Having a Little Fun at SQL Server Central
Steve reminisces on some of the fun times he's had at SQL Server Central.
SSMS 22 Offline Installation
Beginning with SQL Server Management Studio 21, Microsoft stopped providing the direct download package/binaries to install SSMS, instead it just downloads the SSMS installer. This installer then starts the installation of SSMS and downloads what is needed to install SSMS. Sometimes there may be a need to do an offline installation where you do not have access to the internet. In this article, we walk through the steps to do an offline install of SSMS.
Remotely Engineer Fabric Lakehouse objects: The Fabric Modern Data Platform
In this next installments of the Modern Fabric Data Warehouse, we look at tools for developers.
SQL Server 2025 CREATE EXTERNAL MODEL and AI_GENERATE_EMBEDDINGS Commands Explained
Now that SQL Server 2025 has finally been released to the public, I was finally able to test and learn a lot about this command (named CREATE EXTERNAL MODEL), and I want to share my knowledge with you here. If you’re new to the world of AI, don’t worry, we’ll start with the basics and evolve to where this command fits in!
Can You Let Go of Determinism
As Steve uses AI more, it seems determinism isn't something you get out of many LLMs.
Downtime Caused by the Postgres Transaction ID Wraparound Problem
Learn about transaction ID wraparound in PostgreSQL, which caused a problem for the author.
Real-time On-prem SQL Server Data in Excel – Over the Internet
Learn how you can combine Power BI and Excel to share data from your local SQL Server across the Internet to Excel on a client machine.
Microsoft Fabric and MQTT for Real-Time IoT Data Ingestion and Analytics
Microsoft Fabric is a unified platform for data integration, data engineering, real-time intelligence, and advanced analytics. Fabric is known for providing an integrated way of working with your data, connecting to many diverse types of sources and across the data landscape. How do we get started ingesting and analyzing real-time data streamed over the MQTT protocol?
25 Years Later: What SQLServerCentral Meant to Me
A look back at SQL Server Central after 25 years from founder Brian Knight.
Blogs
AI Helps Me with My Sloppiness
By Steve Jones
I type fairly well. Well, I type fast, but I do wear out a...
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...
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