Converting and Using Text Dates as SQL Server Dates
This tip describes some T-SQL techniques for converting a mmddyyyy string to a SQL Server date, handling rows with missing date strings, and comparing converted date strings.
Using the T-SQL PERCENTILE Analytic Functions in SQL Server 2000, 2005 and 2008
Percentiles give meaning to measurements by telling you the percentage of the population being measured who get higher or lower values. They are now easier to calculate in SQL, and are useful for reporting; but are the new analytic functions faster and more efficient than the older methods? Dwain Camps demonstrates, and investigates their relative performance.
Hack Us
A challenge from United intrigues Steve Jones. How many other companies would make a challenge like this?
Storing a Binary File in a Database
In this article you will see how to convert a file to a binary stream and insert it into SQL Server with SQLCLR.
SQL Monitor Custom metric: Average I/O stalls
This is a good general indicator of performance problems. High stall times indicate I/O problems, which can be attributed to busy physical disks or queries that return large data sets to the client.
Webinar: How to safely manage application and database changes with continuous delivery
Join Brian A. Randell, Grant Fritchey and Steve Jones in this panel discussion to hear tips, ideas and share your questions on managing application and database deployments with continuous delivery. This Free webinar will be on May 27th at 4PM BST, register while space is available.
The Cascading (CROSS) APPLY
An old trick nowadays but one which is still underused here on SSC is the cascading CROSS APPLY – where output from one CROSS APPLY is used as input for another.
Optimizing Batch Process in SQL Server
SQL Server batch processes are usually run from SQL Agent in the background. Often, the responsibility for creating these tasks belongs entirely to the developer. Dennes Torres demonstrates that DBAs can advise and assist with this type of batch job to help reduce their impact on the working system.
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