Announcing SQL Server 2025
Bob Ward announces the next version of SQL Server, now in private preview.
New SQL Server 2022 Functions
There were a number of T-SQL functions added in SQL Server 2022. Today Steve asks if you are using any of these in your work.
Skipping Columns (& other tricks) Using BCP Format Files (SQL Spackle)
BULK INSERT and BCP are powerful, high performance tools for importing text files. SQL Server MVP Jeff Moden gives us several nifty tips in this introduction to BULK INSERT and BCP Format Files including "Skipping Columns" and the sequestration of bad rows while still loading all the good data.
Transactions
By now, pretty much everyone has heard the stories about the first computers. They were huge, cost a fortune, required incredible amounts of air conditioning, and perhaps more importantly, ran batch jobs submitted on punched cards and magnetic tape. But even before we had these dinosaurs, there were E.A.M (electric accounting machine) units.
Boring or Scripting
There is no shortage of mundane tasks at work. Steve Jones notes that you might not want to depend on those to fill your day in the future.
Should That Be One Update Statement or Multiple?
Let’s say we have a couple of update statements we need to run every 15 minutes in the Stack Overflow database, and we’ve built indexes to support them:
How Do You Patch 100 Database Servers?
The challenges of managing lots of system are significant and there aren't easy solutions, but Steve has a few thoughts on what you can do.
Microsoft SQL announcements at PASS Data Community Summit 2024
Read a summary of the data platform announcements from Microsoft at the PASS Data Community Summit 2024 last week.
Explore Pandas in Python to Analyze and Manipulate Tabular Data
Learn how to use Pandas an open-source library for analyzing and manipulating tabular data in Python along with several examples.
It's The People
Last week the 2024 PASS Data Community Summit conference was held in Seattle. 1,700 of my closest friends got together for a week of learning (well, technically it's a three day conference, but there are two days of pre-conference seminars) and sharing. I'm still exhausted a week later (although, old age and an aggressive travel […]
Blogs
Prime Day Recommendations
By Steve Jones
It’s Prime Day. A few of my recommendations, since I want to do some...
Fabric for Operational Reporting & SQL Endpoint Trap
With Fabric Mirroring, Microsoft is promoting a nice and appealing story for operational reporting...
Crawl, Walk, Run with Agentic Development of Power BI Assets
If you’ve been watching AI roll through the data community and thinking, “this seems...
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...
Concurrency and Baseline Control: Level 5 of the Stairway to Reliable Database Deployments
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Concurrency and Baseline Control: Level...
Spending Time in the Office
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Spending Time in the Office
Question of the Day
Multiple Values Inserted
I have this code on SQL Server 2022. What happens when it runs all at once?
DROP TABLE IF EXISTS dbo.Commission GO CREATE TABLE dbo.Commission (id INT NOT NULL IDENTITY(1,1) CONSTRAINT CommissionPK PRIMARY KEY , salesperson VARCHAR(20) , commission VARCHAR(20) ) GO INSERT dbo.Commission ( salesperson, commission) VALUES ( 'Brian', 12 ), ( 'Brian', 'None' ) GOSee possible answers