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Halloween 2017

It's Halloween, and I'm at the PASS Summit. In all the years I've attended the annual event, I don't remember it being on Halloween, especially since that has been a holiday that I've spent with my children. I know quite a few people aren't attending the Summit this year with the scheduling and their own kids. However, for me, I'm about done. My youngest is 16, and unlikely to want to spend the holiday with Dad.

Halloween should also have some special meaning for data people, after all, we have a Halloween Problem in our systems that must be dealt with. Fortunately, the platform protects us, and if you want to know more, read Paul White's series. It's educational, informative, and interesting. Plus, who knows when someone might interview and decide to bring up the issue to see if they can stump you. If you want something that's perhaps a bit more fun, check out a few of Jason Brimhall's Halloween posts.

I don't know how celebratory the rest of the world is on Halloween, but it can be quite fun here in the US. I won't have a costume tonight, but I'm looking forward to seeing how all the data professionals look at tonight's opening reception. I'll take lots of pictures, and post them on my blog.

Happy Halloween.

Steve Jones from SQLServerCentral.com

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Question of the Day

Today's Question (by Steve Jones):

What is the result of adding these two dates?

 DECLARE @dt1 datetime, @dt2 DATETIME SET @dt1 = '2017-10-31'; SET @dt2 = '2000-01-01'; SELECT @dt1 + @dt2

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Yesterday's Question of the Day

Yesterday's Question (by Steve Jones):

I run this code:

 SELECT EOMONTH('20170928', 3)

What date is returned?

Answer: 2017-12-31

Explanation:

The EOMonth function finds the end of the month for a date. There is a second parameter that changes the number of months from the date passed in.

In this case, the end of month is 2017-09-30. Adding 3 months to that gets to 2017-12-31.

Ref: Stairway to Advanced T-SQL Level 9: Compare, Modify, Derive and Validate Date and Time Values

EOMonth - click here

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