How do you know when it is time to leave a job?
Today we have a guest editorial from Ben Kubicek as Steve is traveling out of town. I discovered I had stayed at a job about two years too long. Why was that?
PowerShell Desired State Configuration: Automating and Monitoring Pull mode
The Pull mode of Desired State Configuration (DSC) is more complicated to implement because you need to meticulously manage the MOF files and their naming conventions so as to ensure that you deploy your DSC configurations correctly. In this first article of a two-part series, Nicolas Prigent describes how you can best automate this, and then in a second part on monitoring DSC he describes techniques to help you to use the pull mode as a regular part of your admin work.
Target Recovery Interval and Indirect Checkpoint
Indirect checkpoint is the recommended configuration, especially on systems with large memory footprints and default for databases created in SQL Server 2016.
SQL Server differences of char, nchar, varchar and nvarchar data types
Sherlee Dizon looks at the basic differences between char, nchar, varchar, and nvarchar, as well as what to be aware of when using each data type.
Using SQL Compare with Dynamic Data Masking
Dynamic Data Masking is an exciting new feature in SQL Server 2016, allowing DBAs to centrally set a mask that is returned for a table column instead of the actual data, limiting what information is returned to certain users in a consistent and reliable way. What’s more, Redgate SQL Compare safely and reliably handles your DDM changes. Data Platform MVP Steve Jones explains more.
Stairway to U-SQL Level 4: U-SQL and Data Lake Tooling with Visual Studio
A guide to using Visual Studio to create U-SQL projects and scripts.
The Relentless Cloud
The march to the cloud is ongoing and Steve Jones says you should prepare yourself. Even if your company doesn't move.
Number of Rows Read / Actual Rows Read warnings in Plan Explorer
Rob Farley looks at information exposed in query plans about residual predicates and actual rows read, showing how Plan Explorer helps identify the issue.
Databases in Azure: Copy and Exports
Toady we are going to make a copy and export your DB to Azure Storage. Lets get started.
Blogs
Stop Using Pandas for Aggregations — Try DuckDB Instead
If you've ever loaded a 2 GB CSV into pandas just to run a...
Understanding Fabric Ontology
By James Serra
What problem is Fabric Ontology trying to solve? For years, most data conversations have...
QUOTENAME Basics: #SQLNewBlogger
By Steve Jones
Recently I ran across some code that used a lot of QUOTENAME() calls. A...
Forums
The New Software Team
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Database Mail in SQL Server 2022
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The string_agg function
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Question of the Day
The string_agg function
We create the following table and then insert some records in it:
create table t1 ( id int primary key, category char(1) not null, product varchar(50) ); insert into t1 values (1, 'A', 'Product 1'), (2, 'A', 'Product 2'), (3, 'A', 'Product 3'), (4, 'B', 'Product 4'), (5, 'B', 'Product 5');What happens if we execute the following query in both Sql Server and PostgreSQL?
select id,
category,
string_agg(product, ';')
over (partition by category order by id
rows between unbounded preceding and unbounded following) as stragg
from t1; See possible answers