Interesting things about INSTEAD OF triggers
This article from Paul White examines some surprising behaviour of INSTEAD OF triggers and reveals a serious cardinality estimation bug in SQL Server 2014.
Baseline Collector Solution V2
New version of the Free Baseline Collector Solution released. Do you collect baseline data? If not, let's start doing it!
Data Liability
The issue of who owns data, and who is responsible is one that our world hasn't defined well. Steve Jones has a few thoughts on potential issues for data professionals.
Learning Stretch Database
References and links about the Stretch to Azure feature in SQL Server 2016.
Whatever happened to Database Table Refactoring?
Phil Factor ponders why most people lost their initial enthusiasm for refactoring databases iteratively, in parallel with the evolutionary design of the rest of the system.
How to Confuse the SQL Server Query Optimizer
Want to 'trick' SQL Server into performing millions of logical reads to return data, when only are few thousand were really required? In this article, Gail Shaw examines three common forms of generic SQL that can and will confuse the SQL Server Optimizer to the point that it generates and reuses very inefficient execution plans.
Logging and Error Handling for SQL Stored Procedures
Learn how to develop and test a template for logging and error handling in a multi-step SQL stored procedure
T-SQL Window Functions Speed Phreakery
Before SQL Server had SQL window functions, SQL Server developers had to use all manner of tricks and algorithms to come up with ways to rapidly process large amounts of data. Do we need these techniques now that we can express a SQL task in terms of window functions? Kathi revisits a famous SQL challenge to find out.
Creating SQL databases on Azure Blob storage
Creating a database in SQL Server running in on-premises with a dedicated storage location for your data in Windows Azure Blob Storage.
Monitoring Availability Group Replica Synchronization
If you are deploying SQL Server Availability Groups, one of the important aspects of a successful deployment is monitoring the synchronization of the secondary replica databases with the primary replica - but there are multiple ways to do this. Jonathan Kehayias goes through each, explaining their different benefits and drawbacks.
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