Conditional Formatting in the Analysis Services Layer
Support conditional formatting for enterprise reports from the Analysis Services layer of the integrated Microsoft business intelligence solution.
Implementing Real-World Data Input Validation using Regular Expression
Francis Norton shows how to use regular expressions to fulfil some real world data validation requirements, demonstrating techniques ranging from simple number format checks, to complex string validation that requires use of regex's powerful "lookahead" feature.
SQLChess - A tutorial on thinking in sets
Chess makes a fantastic game for programming examples. You will find hundreds of examples on the internet. Some dedicated to OO patterns, others to algorithms and so forth. Unfortunately, most of these examples do not use a database or if they do, treat the database as nothing more than a storage repository. In this series of articles we will use SQL Server and T-SQL to implement the game of chess with an emphasis on thinking in sets.
SQL Server Grouping Workbench
Robyn Page and Phil Factor take on GROUP BY queries in SQL server, starting on the nursery slopes but finishing with a wild ride off-piste.
SQL Server 2005 Integration Services - Part 48
Maintenance Plan Designer gives you access to 11 tasks, which allow you to perform a variety of database management activities. This article provides a brief overview of each of them, focusing on their recent improvements.
Returning a week number for any given date and starting fiscal month
Sql Server comes with a host of built in functions such as ISNULL, CONVERT and CAST. Now if that wasn't enough rope to hang ourselves with, as of Sql Server 2000 we gained the ability to create our own user defined functions. In this article I will be looking at the three main date functions DATEADD, DATEPART and DATEDIFF (there is a fourth called DATENAME but I want to get to the end of this article before you fall asleep so I decided to leave it for another date and time! And no it doesn't foretell the name of your future blind date so it's not as interesting as it sounds anyway) Then I will be combining all three in a user defined function of our own by which time our necks will be well and truly stretched
Send SQL Server Data to Exchange
An updated version of xp_sql2exchange is now available, enabling you to publish SQL Server data easily to an exchange server. Read about this very cool extended stored procedure from author Steve Boriotti.
XML Restructuring and Reshaping Should Not be Considered the Same
Michael M. David returns to SQLSummit.com to explore two approaches to XML hierarchical structure transformations. He explains the difference between restructuring and reshaping XML data, with the latter driven by the semantics of the data structure.
Fired With Enthusiasm
Phil Factor's describes his first encounter with the "light arms" (low calibre, small bore, needed to be fired).
Blogs
Advice I Like: Knots
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Learn how to tie a bowline knot. Practice in the dark. With one hand....
Shifting Mindsets: Why FinOps is Essential for Cloud Efficiency
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As a DevOps practitioner, I’ve always focused on performance, scalability, and automation. But as...
March 2026 SQL Server Security Updates
By Brian Kelley
On Patch Tuesday, in addition to OS and Office security patches, Microsoft also released...
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Upgrading Admin Queries
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Question of the Day
Upgrading Admin Queries
I have a query from a former DBA that we run on SQL Server 2025 to check on database metadata. This query references sys.sysaltfiles. I want to refactor this code to be more modern. Which DMV should I reference instead?
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