A Lightweight, Self-adjusting, Baseline-less Data Monitor
Can data alert us that something is going on, without baselines and thresholds?
The Blame Game
Equifax is blaming a single IT person for their data breach. Steve Jones worries this is a sign of things to come.
Statistics in SQL: Student’s t-test
Many undergraduates have misunderstood the name 'Students' in the t-test to imply that it was designed as a simple test suitable for students. In fact it was William Sealy Gosset, an Englishman publishing under the pseudonym Student, who developed the t-test and t distribution in 1908, as a way of making confident predictions from small sample sizes of normally-distributed variables. As Gosset's employer was Guinness, the brewer, Phil Factor takes a sober view of calculating it in SQL.
Network Configuration of SQL Server Always On Availability Groups in Azure
Implementing SQL Server Failover Clustering in Azure virtual machines differs in several aspects from its on-premises implementations. These differences reflect some of the unique characteristics of the storage and network infrastructure services in the Microsoft cloud environment. In this article, Marcin Policht looks at the networking aspects of clustered deployments of SQL Server 2016 in Azure.
Citizen Scientists
More and more people are becoming citizen scientists, even in companies. Steve Jones thinks this is helpful, but we still need professionals.
Automated Database Provisioning for Development and Testing
If your development team needs to work on anonymised copies of the current production database, and if changes are being delivered rapidly as well, that could mean a lot of time and routine DevOps work copying databases. SQL Clone was designed for tasks like this. Grant Fritchey investigates whether you save time, effort and scripting over the more traditional approach, and at what point it makes sense to use it.
The Achilles Heel
In a long career in IT, Phil Factor cannot recall a 'major incident', where the failure or breach was due to a single 'Achilles Heel', or even a single team of people. They are always due to a whole plethora of slack and ignorant practices.
Indexing for Windowing Functions: WHERE vs. OVER
Erik Darling shows that if you take SQL Server's word when it asks for an index, things can go horribly awry.
Blogs
No Shortcuts for the SQLCMD Batch Terminator: #SQLNewBlogger
By Steve Jones
I was messing around with SQLCMD and I realized something I hadn’t known. I’ve...
Where Is My SQL Agent? Running Scheduled Jobs Against Azure SQL Database
By gbargsley
One of the first things I review when I inherit a new SQL Server...
AgentDBA vs Critical SQL Server
By Arun Sirpal
It’s 07:43. Someone’s already left a message. “Something’s wrong with the DB server.” You...
Forums
Increment a number in a SQL Query based on a value
I have an issue where I have a Bill of Material list of items...
Follow Your Hunch
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Follow Your Hunch
What Happens When You Ask a Local AI to Query Your Database?
Comments posted to this topic are about the item What Happens When You Ask...
Question of the Day
Detecting Characters
I have a SQL Server 2022 English default installation on a server. I want to detect if there are any upper case characters in rows and I have this code:
SELECT CustomerNameID,
CustomerName
FROM dbo.CustomerName
WHERE CustomerName = LOWER(CustomerName)
Here is the sample data I am testing with:
CustomerNameID CustomerName 1 John Smith 2 Sarah Johnson 3 MICHAEL WILLIAMS 4 JENNIFER BROWN 5 david jones 6 emily davis 7 Robert Miller 8 LISA WILSON 9 christopher moore 10 Amanda TaylorHow many rows are returned? See possible answers