The Database Giveth and Taketh Away
A database error at Southwest Airlines confused some customers and was embarrassing. Steve worries that we might want to be more careful in the future about making database mistakes.
Using Backup Encryption with an External Certificate
Learn how to load an external certificate into SQL Server to encrypt your backups.
Reporting Services Basics: Overview and Installation
SQL Server Reporting Services has changed quite a bit since it was introduced in 2004. Despite new analytic services like Power BI, SSRS is still a popular tool for paginated reports. In this article, Kathi Kellenberger explains the architecture of SSRS and walks you through installing an SSRS development environment on your workstation or laptop.
SQL in the City Summits – UK, US & Down Under
Redgate are inviting senior data professionals to attend one of the upcoming SQL in the City Summit events taking place in April, May and June. If you’re interested in learning how your business can benefit from implementing Compliant Database DevOps this event is for you. Find out who’s presenting and register for a Summit near you today. Register now
Tracking the number of active sessions on a database using SQL Monitor
Phil Factor creates a simple custom metric to track the number of sessions that have recently done a read or write on a database. Having established a baseline for the metric, you'll be able to spot, and investigate the cause of, any wild deviations from normal behavior.
Can Azure Stack Reduce Software Development Costs?
Azure Stack provides a hybrid cloud infrastructure platform. Steve wonders if this really helps reduce software development costs.
5 reasons why backup and restore doesn’t cut it in dev and test
The provisioning process is a critical part of database development. Redgate's Rebecca Edwards looks at a tool that can remove the pain points of backup and restore and replace them with a more efficient solution can hugely benefit your organization and the quality of life of you and your team.
SQL Server Database Users to Roles Mapping Report
In this tip we look at a SQL Server function that generates a report of all users and their assigned database roles.
Changing Context and Data Reuse
We don't have strong data consent rules in the US, but Steve thinks we should.
Uploading On-Premises Data as JSON to Azure Blob Storage using SSIS
Using Azure Feature Pack for Integration Services to access Blob storage from Azure into SSIS packages
Blogs
How AgentDBA Identifies Backup Failures
By Arun Sirpal
Every DBA has a box like this. Sitting untouched for months. Nobody’s proud of...
AI Helps Me with My Sloppiness
By Steve Jones
I type fairly well. Well, I type fast, but I do wear out a...
WITH clause gets a 26ai boost!
By way of background, a while back I did video called “My New Favourite...
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