Backing up your SQL Server to Amazon's Cloud in Three Easy Steps
John Grover explains how to set up Amazon S3 storage, install and configure the Amazon PowerShell module, and set up a Maintenance plan using SQL native backups and PowerShell.
Two Days Off
Verizon is taking their cloud service offline for maintenance for two days. Steve Jones doesn't think that sounds good.
Archiving Hierarchical, Deleted Transaction Using XML
When you delete a business transaction from the database, there are times when you might want to keep a record of the data for posterity. In this article, Dwain Camps looks at a tidy means of doing just that.
Stairway to DAX and Power BI - Level 8: The DAX COUNT() and COUNTX() Functions
As a part of his “Function / Iterator Pairs” mini-series, Business Intelligence architect, Analysis Services Maestro, and author Bill Pearson introduces the DAX COUNT() and COUNTX() functions, discussing similarities and differences. He then provides some hands-on exposure to the use of each, particularly in combination with other DAX functions, in generating counts to meet differing needs within our PowerPivot model designs.
Test Your Situation
One of the important things is to be able to recover your environment. That doesn't mean you need to know everything about SQL Server and potential disasters, but you should know their affect on your situation.
Importance of Statistics and How It Works in SQL Server – Part 1
SQL Server Query Optimizer uses statistical information to estimate the cardinality in a query result. This enables the SQL Server Query Optimizer to create a high-quality query execution plan. Read on to learn how to use statistics and why it’s needed.
Recovering from Bad Deployments
When you deploy software, what do you do if things don't go well? Steve Jones talks about a few options you might have.
Add a linear trendline to a graph in SQL Server Reporting Services
In this article, Koen Verbeeck illustrates how to add a linear trendline to a graph in SSRS, similar to the way it would appear if done Excel.
SQL Monitor Custom Metric: Identity Columns Near Limit
If your application relies on identity columns, this metric is a useful measure of the number of identity columns that are near to the limit per database. You can then avoid logical problems in your application and SQL Server errors.
Adding an Article Without a Full Snapshot
Have you got transactional replication in your SQL environment? Do you need to add a new table to your publication, but can't afford the time necessary to create a full new snapshot? Here is a step-by-step guide. Thankfully, adding a single table is easier than I thought.
Blogs
Architecting Zero Downtime Deployments–Day of Data Boston
By Steve Jones
Here are the resources for my talk at Day of Data Boston. Slides –...
The Book of Redgate:A Prehistory
By Steve Jones
I’ve covered the values in a number of previous posts on the Book of...
Evidence-bound: what AgentDBA will and won’t link
By Arun Sirpal
When the evidence names the database, it says so. When it doesn’t, it stops....
Forums
Split Large Queries in Athena with a Simple Modulo Trick
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Split Large Queries in Athena...
Finding Trailing Spaces
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Finding Trailing Spaces
Question of the Day
Finding Trailing Spaces
I have some data in a SQL Server 2025 database. It looks like this for the dbo.Customer table:
CustomerID CustomerName PreferredName 1 Steve Steve 2 Andy Andy 3 Brian Brian 4 Allan Allan 5 Devin Devin 6 Steve Steve 7 Sally SallyI want to detect which names have a single trailing space. The CustomerName is a varchar() and the PreferredName is a CHAR(). Does this query detect the problem rows?
SELECT
CustomerID,
CustomerName,
PreferredName
FROM Customer
WHERE CustomerName <> RTRIM(CustomerName)
OR PreferredName <> RTRIM(PreferredName); See possible answers