What motivates you to do your best?

In today's guest editorial: the motivation to do our best must come from within.

Democratizing Self Service Cloud Analytics and ELT Supporting Modern Cloud Data Management Approaches

Many organizations struggle with democratizing access to data and analytics in the cloud, particularly for self-service purposes. As a result, data and analytics projects often require significant IT involvement, leading to delays, bottlenecks, and inefficiencies. Additionally, data analytics, ELT, and BI tools often require specialized technical expertise, making them inaccessible to a broader range of users. To address these challenges, organizations can adopt cloud-based data and analytics platforms that provide self-service capabilities and support modern cloud data management approaches.

What are the biggest challenges organizations face in their digital transformation efforts?

As part of a recent Redgate Summit which focused on data modernization, Grant Fritchey interviewed Pramod Sadalage, a Director at Thoughtworks. They discussed data and DevOps, and the typical challenges organizations come across in their digital transformation efforts. Grant Fritchey shares this Q&A.

Information Schema Strangeness

An extra column in an information_schema view had Steve digging into standards.

PASS Data Community Summit 2023 registrations are open!

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The ten habits for highly successful compliant database DevOps

Database DevOps has come of age. Now seen as a key technical practice which can contribute to the successful implementation of DevOps, it stops the database being a bottleneck and makes releases faster and easier.

To implement it successfully, there are ten areas which teams should focus on.

Living With Broken Software

Steve has to use software that is broken, but it's OK. It actually works well enough.

DAX CASE Statement Functionality with IF, SWITCH and SWITCH True

The CASE expression is one of the most valuable tools in your T-SQL toolbox. I use it in almost every query I write. However, there isn't a direct equivalent of CASE in DAX. Since it's a different language entirely, I don't expect it. As my grandmother used to say, I am not surprised, just disappointed. If you don't know, DAX (Data Analysis Expressions) is a language for creating custom calculations and aggregations in Power Pivot, Power BI, and other data analysis tools. Two functions in DAX come close to replicating the functionality but come with limitations. Which one of these functions should you use? Please stay tuned.

Improving the Quality of your Database Monitoring

Database monitoring should be as simple as possible, and yet still allow the users to drill into sufficient detail to be able to recommend a fix to the problem. The trick is to adopt a layered or 'tiered' approach.

Has SQL Server Performance Improved?

This week Steve found a question of whether SQL Server 2019 uses more CPU than 2016.