From Great Idea to End Result
IT is too slow. That was a quote that inspired this piece from Steve Jones that talks about the need for IT to be more flexible and agile in their efforts. That includes the data professional in their modeling.
Simple Mathematical Formulas using the M Language
The Power BI desktop designer is a great tool; however, the hardest part of any Business Intelligence project is gathering and formatting the data into reportable datasets. John Miner explains how having a deeper understanding of the M language will help a BI developer in cases where the menus can not.
The Hot Jobs
This week Steve looks at the hot jobs that are going to have pay increases in the coming year.
The Complete Guide to PowerShell Punctuation
It is the punctuation, the strange dollar signs, brackets and parentheses that bewilder anyone learning PowerShell. Add to that the aliases and you can bewilder everyone. The punctuation is essential, so here is the the complete PowerShell wallchart and guide to Powershell Punctuation. Thanks to Michael Sorens, PowerShell need no longer be perplexing.
A Simple Formula to Calculate the ISO Week Number
He admits it wasn't his idea but his head sure wishes it was. SQL Server MVP Jeff Moden explains a wonderful, super simple, very high performance formula that will calculate ISO Week Numbers. If you're "stuck" with SQL Server 2005 or less, you're going to like this a whole lot!
Positive or Negative
Today Steve Jones wonders if the way you choose to design a database says something about you.
Dependencies and References in SQL Server
It is important for developers and DBAs to be able to determine the interdependencies of any database object. Perhaps you need to work out what process is accessing that view you want to alter, or maybe find out whether that table-type you wish to change is being used. What are all these dependencies? How do you work out which are relevant? Phil Factor explains.
The Dangers of Travel
As data professionals, we might carry lots of information with us that relates to our organization. Will we get caught up in government issues as we cross borders?
The Oracle PL/SQL Results Cache
Oracle offers a results cache in the database (from 11.2 onwards) and in PL/SQL (again, from 11.2 onwards) which can greatly reduce execution time of repeated statements when insert/update/delete activity is not heavy. The mechanism in PL/SQL, however, may not work as expected with global temporary tables. Using a slightly modified example, Jonathan Lewis looks at what you might see when using this option.
An Out of Date CAP
The CAP Theorem talks about the properties of distributed systems, and how you can really only have two of them in any system.
Blogs
A Cloud Dependency Failure from Amazon
By Steve Jones
I went to sleep while reading a Kindle book on my phone. I know...
Deploying AI in logistics (the unfiltered version)
A conversation with Jan Laš, CIO at HOPI, about what deploying a data agent...
T-SQL Tuesday #198 Invitation: How Do You Detect Data Changes?
It's time for T-SQL Tuesday #198! This month's topic is change detection. The post T-SQL...
Forums
SPAM Issues May 2026
We suffered a SPAM attack from May 1-6, which unfortunately corresponded with time off...
SQL Password enforcing
Hi to all We have situation at a client where someone is illegally changing...
SQL Password enforcing
Hi to all We have situation at a client where someone is illegally changing...
Question of the Day
Creating a JSON Document III
I have this data in a table called dbo.NFLTeams
TeamID TeamName City YearEstablished ------ -------- ---- --------------- 1 Cowboys Dallas 1960 2 Eagles Philadelphia 1933 3 Packers Green Bay 1919 4 Chiefs Kansas City 1960 5 49ers San Francisco 1946 6 Broncos Denver 1960 7 Seahawks Seattle 1976 8 Patriots New England 1960If I run this code, how many rows are returned?
SELECT TOP 2
json_objectagg('Team' : TeamName)
FROM dbo.NFLTeams;
See possible answers