Had a requirement to round some price values to the nearest £5 in a SQL stored proc. It’s easy to round to the nearest 10 using a negative value for the length parameter of the ROUND function i.e. [sql]select round(12, -1)[/sql] returns 10 [sql]select round(16, -1)[/sql] returns 20 but length must be of type tinyint, Read more about SQL – rounding to nearest 5[…]
It’s that time of year again when Red Gate open the nominations for it’s annual Exceptional DBA Award. I entered and made the final 2 years ago, and honestly believe it has added value to me as a SQL professional. I was immensely proud to be associated with some ‘big names’ in the SQL world, and be Read more about Exceptional DBA[…]
This is a reprint of an article of mine that appeared on SQLServerCentral.com in December 2008 Introduction A customer of mine had a performance problem with a stored procedure that uses Common Table Expressions (CTEs). The performance had gone from sub second to 10-12 secs, and the approach that was being taken to diagnose and Read more about Power and Deception of CTEs[…]
One of the best ways of monitoring your database server health and general well-being is to keep an eye on the SQL Server Log. A lot of information gets written to this log, and it can be quite daunting if you are trying to look for pointers in the event of a server failure or Read more about RECONFIGURE messages in SQL Log[…]
I very often find myself wanting to repeat functionality across different products, and Reporting Services and Excel are often the culprits! The 2 most common features I want to nab from Excel reporting are: Keeping the column headings at the top when scrolling – a la ‘Freeze Panes’ in Excel Remove pagination for the web Read more about SSRS report paging[…]