Monitoring and Alerting
Knowing what is happening on your systems, and being told when a system is not behaving normally is very important for administrators. Steve Jones has a few thoughts on monitoring today.
Using SSIS to Load Data Into Azure SQL Data Warehouse
It is a good time to get familiar with Azure SQL Data Warehouse. The first objective must be to get data into it. SSIS is a good way to start, and it’s certainly worth gaining confidence with the ETL processes supported by SSIS before setting off in other directions. Rob Sheldon provides a simple guide to getting up and running.
Email or Username
One of the things that can be an issue in database design is the data used to identify a user.
PowerShell Interview Questions for SQL Server DBAs
With PowerShell playing a more important role in administration of various types of servers, more SQL Server DBA candidates should have PowerShell knowledge and skills. In this article, Jeffrey Yao lists some common SQL Server DBA tasks that may be completed easier with PS than T-SQL.
Democratic Data Science
Data science is hot now, but work is being done to use the power of software to handle some of the grunt work with data analysis problems.
The Bleeding Edge Versus N Minus One
Risk-averse managers are reticent to upgrade to the latest and greatest. Why is this the case and how can the savvy DBA make the case for and get ready for a newer version of SQL Server?
SQL Server Sargability - Queries on an Indexed Table Sometimes have Slow Performance
The solution here was to slightly modify the slow queries, so the index could be fully used. We made the queries Search Argumentable, or "SARGABLE."
Configuring geo-replication for an Azure SQL Database
This article will discuss geo-replication for an Azure SQL Database (PaaS) and the steps required for setup via the Azure portal and TSQL.
DevOps and Security
Are DevOps and security diametrically opposed? An interesting pieces says no, and Steve Jones comments.
SQL Server 2016 is Out and It's Fabulous!
On the First of June, SQL Server 2016 was officially released. While it is still early days to measure the full impact of the release, the one thing that is exceedingly clear is that this is a very successful software release. There have been very few complaints online beyond the standard heard during any upgrade: […]
Blogs
Automatic Index Compaction
By ReviewMyDB
Index maintenance has always meant nightly jobs and a window you have to defend....
The Goldilocks problem – Materialized Views
I’m sure you’ve all heard the tale of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, but...
Monday Monitor Tips: Virtual Machine Usage and Cost
By Steve Jones
One of the things I’ve been requesting for a number of years is cost...
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