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.
Kitchen Culture
Today Andy Warren talks about an employee work item that many of you might not be tasked with.
Linked lists
Learn how you can achieve better performance with linked list instead of a numbering column.
What counts for a DBA: Responsibility
Whose fault is it if a database is hacked and its contents appear on a hacker’s site? Louis Davidson suggests that, regardless of limitations, the DBA always bears some responsibility.
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.
Blogs
Learn about Modern Microsoft Apps in San Diego
By Steve Jones
I wrote about learning today for the editorial: I Can’t Make You Learn. I...
How To Deploy Fabric SQL and Azure SQL Databases with Azure DevOps
By ReviewMyDB
Fabric has CI/CD built in, but if you've tried to use it for database...
A New Word: Attriage
By Steve Jones
attriage – n. the state of having lost all control over how you feel...
Forums
SSRS Reminded Me of the Time Microsoft Retired TMG
Comments posted to this topic are about the item SSRS Reminded Me of the...
Getting results from a Procedure to join to a query
I have a need to execute a stored procedure and return the results to...
Upgrade 2016 Standard to 2022 Express
Title pretty much says it all - can this be done? I've tried several...
Question of the Day
BIT_COUNT II
In SQL Server 2025, I have a table (dbo.UserPermission) that contains this data:
UserID UserPermissions 15 23 37 4 NULLWhat is returned when I run this code:
select bit_count(UserPermissions) as PermissionCount from dbo.UserPermission where UserID = 4;See possible answers