The SQL of the Feast Days of Western Christendom
Phil Factor's newest SQL expression calculates when all the feasts and saints days are, giving you plenty of potential causes for celebration.
Copy a database between servers with one command
This tool is a helper for your daily work to copy easily databases between Servers/instances and do all the necessary stuff for you.
Gratitude
Today we have a guest editorial from Erin Stellato that reminds us that we have had support from many, and it's important to thank them from time to time.
The SQL Server 2016 Query Store: Overview and Architecture
SQL Server's Query Store, introduced in SQL Server 2016, helps to troubleshoot query performance by capturing a range of information about query usage, CPU, memory consumption, I/O and execution time, and retaining every Execution Plan for analysis. Much of this information is available through queries. It looks set to be the most significant enhancement of SQL Server 2016 - Enrico van de Laar explores.
What is DevOps?
The DevOps moniker seems to bring together good practices that some companies have followed for years. However lots don't, and today Steve Jones tries to get inspire a few of you to give it a try.
Converting and Formatting Numbers Using the M Language
Power BI designer is based upon the Power Query formula language informally known as "M". Unfortunately, the advanced editor inside the Power BI designer does not support syntax highlighting, meaning it can be easy to make mistakes. Matt Mason shows how you can extend the Notepad++ editor to support this feature.
Rethinking Hiring
Today Steve Jones looks at the problems we have with hiring staff and the troubles we go through. Perhaps we can do better with an investment in our people.
MySQL Pattern Matching using Regular Expressions
In this follow-up to Beyond the LIKE Operator: Advanced Pattern Matching with MySQL, Rob Gravelle shows how to use the REGEXP operator to match alphanumeric characters, explores the role of meta-characters, and compares standard regular expression syntax to that of MySQL.
Doing a SQL Server Healthcheck via PowerShell
PowerShell is an ideal tool for doing health-checks of a collection of SQL Server instances, and there are several examples around, but few acknowledge the fact that individual DBAs have their own priorities for tests, and need something easily changed to suit circumstances. Omid Afzalalghom's Healthcheck allows tests to be SQL or PowerShell and requires only adding, altering or deleting files in directories.
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