Kanban
Steve Jones talks about organizing and tracking work with kanban and how that might help you.
What is Database Continuous Integration?
This is an introductory article to explain what Continuous Integration (CI) is and how it can be used in database development.
Deleting Historical Data from a Large Highly Concurrent SQL Server Database Table
In this tip, Daniel Farina explains an unconventional way of deleting millions of old records from a table which is accessed by a system 24x7, and without impacting that system.
A Hazard of Using the SQL Update Statement
If you've never encountered this quirk of the SQL UPDATE statement, you should take a look and find a simple way around it.
The Devil's in the Details
This week Steve Jones notes that the little details can sometimes have a big impact in your code.
Your Cloud Held Hostage – Could It Happen?
Today's guest editorial by Andy Warren is more of a movie plot than reality, but perhaps it's worth considering.
Introduction to SQL Server Spatial Data
More and more applications require the handling of geospatial data. It is easy to store spatial data, but it takes rather more thought to retrieve and manipulate it. Tasks like searching neighborhoods, and calculating distances between points is often required from databases. But how do you start? Roy and Surenda take you through the basics.
Calculating Duration Using DATETIME Start and End Dates (SQL Spackle)
It's an old problem with a solution that's nearly as old. SQL Server MVP Jeff Moden shows us the old trick mixed with a slick trick to format the duration as extended hours, minutes, seconds, and milliseconds.
Large Chunks of Data
This Friday Steve Jones talks reporting. Specifically he wonders how long can a report be before it's just wasting space.
Azure Active Directory - Schema Extensions
The Azure Active Directory Graph API enables some interesting scenarios that you can implement in your applications by enabling you to query and manipulate directory objects in Azure AD. In this article, Rick Rainey provides a clear walkthrough of its implementation.
Blogs
AI Helps Me with My Sloppiness
By Steve Jones
I type fairly well. Well, I type fast, but I do wear out a...
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...
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