The Panjandrum Conundrum
With progress thwarted by a committee of panjandrums, will T-SQL forever remain in the doldrums? So wonders Phil Factor.
Storage 101: Understanding the Hard-Disk Drive
In this article in the series, Robert Sheldon provides a deep dive into HDDs.
Why you Should Always Specify Whether a Column Accepts Nulls
Phil Factor explains the factors that determine whether a column will allow null values, if you don't specify it explicitly in the column definition. If you rely on the default behavior established by your connection settings, you could be in for some nasty surprises.
Displaying Hierarchical Data
Producing hierarchies from SQL tables can necessitate joining a table to itself. This article will explain how you can do this.
The Developer Arguments for Stored Procedures
Today Steve asks what reasons a developer has for using stored procedures.
Creating Time-Intelligence Functions in DAX
DAX contains a host of time-intelligence functions with exotic names such as SAMEPERIODLASTYEAR and PARALLELPERIOD. In the last article in this series, Andy Brown explains how to write measures using the range of date functions in DAX, and also explains how time-intelligence functions work behind the scenes.
Meeting your CCPA needs with Data Classification and Masking
This article will explain how to import the data classification metadata for a SQL Server database into Data Masker, providing a masking plan that you can use to ensure the protection of all this data. By applying the data masking operation as part of an automated database provisioning process, you make it fast, repeatable and auditable.
Implementing Date Calculations in SQL
This article explains a way to use labels (last year, YTD, etc.) for report parameters.
Is 100% Security Possible?
A security breach at Microsoft is disconcerting, especially when they don't share details.
Build your DevOps business case with industry insights
With over 2000 participants from every industry sector across the globe, the State of Database DevOps report will help shape the business case of any team looking to implement or improve their approach to database DevOps, no matter the platform they choose to work with. Including a foreword from Kellyn Pot’Vin-Gorman, Customer Success Engineer at Microsoft, discover the landscape of database DevOps for 2020.
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