
Is Fabric a Reliable Service or a Ripped Resource?
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Is Fabric a Reliable Service...
locking down agent for new user on our dev machine
hi , a new user wants to be able to add sql agent jobs...
Question of the Day
BIT_COUNT I
In SQL Server 2025, I have a table (dbo.UserPermission) that contains this data:
UserID UserPermissions 15 23 37What is returned when I run this code:
select bit_count(UserPermissions) as PermissionCount from dbo.UserPermission where UserID = 3;See possible answers