In this article, we are going to clarify the fundamentals of Business Intelligence (BI) concepts with their benefits from the data utilization point of view, and explore the SQL Server-focused Business Intelligence solutions by practical examples and illustrations.
Before we discuss the particular issues related to SQL Server, let’s define the basic ideas of business intelligence.
Read MoreThanks to the diversity of cultures on Earth, we have a variety of date formats. For numeric dates, we have month-day-year, day-month-year, and year-month-day. We also have short and long formats. Dates can be mixed with time, which is another story. This reality follows us at work. That’s why the SQL date format is not something we can take easy.
Read MoreSQL CASE? Piece of cake!
Really?
Not until you bump into 3 troublesome issues that can cause runtime errors and slow performance.
If you are trying to scan the subheadings to see what the issues are, I can’t blame you. Readers, including me, are impatient.
I trust that you already know the basics of SQL CASE, so, I won’t bore you with long introductions. Let’s dig into a deeper understanding of what’s happening under the hood.
Read MoreThere is a requirement in relational database systems that transactions must be durable. This is “D” in the ACID properties of transactions. The system must ensure that if a sudden crash happens, the transaction can be replayed. SQL Server fulfills this requirement by capturing all transactions in a physical file called a transaction log file.
In essence, every time a transaction is committed, SQL Server records changes produced by that transaction in a transaction log. Even if the transaction has not been persisted in the data file, it is available in the transaction log and can be replayed in the event of a sudden crash.
Read MoreThe data type represents an attribute that stores integer, character, data time, binary data. Suppose you have a web application for recording the users’ feedback for various questions. It contains multiple dichotomous questions and a few textbox-based questions, such as remarks. On the backend, these responses get stored in an SQL table.
Read MoreIf you are reading this article, most probably, you are already familiar with SQL. You know how to write basic SQL queries. There are many ways to execute a SQL query to get desired results on your database.
However, not all SQL queries are created equal. Most can be optimized to follow the best practice. This article focuses on the ways of queries optimizing. After reading, you will know all the dos and don’ts of writing SQL queries.
Read MoreSQL Server is Microsoft’s premier database management system that we can use to develop relational databases. It also offers support for graph databases. Depending on the services offered, SQL Server comes in various editions, such as Enterprise, Standard, Personal, Developer, Express, etc.
In this article, we’ll deal with the SQL Server Express Edition, a free edition of SQL server commonly used for developing desktop, web, and small-scale server applications. We’ll clarify how to download, install, and configure it. Along the way, we’ll also illustrate how to install and use SQL Server Management Studio which is an easy-to-use GUI-based tool for managing SQL Server databases.
Read MoreNewbie? Then an SQL foreign key may be foreign to you.
You may have heard different opinions about SQL foreign keys. If you haven’t, soon you will. Or your experience will affect your view. The main thing to know is, foreign keys are a must in relational databases.
Yet, some developers may remove or ignore foreign keys when facing some complications. So, what to do? To use the foreign key or not to use it? Will there be times when you won’t need to use them?
This guide is for you to see how important this thing is. You will also know some gotchas in code and learn how to fix them. Besides, of course, we’ll use practical examples. There’s nothing you can’t handle.
Read MoreThere are several methods of rebuilding all indexes of all tables, among them:
In this article, we’ll explore these methods and illustrate them with practical examples.
Read MoreNot so long ago, I was working on a project where we needed to change the data type of a table. The table had millions of rows, and we decided to create a separate table using the existing table definition and insert the rows into that table. After exporting data into the new table, we renamed the old table, constraint, and indexes using the sp_rename stored procedure.
The current article is dedicated to the ways of renaming indexes.
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