Sql-Server

One of our popular courses is Advanced T-SQL for Developers and DBAs. If you’re still writing T-SQL like it’s SQL Server 2000, or even SQL Server 2016, it’s time to look at what’s changed over the years. We’ve just pushed out substantial updates to that course. The new content areas pushed out in this update are: New Module 1 Content: (Using Common Data Types Effectively) UNISTR - embedding Unicode within strings ANSI string concatenation with || Extensions to TRIM, LTRIM, and RTRIM, particularly for removing characters apart from spaces New options for CURRENT_DATE Truncating dates with DATETRUNC Grouping periods of dates with DATE_BUCKET New Module 2 Content: (Using Special Data Types) Creating tables of values with GENERATE_SERIES Optimizing optional parameters by using IS [NOT] DISTINCT FROM Working with bits (shifting left, right, counting, and setting and getting bits) New Module 7 Content: (Ranking, Pivoting, and Grouping Data) Using APPROXIMATE_PERCENTAGE (discrete and continuous) to enhance performance and reduce memory usage Using GREATEST and LEAST to reduce query complexity New Module 8 Content: (Using TOP, APPLY, and Window Functions) Using named windows to simplify queries New NULL treatment options for window clauses New Module 10 Content: (Working with JSON Data) New options for storing data by using the json data type Enhanced options for OPENJSON Using ISJSON to check JSON formats, including checking for VALUE, ARRAY, OBJECT, and SCALAR types JSON_PATH_EXISTS helps when working with nullable data Using JSON constructors to create objects and arrays Using the new JSON aggregates We’re really pleased with this update.

2024-10-09

Just a heads-up that v24 of SDU Tools went out to SDU Insiders last week. If you haven’t used SDU Tools, they are just a large library of functions implemented in T-SQL. You can use them as a full library or use them as examples of code in work you are trying to do. Backwards Compatibility We’ve also tried to keep all the code working for all versions of SQL Server that we see clients using.

2024-09-10

I had some clear time this morning so I read a recent book called Deciphering Data Architectures (Choosing Between a Modern Data Warehouse, Data Fabric, Data Lakehouse, and Data Mesh) by James Serra. Price One comment I need to make is that for some reason, the O’Reilly titles seem to have become more expensive lately, and their freight options are expensive too. It was the same for this book. It was $112 AUD landed at my place.

2024-08-15

Welcome to show 3 for PG Down Under! Once again, I really enjoyed recording today’s show. It features Ryan Booz. Ryan is an evangelist with our friends at Red-Gate, focussing on PostgreSQL. In this show, Ryan shares his experiences with community in relation to PostgreSQL. Next, we ventured into the challenges and benefits of being an application vendor working against PostgreSQL, and in particular, the extensibility model and how it compares to other products.

2024-07-25

There was a question on the Q&A forums today, asking how to read data using SSIS, when it’s in this format: |Col1| |Col2|Col3|Col| |101| |A|21|DC| One of the concerns was that there was a leading pipe. This is not a problem. When you have data like that, and you set | as the delimiter, because there are 6 delimiters, then there are 7 columns output. These are the values: Column 1: blank string Column 2: 101 Column 3: blank string Column 4: A Column 5: 21 Column 6: DC Column 7: blank string

2024-07-19

Another book that I read recently was SQL Query Design Patterns and Best Practices Book Cover by Steve Hughes, Dennis Neer, Dr Ram Babu Singh, Shabbir H Mala, Leslie Andrews, and Chi Zhang. It also came from our friends at PackT publishing. Purpose The intro to the book says “This book is for the SQL developer who is ready to take their query development skills to the next level. This includes report writers, data scientists, or similar data gatherers and allows users to expand their skills for complex querying and build more efficient and performant queries.

2024-06-11

I hadn’t seen Mohamed Kabiruddin for a while. He used to be Australian based, and worked for Microsoft for some time. Now he’s a product manager at Google. He’s always fascinating to chat to and so I was so pleased to have him on a SQL Down Under podcast today. Mohamed leads Cloud SQL for SQL Server working with the engineering team to deliver features and capabilities for enterprises to run their SQL Server workloads on Google Cloud SQL.

2024-05-18

Welcome to show 2 for PG Down Under! I really enjoyed recording today’s show with John Miner. John is a data architect at Insight in the USA. Over many years, John was a data platform MVP, is a strong community contributor, and blogs at craftydba.com. After I created the Wide World Importers sample databases for Microsoft back in 2016, I did also do a migration of the code to PostgreSQL. That didn’t get released for quite a while but I’ve now seen it out there in the wild.

2024-05-04

I’ve recently been doing work with a site that makes extensive use of Central Management Servers. And that’s an issue if you upgrade past v19.3 of SSMS. Central Management Servers If you haven’t used these, it’s the Registered Servers window that you can open in SSMS. (View -> Registered Servers) What it lets you do is set up groups of servers, and execute multi-server queries against all the servers in the group.

2024-05-02

Joe Sack is an old friend. (I’ve known him a long time. He’s not actually old). He’s always fascinating to chat to and so I was so pleased to have him on another SQL Down Under podcast today. Last time was in 2017. Joe is a Senior Product Manager at Microsoft and is working with the integration of data and AI with SQL Copilots. The aim is to use AI and natural language processing to make database management simpler, whether you’ve been doing it for years or just getting started.

2024-04-27