The Bit Bucket

In the last post, when talking about querying a table, I mentioned that you should always include the name of the schema when you refer to a table. This is called using two-part names. But what are schemas in the first place?

In different database engines (e.g. Oracle, PostgreSQL, etc.), schemas are implemented and work differently i.e. there isn’t a consistent story across the industry. In SQL Server though, the closest analogy that most people would be familiar with, is a folder where you group things that are related in some way.

2019-03-25

You probably already know that I’ve been learning Mandarin for about 8 years now, and have a fascination with Chinese business and technology. Learning the language has made this more approachable for me.  The story of Jack Ma and Alibaba is one of the really interesting aspects of Chinese business today, so I was intrigued to read this book:

Alibaba: The House that Jack Ma Built by Duncan Hall

I ended up listening to the book via Audible rather than reading it.

2019-03-22

Ever since it appeared back in earlier versions of SQL Server, I’ve normally launched SQL Server Configuration Manager from the Start menu in Windows. But every now and then, with some versions, it seemed to disappear. Now with the latest version of SQL Server installed on the latest version of Windows, it’s not there at all.

While it is possible to put it back in the menu, I think it’s time for us to get used to starting it in a different way.

2019-03-21

In our free SDU Tools for developers and DBAs, we have a number of functions and procedures that help you work with tables and indexes. One question that often arises is about how big tables are. Our tool ListUserTableSizes helps with that.

SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) has a report that shows you user table sizes, but people often want a list of sizes that they can get programmatically, perhaps for a monitoring tool, or some sort of automation.

2019-03-20

In the last post, I described what tables were, and then showed how to view their contents using an option in Object Explorer in SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS).

If you’ve ever seen a SQL query of any type, you will have seen one like this:

It says to return all columns from the table, and to return all rows.

Fair enough.

But there are a few things to understand about this simple statement:

2019-03-19

There are many SQL Server events around the world each year, and many are just awesome events. One that has grown non-stop and is currently my pick of these events is SQLBits.

Our UK buddies behind this (currently Simon Sabin, Darren Green, Annette Allen, Jonathan Allen, and Alex Whittles) have created an event that all others should be looking to.

I love the way they combine technical content with fun.

2019-03-18

Need to learn SQL Server Reporting Services or know someone else that needs to?

We’ve been working hard to move all our popular in-person training courses online and on-demand, so anyone in the world can take them.

Our SQL Server Reporting Services for Developers and DBAs course is now out the door.

This is the same course that we run as the first day of our 5 day BI Core Skills course. And it’s not just videos, there are:

2019-03-16

Leigh Sales is a well-respected local journalist. I feel some affinity for her, as she’s grown up in Queensland and often comments on things from her childhood that I clearly remember, even though Leigh is younger than me. I was fascinated to read her book Any Ordinary Day: Blindsides, Resilience and What Happens After the Worst Day of Your Life.

I decided to read her book before I knew anything about it at all. I knew it was “Any Ordinary Day”. I hadn’t realized it was “Blindsides, Resilience and What Happens After the Worst Day of Your Life”, so it was quite an unexpected story for me.

2019-03-15

I remember being pleased some years back when I finished reading all of SQL Server’s Books Online (now just the documentation pages for T-SQL and SQL Server). The more of those pages I read, the more I was fascinated by small things that I hadn’t noticed even though I’d used the product for a long time. There’s so much to SQL Server and even just to T-SQL, that I still find unexpected things all the time.

2019-03-14

In our free SDU Tools for developers and DBAs, a number of the string formatting functions have been quite popular, and we keep getting requests for even more.

Today’s post highlights another two of these. TrainCase is words with the first letters capitalized, then separated by underscores. KebabCase has dashes as separators. It’s named because it looks like a kebab.

You can see them (and some others) in action in the main image above, and in this video:

2019-03-13