Give Up on Natural Primary Keys
With the need to remove older data, Steve thinks natural keys may be obsolete.
The Ever Expanding Data Platform
With lots of news coming out of Ignite, Steve talks about a few of the changes.
Exhuming the GDPR Bodies
Since the GDPR has gone into effect, the focus has often been on databases. There are many other ways that personally identifiable data may be stored by an organization. In this article, David Poole shows how to use Bash and PowerShell to locate that data in file shares
Using undocumented DBCC WRITEPAGE to instigate SQL Server database corruption
In this tip we look at the undocumented command DBCC WRITEPAGE to corrupt a SQL Server database and then use the command to undo the corruption.
Picking the Right Type of Tool For the Job
Do we need the right tool or just a tool? A guest editorial from Andy Warren gives a few thoughts on getting things done effectively.
PowerShell Tool Time: Building Help
Learn how you can customize the help for your library of scripts in this edition of PowerShell Tool Time.
Forwarded Fetches and Bookmark Lookups
If someone says clustered indexes slow you down, they haven't read this.
What's New in the First Public CTP of SQL Server 2019
In this article we look at the first public CTP release of SQL Server 2019 and some of the great new features that will be part of SQL Server 2019.
An Open Thank You to the Microsoft SQL Server Team
Thanks for improving the string or binary data truncated error message.
SQL Server From .Net: Using SQL Server Schema to Build a Data Set
A basic introduction for developers (or anyone) to using the metadata for a SQL Server database to build a DataSet in ADO.Net that represent objects in any SQL Server database.
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