The Facebook Fiasco

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About ten years ago, my friends and family were abandoning their Myspace accounts and heading to Facebook. I fought it for a while but eventually assimilated and ended up with over 650 Facebook “friends” at last count. Even my mother embraced the platform, very happy that she could see frequently updated photos of her many … Read more
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Working from Home

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I’ve been fortunate enough to work from my home office for the past six years. My commute is about twelve steps, or, occasionally, a 45-minute drive to the nearest airport. It may not be for everyone, but I think that more employers should let their workers take advantage of an arrangement like this. Since I … Read more
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Time Off

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Time is a precious commodity, and so much of our time is dedicated to working. IT professionals often have jobs with good benefits, including generous paid time off. It’s very important to get away from work to relax and recharge, but, sometimes, it’s difficult to take those days that belong to us. Even when we … Read more
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Self-improvement: Uniquely Human

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There are many things that separate humans from other animals. One of those things is our interest in improving ourselves. Many of us are motivated, especially this time of year, to learn languages, better our health, develop leadership qualities, or increase wealth. There is an entire genre of literature dedicated to self-improvement, also known as … Read more
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T-SQL Window Function Speed Phreakery: The FIFO Stock Inventory Problem

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Sometimes, in the quest for raw SQL performance, you are forced to sacrifice legibility and maintainability of your code, unless you then document your code lavishly. Phil Factor's SQL Speed Phreak challenge produced some memorable code, but can SQL features introduced since then help to produce code that performs as well and is also easy to understand? Aunty Kathi investigates.… Read more
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SQL Server Reporting Services Basics: Deploying Reports

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Having designed and tested our reports, it's time to deploy them to the Report Server, so that our users can access them. Kathi Kellenberger demonstrates how to configure reports for native-mode deployment using Report Manager, and then deploy them from within SSDT-BI. She also explains how to use the Report Builder to provide "self-service" reporting to end users, allowing them to build custom reports based on report parts and shared datasets.… Read more
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SQL Server Reporting Services Basics: The Visual Controls

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The challenge of report development is to present complex data in a simple, visually compelling way. The goal is to make it as quick and easy as possible for others in the organization to use that data to make decisions, to see progress towards a business target, or spot and act on worrying trends sooner rather than later. Kathi Kellenberger demonstrates how to start adding visual flair to your SSRS reports, using its impressive set of visual controls, ranging from basic charts to gauges, indicators, sparklines, and maps.… Read more
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SQL Server Reporting Services Basics: Customizing SSRS Reports

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While the Reporting Wizard and basic report tables will do for prototyping, very soon we'll want to add some finesse to our reports, and allow our report users to create different views of the same data, dynamically. Kathi Kellenberger shows how to use expressions, functions, grouping, the matrix control, and other features, to add a degree of user control to the reports while maintaining visual clarity.… Read more
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SQL Server Reporting Services Basics: Building SSRS Reports

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SQL Server Reporting Services is one of the most popular components of SQL Server, but it has always been surprisingly difficult to get from one place all the basic facts you need to get up and running from scratch, to the point of producing reports. Here Kathi Kellenberger quickly describes the basics of SSRS before showing how to build quick, simple reports.… Read more
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Solving Complex T-SQL Problems, Step-By-Step

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What should you do if your first, most intuitive solution to a problem ends up scanning the data more than is necessary, resulting in poor performance? Have you missed a new SQL Server feature that can remove inefficiency from your technique? Alternatively, do you need a little help, and some lateral thinking, to open the path to a different approach? Sometimes, the answer is "both".… Read more
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Set-based Speed Phreakery: The FIFO Stock Inventory SQL Problem

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The SQL Speed Freak Challenge is a no-holds-barred competition to find the fastest way in SQL Server to perform a real-life database task. It is the programming equivalent of drag racing, but without the commentary box. Kathi has stepped in to explain what happened with the second challenge and why some SQL ran faster than others.… Read more
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