Roy Ernest Introduction to SQL Server Spatial Data Many applications require the handling of geospatial data. Roy and Surenda take you through the basics of SQL Server spatial data types. … 18 March 2020 22 min read
Robert Sheldon SQL Server System Functions: The Basics Every SQL Server Database programmer needs to be familiar with the System Functions. These range from the sublime (such as @@rowcount or @@identity) to the... 31 March 2016 22 min read
Robert Sheldon SQL Server Metadata Functions: The Basics To be able to make full use of the system catalog to find out more about a database, you need to be familiar with the... 09 March 2016 21 min read
Michael Sorens Using C# to Create PowerShell Cmdlets: The Basics Although PowerShell Cmdlets are usually written in PowerShell, there are occasions when the level of integration with existing C# or VB libraries is awkward to... 19 February 2016 18 min read
Nicolas Prigent PowerShell Desired State Configuration: The Basics 'Desired State Configuration (DSC) is an essential part of the configuration, management and maintenance of Windows-based servers. It allows a PowerShell script to specify the... 10 February 2016 13 min read
Joe Celko SQL GROUP BY Basics It sometimes pays to go back and look at what you think you already know about SQL. Joe Celko gives a quick revision of the... 08 February 2016 15 min read
Robert Sheldon SQL Server System Views: The Basics When maintaining or refactoring an unfamiliar database, you'll need a fast way to uncover all sorts of facts about the database, its tables, columns keys... 27 January 2016 19 min read
Casimir Saternos Visualizing Data with R It isn't just the attraction of the huge range of statistical analyses afforded by R that attracts data people to R. The language has also... 24 August 2015 12 min read
Nicolas Prigent PowerShell Day-to-Day Admin Tasks: Monitoring Performance By reading performance counters from services such as SQL Server or Exchange, you can get a wealth of performance information. By automating the process of... 01 July 2015 13 min read
Adam Aspin SQLXML Bulk Loader Basics SQLXML isn't exactly new technology, but like the even more venerable BCP, it remains the quickest and most reliable way of heaving large quantities of... 02 June 2015 26 min read
Nicolas Prigent PowerShell Day-to-Day Admin Tasks: WMI, CIM and PSWA WMI (Windows Management Instrumentation) is the basic way of querying and changing basic information about any windows server, including SQL Server or Exchange Server. It... 28 May 2015 12 min read
Casimir Saternos R Basics For exploring data and doing open-ended statistical analysis on it, nothing beats the R language. Over the years, this open-source tool has come to dominate... 04 March 2015 12 min read
Kathi Kellenberger SQL Server Reporting Services Basics: Deploying Reports 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... 06 January 2015 20 min read
Kathi Kellenberger SQL Server Reporting Services Basics: The Visual Controls 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... 03 December 2014 17 min read
Feodor Georgiev SSIS 2012 Projects: Setup, Project Creation and Deployment It used to be that SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) packages had to be deployed individually. Now, they can be all deployed together from a... 04 November 2014 7 min read
Kathi Kellenberger SQL Server Reporting Services Basics: Customizing SSRS Reports 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... 27 August 2014 23 min read
Jaap Wesselius Office 365 Essentials – Subscriptions and Licenses Should you be planning to move from Exchange to Office 365? If so, why? What sort of license should you get, and should you use... 08 August 2014 10 min read
Phil Factor On Comparing Tables in SQL Server How do you compare two SQL tables? Every SQL Developer or DBA knows the answer, which is 'it depends'. It is not just the size... 29 May 2014 20 min read
Robert Sheldon SQL Server Source Control Basics For efficient team-based database development, and reliable and repeatable database deployments, source control is not optional. This book provides just the right combination of theory... 01 May 2014 3 min read
Kathi Kellenberger SQL Server Reporting Services Basics: Building SSRS Reports 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... 25 April 2014 27 min read
