The Rich Rewards of Tuning SQL
The next time you are tempted to hammer a performance problem with hardware, why not instead invest that time in hammering and refining your SQL queries? There are rich rewards to be had.
Getting Started with HDInsight - Part 2 - Introduction to Azure HDInsight PowerShell
PowerShell is a very popular and powerful feature in the Microsoft stack. It is extensively used for development, deployment and administration across various ecosystems like SQL Server, SharePoint, Azure Cloud and others. PowerShell cmdlets are available for HDInsight as well and in this tip we will take a look at fundamental aspects of Microsoft Azure PowerShell for HDInsight.
15 Quick Short Interview Questions Useful When Hiring SQL Developers
Here is a useful exam that you can administer in either 10 or 15 minutes, either oral or written, when you interview for hiring permanent or contract workers for jobs in SQL Server development or support. (This is not a test for SQL Data Base Administrators.)
SQL Brainteasers: Guess the Christmas Carol/Song
It's Christmas, so here are some Christmassy-themed songs to guess.
SQL Server Data Aggregation for Data with Different Sampling Rates
In the emerging "Internet of Things", there are multitudes of devices collecting data at differing sampling rates. Integrating this data so the data has a common granularity in time is important to not only allow for accurate analysis and mining, but it will also aid in reducing the amount of data to be stored and processed.
In this tip, we will demonstrate how to use the T-SQL AVG function and GROUP BY clause to transform data collected from two devices sampling at 100Hz and 40Hz to one row per second.
Dealing with the Evil of FMTONLY from SSRS
SSRS continues to use SET FMTONLY ON even though it has many problems. How can we cope?
Practical PowerShell Unit-Testing: Mock Objects
Pester allows you to automate the testing of PowerShell scripts. It can test the output of a function as you develop it by validating simple data (scalars) and arrays, and allows you to focus on the one function you want to test by using 'mocking' to fake all the other functions and Cmdlets.
The Big Database Freeze
When a hospital’s mission-critical database fails at Christmas, disaster for the hospital – and its hapless DBA – seems certain. With less than an hour to spare before catastrophe, can the DBA Team save the day? This is a fictionalized true story.
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