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| | | The MVP Award Looks Backward I was awarded the Microsoft Data Platform MVP designation in July 2018. I've been honored to receive this designation since 2008, though the award doesn't drive my work. I started writing articles to help others get better with their work, just as I got help from others before me. That was the goal of SQLServerCentral, and I'm proud whenever I hear that I've been able to help someone solve a problem, learn a new skill, or improve their career in some way. Microsoft has an MVP site, and they describe the people they recognize in this way: "Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals, or MVPs, are technology experts who passionately share their knowledge with the community." The award is for those that make efforts to help others "ranging from speaking engagements, to social media posts, to writing books, to helping others in online communities ..." In other words, for those that help others, Microsoft chooses to designate some of them as MVPs for their efforts. Their past efforts. That's the key. If you are awarded the MVP designation, then you've spent quite a bit of time during the previous year helping others and sharing knowledge. You could stop all your writing, speaking, etc., and you'd still be an MVP for the next year. You might not be renewed after that, but you could use the logo, attend the MVP Summit, and more during this year. There are budget constraints to the MVP program, just like other corporate initiatives. As a result, not every speaker, blogger, open source MS stack developer, etc. gets awarded. People get nominated, or if they're already MVPs, they're automatically considered for the next award period. This leads to an evaluation process where every nominee for some period is ranked in some order. I have no idea what method is used, but it's a combination of speaking, blogging, organizing events, writing free/open source software, and likely more. There is a budget that says only xx people will be awarded, and the top xx people get picked. I really have no idea how this works, but since I've been a recipient of the award, this is what I've observed. Most people appreciate the award and continue to contribute to the community. Some really want to earn the award and make special efforts to ensure they make plenty of contributions. If you want to get recognized, it takes a lot of work. This is a competitive environment, with many people regularly making contributions to the community. You have to make enough to rank above the cutoff, regardless of accomplishments in prior years. I'm always appreciative of the award, but as I mentioned, it doesn't drive me. I have a set of things that I do for work, and a set that I volunteer for as a part of the community. If that earns me a high enough ranking, that's great. If it doesn't, I'm fine with that. Ultimately my goal is to help others, and I'll continue to do that, regardless of recognition. Steve Jones from SQLServerCentral.comJoin the debate, and respond to today's editorial on the forums |
| | The Voice of the DBA Podcast Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 4.1MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and Libsyn. The Voice of the DBA podcast features music by Everyday Jones. No relation, but I stumbled on to them and really like the music. |
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| | | | | Steve Hall from SQLServerCentral.com There are frequent misunderstandings about Explicit Transactions, not limited to use of 'nested transactions'. This article attempts to explain by example many of the behaviors of this feature. More » |
| | Tom Walsh explains how to use Redgate's SQL Prompt to improve legacy code More » |
| | Kenneth Fisher from SQLServerCentral Blogs For this month’s homework let’s try something a bit different. SQL Agent jobs are a very powerful tool frequently used... More » |
| | Steve Jones from SQLServerCentral Blogs The most important thing for a data guy is having a way to restore data. If security, performance, etc. are... More » |
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| | | Today's Question (by Steve Jones): I create this table: CREATE TABLE SalesOrderHeader ( OrderKey INT NOT NULL , OrderDate DATETIME2(3) NOT NULL , CustomerID INT) GO Next I add a clustered index. CREATE CLUSTERED INDEX SalesOrderHeaderCX_OrderDate ON dbo.SalesOrderHeader (OrderDate); GO Now I add a PK. ALTER TABLE dbo.SalesOrderHeader ADD CONSTRAINT SalesOrderHeaderPK PRIMARY KEY (OrderKey); The SQL Server will create statistics for the columns. What will be the statisticsID for the PK column? |
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| Yesterday's Question of the Day |
| Yesterday's Question (by Steve Jones): When most CTE code is published, it looks something like this: ; WITH Tally_CTE AS ( SELECT TOP 52 ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY StockCode) AS Num FROM Data.Stock ) SELECT Num, SalesForTheWeek FROM Tally_CTE CTE LEFT OUTER JOIN ( SELECT SUM(TotalSalePrice) AS SalesForTheWeek ,DatePart(wk, SaleDate) AS WeekNo FROM Data.Sales WHERE YEAR(SaleDate) = 2016 GROUP BY DatePart(wk, SaleDate) ) SLS ON CTE.Num = SLS.WeekNo What is the semi colon on the line at the beginning?
Answer: Any code before the CTE must end with a terminator, which is the semi colon. This prevents errors if this code is placed after other statements in a batch. Explanation: The CTE is a T-SQL construct that must have any previous statements end with a terminator, which is the semi colon. Ref: WITH common_table_expression - click here » Discuss this question and answer on the forums |
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| Database Pros Who Need Your Help |
| | Here's a few of the new posts today on the forums. To see more, visit the forums. 0x004700DD24EBF06E46E0A707561C0BE83EC0 is changing to Binary on import - Hello all! When I run this Query as an Import: SELECT ID, OWNER, EMAIL FROM dbo.CLEAR_AUX i get... <Binary data> as ID Barry Bonds as OWNER abbonds@gmail.com as... Need to display a column with deleted overlapping dates - I want to get rid of the following overlapping records from the table and display the below output. Also, I... Insert into increased database size to maximum - Hi, sorry first of all for the nervous writing and multiple edits, i think i srewed up big time and try... Permission issue - am I missing something? Joining on the numeric part of string... - Hi All, It's been a while...I'd like to get your advice on the most efficient way to join on only the... Pivoting a 2 columns table to a 6 columns table with 1/3 the rows - Hello, I have a table with 3 columns: RowNumber integer xImage Image xImageDesc nvarchar(30) I need to flip this into a table with 6 columns... Changing network packet size - Hi our network has an MTU of 1500 so I've changed the network packet size to 1472 to stop the packet... sql cursor in stored procedure - not looping - I have a problem that I don't know how to solve.Since yesterday I've tried all the different approaches I could... Error handling in nested stored procedure - I have the following code Create procMaster as Begin try Begin transaction exec procChild 123 , 'ABC' if @@trancount > 0... Compare against multiple columns - I have a table representing sales. I want to return a list of sales along with the possible sales. --... Insert-Update Concurrency Simulator - Dear All, I have a application with SQL Server 2008 r2 DB which creates some Ticket ID's based on last ID... Can I Proper case a UK address string with postcode with a function - Hi All Thanks in advance for any solutions I have been doing some searching and found pattern matching for UK post... Efficient way to load data in a table - Hello guys, I currently have a query comprising of joins across multiple tables to process data for 10 years and... random records - How to select random (10 or 20) records from table? Help improving performance of a query - The following query takes somewhere between 30 to 35 seconds to complete. Can something be done to speed it up?... AWS RDS two instances Virginia and Ireland, run Redgate data compare and get transport level error/timeout - Morning, I ran redgate compare between two instances one in the US one in Ireland, no problem synchronizing the schema over.... Tracking jobs over time - Hello I have a work database that lists: Type of job Date job started Date job finished I have been asked if I can produce a... SSMS SQLCMD Mode with ApplicationIntent=ReadOnly - I'm new to SQL Server 2017 availability groups so any help would be appreciated. For my scripts that use select... How to run Deployed Pkg's at 64 bit - Hello, I'm on a single SQL Server instance and box where both Dev and prod occur. I have VS 2015... Measure Calculation - Here some background: I am using vs2010 multidimensional cube solution. My fact table, FactProductionClaims, consists of contract keys and the claims keys... |
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