Don't Be a Ghost
If you want to further your career, you can't be a ghost. Steve Jones talks about the ways in which so many people might end up hurting their careers by trying to keep their lives too private.
T-SQL Coding Style
When you write T-SQL code what kind of coding style do you use? Do you have a consistent way to comment and format your code? Does your organization provide standards for how you must code your T-SQL? Join Greg Larsen as he discusses some of the coding styles you should consider when writing your T-SQL scripts and stored procedures.
Bad Data Costs Lives
Either data is right or it is wrong. There is no in-between. Phil Factor examines a recent scandal that hit the health care system in the UK to highlight why it's so important that we, as data professionals, ensure responsible use of data and respect for data quality.
Data mining introduction part 4: the Naïve Bayes algorithm
This chapter explains the Naïve Bayes algorithm. How does it works, what information is displayed.
Data mining introduction part 4: the Naïve Bayes algorithm
This chapter explains the Naïve Bayes algorithm. How does it works, what information is displayed.
Modeling the Earth
Microsoft Research has a variety of interesting projects underway, including one to try and model the Earth. Many of these involve lots of data in some way, and would be interesting projects to work on, according to Steve Jones.
Managing SQL Server Statistics
Accurate statistics about the data held in tables are used to provide the best execution strategy for SQL queries. but if the statistics don't accurately reflect the current contents of the table you'll get a poorly-performing query. How do you find out if statistics are correct, and what can you do if the automatic update of statistics isn't right for the way a table is used?
dbWarden - A Free SQL Server Monitoring Package
dbWarden is a comprehensive monitoring and alerting solution for SQL Server 2005 or newer. It features an emailed Health Report and includes email and text notifications with customizable metrics for alerts such as Blocking, Long Running Queries and SQL Jobs, CPU %, Log file and TempDB growth.
The DBA Office
The environment in which we work can have an affect on the way in which we work. Steve Jones asks today if you have a preference for your environment.
Comparing Multiple Rows Insert vs Single Row Insert with Three Data Load Methods
The performance of 'extract, transform, load' (ETL) processes for large quantities of data can always be improved by objective testing and experiment with alternative techniques. The cause of poor performance can sometimes be surprising.
Blogs
Automatic Index Compaction
By ReviewMyDB
Index maintenance has always meant nightly jobs and a window you have to defend....
The Goldilocks problem – Materialized Views
I’m sure you’ve all heard the tale of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, but...
Monday Monitor Tips: Virtual Machine Usage and Cost
By Steve Jones
One of the things I’ve been requesting for a number of years is cost...
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...
How We Handled a Vendor Retry That Loaded Twice in Snowflake
Comments posted to this topic are about the item How We Handled a Vendor...
Cognitive Coverage
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Cognitive Coverage
Question of the Day
Getting the Average
I have this data in the dbo.Commission table in a SQL Server 2022 database.
salesperson commission Brian 12 Brian 16 Andy 7 Andy 14 Andy 21 Steve 20 Steve NULLAll the data is a varchar, and I decide to run this query to get the totals for each salesperson.
SELECT SalesPerson
, AVG(TRY_PARSE(Commission AS int)) AS TotalCommission
FROM commission
GROUP BY SalesPerson
GO
What average commission is calculated for Steve? See possible answers