External Article

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.

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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.

Technical Article

Using the MERGE Statement to Perform an UPSERT

The term UPSERT has been coined to refer to an operation that inserts rows into a table if they don’t exist, otherwise they are updated. To perform the UPSERT operation Microsoft introduced the MERGE statement. Not only does the MERGE statement support the UPSERT concept, but it also supports deleting records. Greg Larsen discusses how to use the MERGE statement to UPDATE, INSERT and DELETE records from a target table.

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Backing Up a DMK

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Question of the Day

Backing Up a DMK

In SQL Server 2025, I have a database with a Database Masker Key (DMK). I want to back up this key and keep a copy offline. When do I have to open this key before running the backup?

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