Power BI Desktop Web Queries to Screen Scrape Data from Websites
I have heard the new Power BI Desktop can screen scrape data off websites; how does that process work?
Contract to Hire
Today we have a guest editorial from Andy Warren that looks at the way some companies look to hire new workers.
How efficient is your covered index?
Observing an index seek utilizing a composite index within SQL execution plan might be more than meets the eye – you should look again.
Storing Passwords in a Secure Way in a SQL Server Database
Measures such as using special characters and numbers within a password are of little use to security if passwords are then stored in an insecure way. Sergey Gigoyan explains how to encrypt and store passwords in a SQL Server database.
Choosing Your Tasks
Today Steve Jones asks about your job and if you get to pick the things you work on or is most of your time assigned to tasks by someone else?
Data Mining Part 32:The Microsoft Data Mining Enemies
In this chapter, we will talk about the competition of Data Mining
Data Mining Part 32:The Microsoft Data Mining Enemies
In this chapter, we will talk about the competition of Data Mining
SQL and R
There is plenty that is novel and perhaps foreign to a new R user, but it's no reason to abandon your hard-earned SQL skills! In this article, Casimir Saternos explains that not only can you easily retrieve data from SQL Sources for analysis and visualisation in R, but you can also use SQL to create, clean, filter, query and otherwise manipulate datasets within R, using a wide choice of relational databases.
Follow-Up on Cursor Options
In this follow-up to a previous article, Aaron Bertrand reiterates that – while you should never just accept the defaults – you really should think about which options are most applicable to your scenario.
Blogs
The SUM of Nothing: #SQLNewBlogger
By Steve Jones
I caught this interesting item over on Pinal Dave’s blog: Eleven Interview Questions that...
How to Move the SSMS Status Bar to the Top and Color-Code SQL Server Connections
By Hemantgiri
I use color-coded connections in SSMS to distinguish Production, Pre-Production, UAT, and Development. But...
Forums
Split Large Queries in Athena with a Simple Modulo Trick
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Split Large Queries in Athena...
Finding Trailing Spaces
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Finding Trailing Spaces
Question of the Day
Finding Trailing Spaces
I have some data in a SQL Server 2025 database. It looks like this for the dbo.Customer table:
CustomerID CustomerName PreferredName 1 Steve Steve 2 Andy Andy 3 Brian Brian 4 Allan Allan 5 Devin Devin 6 Steve Steve 7 Sally SallyI want to detect which names have a single trailing space. The CustomerName is a varchar() and the PreferredName is a CHAR(). Does this query detect the problem rows?
SELECT
CustomerID,
CustomerName,
PreferredName
FROM Customer
WHERE CustomerName <> RTRIM(CustomerName)
OR PreferredName <> RTRIM(PreferredName); See possible answers