Will Terminators Be Required?
The use of terminators in T-SQL is incredibly inconsistent. Steve Jones thinks it will always be this way.
How to Successfully Deliver IT Projects in a Not-so-Agile Organization
Agile methodology for software delivery is accepted at many organizations but is not used everywhere. In this article, Mohammad Rizvi gives advice on how to successfully implement a software project in a non-Agile environment.
Is SQL Server Mature?
This Friday Steve Jones is wondering if the SQL Server platform does the job well enough for most people, or are there holes that need to be filled with new features.
SQL Authentication Via AD Groups Part II: Who has what access?
In a previous article, we discussed how to liberate the DBA from SQL Logins with AD Groups. A good point was raised: How can the DBA know who has what access? Here is a solution.
Interpreting Missing Index Recommendations
Pinal Dave explains how missing index hints are like restaurant appetizers.
Handling Inconvenient Requests
Brad gives a little guidance on how you might want to respond to inconvenient requests with an eye on doing yourself a favor.
Using a Derived Table to Compare Data with Values from a Previous Year
Comparing year on year sales is a fundamental requirement in much commercial analysis - here you learn how to do this in SQL
Understanding your Azure EA Billing Data and Building a Centralized Data Storage Solution
Many organizations are moving to Azure and other cloud providers. Understanding how resources are being used and what is spent is very important. In this article, Feodor explains his solution for automating the collection of the Enterprise Agreement billing from Azure into an Azure SQL Database where it can be analyzed.
CI and CD Aren't Magic
The techniques for Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Delivery (CD) don't make software better by themselves. It takes some investment and work by your staff as well.
Rolling up multiple rows into a single row and column for SQL Server data
Do you need a way to roll-up multiple rows into one row and one column. You know you can roll-up multiple rows into one row using Pivot, but you need all of the data concatenated into a single column in a single row. this tip looks at a simple approach to accomplish this.
Blogs
How AgentDBA Identifies Backup Failures
By Arun Sirpal
Every DBA has a box like this. Sitting untouched for months. Nobody’s proud of...
Tip: Expanding a SQL statement
In all recent versions of the database you can call DBMS_UTILITY.EXPAND_SQL_TEXT to get the...
AI Helps Me with My Sloppiness
By Steve Jones
I type fairly well. Well, I type fast, but I do wear out a...
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