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Daily Coping Tip

Call a relative who is far away to say hello and have a chat

I also have a thread at SQLServerCentral dealing with coping mechanisms and resources. Feel free to participate.

For many of you out there working in a new way, I'm including a thought of the day on how to cope in this challenging time from The Action for Happiness Coping Calendar. My items will be on my blog, feel free to share yours.

The Devil is in the Details

Some of us have run into perplexing technology  problems, where we had to dig deep into an application to solve a problem. We might need to work with our own staff, vendor support, perhaps even coordinate people across multiple different organizations. This can be even more challenging when we don't have access into the internals of all the code.

I ran across a neat story from Netflix, where an engineer had to dig into an issue with one of their partners. In this case, there were hardware and software components, and four different companies involved. The problem involved a playback issue, with deadlines and finger pointing over the issue.

Eventually the root cause discovered was a thread level issue in the Android OS, but the tale of how the engineer asks questions, looks at good, sets up tests, and more is a good examine of how to dive into an issue. While many of us wouldn't get involved in threads on the data platform, we do need to understand the code and use metrics and data to narrow down the issues. It's certainly possible we could discover a bug, but most of my experience is that I've found a problem in developer code or insufficient hardware resources.

The story is a nice read, and the final paragraph made me smile It had this quote: " This story really exemplifies an aspect of my job I love:..." It's always inspirational to find someone truly enjoying their job, and I find myself thinking about the things I love about my job, with problem solving being one of the best parts.

Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Join the debate, and respond to today's editorial on the forums

 
  Featured Contents

Spoofing Data Convincingly: Text Data

Phil Factor from SQLServerCentral

Learn how to generate some convincing data for your development databases.

What’s most important to you when dealing with database software?

Additional Articles from Redgate

Take part in this short exercise (no more than 5 minutes) by letting us know what matters most to you when considering, purchasing, or using database software. As a thank you, you can also enter our prize draw at the end for a chance to win a $150 Amazon gift voucher.

Import Excel Data into SQL Server with PowerShell

Additional Articles from MSSQLTips.com

In this article we look at PowerShell code you can use to import Excel data into SQL Server.

From the SQL Server Central Blogs - Syncing SQL databases

James Serra from James Serra's Blog

There are various ways to keep SQL Server databases and SQL Database/SQL Managed Instance (SQL MI) databases in-sync asynchronously that I will discuss in this blog. The main use...

From the SQL Server Central Blogs - Retrieving Log Analytics Data with Data Factory

Meagan Longoria from Data Savvy

I’ve been working on a project where I use Azure Data Factory to retrieve data from the Azure Log Analytics API. The query language used by Log Analytics is...

 

  Question of the Day

Today's question (by Steve Jones - SSC Editor):

 

Default Datetime2 Precision

What is the default precision for datetime2 if I do not specify it, as shown here:
DECLARE @dt datetime2;

Think you know the answer? Click here, and find out if you are right.

 

 

  Yesterday's Question of the Day (by Steve Jones - SSC Editor)

The Update Lock

I have an update lock on a page in a table, where I am looking to increment the value for one row in a column. Is this all I need to perform the data modification?

Answer: No, I need this to upgrade to an exclusive lock to change the data

Explanation: To actually change the data on a page, we need an exclusive lock. The Update lock is upgraded to Exclusive to make the change. Ref: Lock Modes - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/relational-databases/sql-server-transaction-locking-and-row-versioning-guide?view=sql-server-ver15#lock_modes

Discuss this question and answer on the forums

 

 

 

Database Pros Who Need Your Help

Here's a few of the new posts today on the forums. To see more, visit the forums.


SQL Server 2017 - Development
Creating and joining multiple queries (more than 2) - Hi, I know how to create and join 2 queries but on occasion Ive needed to join more than 2 and Im unsure how to achieve this? The method I use for joining to is as per the example below - can you just extend this as required? Select * from ( SELECT Stuff.Example1 Stuff.Example2 […]
SQL Server 2016 - Administration
How to upgrade to 2016 AlwaysON from SQL Server 2012 ?. - Hello, I'm looking for the best way to go from existing 2012 Enterprise AlwaysON Cluster to SQL 2016 Enterprise AlwaysON . Existing setup: 2 nodes with OS 2012R2 and SQL Server 2012 Enterprise on latest service pack. Goal for new setup: Purchased 2 new servers that I want to be the final 2 new servers. […]
Help with Actual execution Plan - Please advise on the attached execution plan. If they open as XML then please rename them as .sqlplan. I did save them as .sqlplan for now. You might need winzip to extract since I was unable to attach direct files. Thank you!  
SQL Server 2016 - Development and T-SQL
Query Code returning incorrect results - Hello Community, I have the following logic: Find customers who didn't place orders from 2019-02-01 to 2019-03-01. Output customer's first name. I am working with the following dataset: CREATE TABLE #tmpTable ( id int, first_name varchar(50), last_name varchar(50), city varchar(50), address varchar(50), phone_number varchar(50), id int, cust_id int, order_date date, order_quantity int, order_details varchar(50), order_cost […]
ORDER BY using successful thousand comma separator - This query requires ActualTotal to be ordered with largest value top however as you can see from the screengrab, this hasn't worked completely. Is there a way to achieve this? Here is my current code: SELECT m.name, FORMAT(x.ComTotal,'N0') AS Total_2020, FORMAT(y.Totals,'N0') AS Some_2020, FORMAT(x.ComToTal + y.Totals,'N0') AS ActualTotal FROM Mees m LEFT JOIN View_2020_Listx_Jan2020 x […]
Odd query question i did some basic digging but didn't find anything relevant. - SQL Server 2016 cursor and query: select * from table1 where col1 = '1' and col2 = '00001' and col3='I' and col4 = 'JULY--2015' this is a dynamically created query and for the most part the col1, col2 and col3 stay the same only the col4 changes in this test case. while all the other […]
SQL query for First swipe in and Last Swipe Out for each day for each pay period - Hi, "EMPLOYEE" table has EmpName,EMPID . "SWIPE" table has SwipeTime_UTC,Swipe_location,EmpID  . Note:Swipein and swipeout locations are different. SwipeTime_UTC is UTC time format. Looking for SQL query to generate  the first swipe in and last swipe out for each employee on each day for given pay period.(Display time should be in EST). Any suggestions pls. Thanks.
Administration - SQL Server 2014
Slow database performance - Hi All, We are seeing serious I/O contentions issues on one of our database called "MarketingDB". Looking for some suggestions on how we can improve I/O demands for this database. Enabled Instant file initialization for data files to get some performance gain. All data files are in one drive and log file is in a […]
Development - SQL Server 2014
Need to insert differences between Staging and Working tables into the Working T - Hi, Still kind of a newbie to SQL Server. Anyway I have two tables: tblStaging and tblWorking. The staging table is updated every 15 minutes and I need to look at what's different in the Staging table and insert the differences into the Working table. I have a combination of two fields that guarantee uniqueness. […]
SQL 2012 - General
How to get duplicate on PartId and Company Id both and have different Status ? - How to get duplicate on Part Id and Company Id both and have different Status ? I work on SQL server 2012 I have issue I can't get duplicate on company id and part id and on same time have different status as partid 1211 and companyid 3030 repeated two times meaning two rows but […]
There is insufficient system memory in resource pool - Not a DBA here. Now that that is out of the way... I am troubleshooting an issue where our SQL service is stopping. We are on SQL 2012 Express x64 11.0.2100.60 running on Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard x64. The Windows application event logs show: -Event ID 701: There is insufficient system memory in resource […]
SQL Server 2012 - T-SQL
Last Column value at the maximum value of Cond Column - Good morning,   I'm trying to get the Temp value at the maximum value of the Cond column. The red line in the first query is what I'm expecting, the second one its the result I'm getting at the moment.   Current query: SELECT TOP (1) DateTime, CASE WHEN TagName = 'WFI_LP01_Cond.PV' THEN value END […]
SQL Server 2019 - Development
CONCAT and CASE WHEN combined - Hi everyone, I'm trying to create a query that concatenates the directions field that were involved in each transaction_id. I've tried to do it by creating a flag table with multiple case whens, and then querying on it, but as you can see in the image below, I'm having trouble to get a multiple 1's […]
Reporting Services
Execute Stored Procedure (with no Fields) - Hi Guys, I'm searching for a while now, but can't find a solution. We have a ssrs project where we are using Reports for Dashboarding. To do Right Management, we have a function for each table, these functions has a so called "Token" wich represents a specific user. As these Tokens have a timeout, there […]
General
How often have you needed to start a sequence of numbers at other than 1 or 0? - Itzik Ben-Gan (definitely one very smart guy in the world of SQL Server and T-SQL) published an interesting challenge back on the 9th of December, 2020.  You can find that challenge at the following link... https://sqlperformance.com/2020/12/t-sql-queries/number-series-challenge To summarize... Itzik posted the basis of his world-famous "GetNums" function, which generates a sequence of numbers.  The version […]
 

 

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