I blog and engage with the community because it gives me satisfaction when someone resolves an issue. A few days ago, I blogged about a DBA who began his first day at a new company and could not find out where the installation summary file was. He was very happy when I featured his story on our blog. Today he asked me another question and when I received his question my first reaction was – not possible. Later I said, may be possible, and when he shared more information, I said of course it is possible and natural. Let us go over these conversations in the exact order of how they occurred.

(I have modified the emails to chat format as it is easier to understand)

Jeff: Pinal, help needed. My query is returning more data than I need.
Pinal: Well, check your WHERE clause, JOINS etc.
Jeff: The problem is that INNER JOIN is returning more records than exist in the table.
Pinal: Not possible. How can a query return data that does not exist. Are you sure that you are connected to the correct database and running the query on the same server where you are validating the data?
Jeff: Yes, yes, everything is in the right place. Can Inner Join ever return more data than exists in the table?
Pinal: Well, maybe. Here is the story. Inner Join can for sure return more records than exists in the table, but it cannot return records that do not exist. Does that make sense?
Jeff: No.
Pinal: Okay, in simple words, if your table has three rows (values 1, 2, 3), your inner join can return 10 rows but it cannot return you the value 4 as part of the result.
Jeff: In simple English please…
Pinal: Honestly, I cannot make it more simple than what I said just now. Here is the example for you.
(Jeff goes through example and after few minutes)
Jeff: Exactly, I had no equal condition which did this. You helped me again.
Pinal: You’re welcome!
(After few minutes…)
Jeff: Pinal, help needed…

Well, this goes on. Anyway, here is the script that I sent him.

Let us create a scenario. We will create three sample tables and insert values in it.

USE TempDB
GO
-- Sample Table
CREATE TABLE FirstTable (Col1 INT)
CREATE TABLE SecondTable (Col1 INT)
CREATE TABLE ThirdTable (Col1 INT)
GO
INSERT INTO FirstTable (Col1)
VALUES (1), (2), (3), (NULL)
GO
INSERT INTO SecondTable (Col1)
VALUES (1), (2), (3), (NULL)
GO
INSERT INTO ThirdTable (Col1)
VALUES (2), (2), (2), (2), (2), (NULL)
GO


Here you will see the normal use of INNER JOIN where a query returns the results as the number of rows or fewer than the number of rows in the table. This happens because the data is unique in both of the tables.

Query 1: Inner Join with Equal to Sign

-- Query 1
SELECT f.Col1 fCol1
FROM FirstTable f
INNER JOIN SecondTable s ON s.Col1 = f.col1
GO

Query 2: Inner Join with Not Equal to Sign

Here is a query where the data is still unique (distinct) among tables but the result set contains more records than the numbers of rows the table contains. The condition <> (not equal to) returns the result which was excluded in the query where = (equal to) condition was used.

-- Query 2
SELECT f.Col1 fCol1
FROM FirstTable f
INNER JOIN SecondTable s ON s.Col1 <> f.col1
GO


Note: If you combine the data of Query 1 and Query 2, you will get the same result as CROSS JOIN of both the tables. If you want to understand further, read my earlier article Introduction to Join – Visual Explanation.

Query 3: Inner Join with Non-Distinct Row Table

Here is a query where data in another table is not unique and INNER JOIN returns more records than one of the tables.

-- Query 3
SELECT f.Col1 fCol1
FROM FirstTable f
INNER JOIN ThirdTable s ON s.Col1 = f.col1
GO

Summary

Inner Join can for sure return more records than the records of the table. Inner join returns the results based on the condition specified in the JOIN condition. If there are more rows that satisfy the condition (as seen in query 2), it will return you more results. Reference: Introduction to Join – Visual Explanation.

Well, feel free to send your questions or even solutions. If I find them interesting I will share them with everybody with due credit.

Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)

SQL Server is an ocean of information. I believe if one starts learning today, after 60 years he/she may still be learning the subject (there are always a few exceptions)! Recently, I published the SQL Server Questions and Answers video tutorial, and since the course came out, I have been receiving lots of request to share SQL Tips which are small and easy to digest.

While writing the SQL books with my co-authors Vinod Kumar and Rick Morelan, we often came across very interesting and useful tips which we believe would be helpful to readers. Sometimes the tips are so small that we could not find an appropriate place for them in the book. We call them Sixty Seconds Tips. The tips are so small that sometimes sixty seconds are too long for them. Keeping the notion of quick and easy tips – we have decided to come up with new series called “SQL in Sixty Seconds.” Every week we will post one small but useful video tip. We believe that Sixty Seconds is metaphor for quick and easy tip.

I have seen many developers staying away from CTE (Common Table Expression), their excuse is that they do not know how to convert subqueries to CTE or they think it is very complicated to do so. In the very first episode of SQL in Sixty Seconds we will see how easily one can convert Subqueries to CTE and CTE to Subqueries.

More on CTE:
Simple Example of Recursive CTE
Multiple CTE in One SELECT Statement Query
Common Table Expression (CTE) and Few Observation
Delete Duplicate Rows
Simple Example of Recursive CTE – Part 2 – MAXRECURSION – Prevent CTE Infinite Loop
T-SQL Paging Query Technique Comparison (OVER and ROW_NUMBER()) – CTE vs. Derived Table

I encourage you to submit your ideas for SQL in Sixty Seconds. We will try to accommodate as many as we can.

Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)

“Pinal,

I am new DBA in my organization and I have to manage SQL Server 2005, 2008 and 2008 R2. Today is my first day at job and my manager has asked me to install all these different edition on our test environment. I have finished installing them. Later he has asked me provide him Installation Log Summary. I searched on internet and I could not find it, would you send me format of the installation log summary?”

I like this question, even though it is very simple, it demonstrates how new job can be confusing on very first day.

I sent him following reply

“Jeff,

I believe your manager is asking you following summary log produced by SQL Server installation. You can find it from following location on various version

Let us assume that your installation directory is: C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server

SQL Server 2012 - C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\110\Setup Bootstrap\Log\Summary.txt
SQL Server 2008\R2 - C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\100\Setup Bootstrap\Log\Summary.txt

Congratulations on first day!”

He immediately replied that I was correct, his manager was looking for summary file in above mentioned folder. You should replace the path of your installation directory with the C drive I specified in above response.

This remind me my first day at job. I was very much confused and lost too. I did not know the abbreviation and jargon used in organization. Thanks to my seniors and co-workers that I am now familiar with the same. However, the learning is forever ongoing activity. Every single day I learn something new when I walk into my office, I consider every day as my first day for learning something new.

Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)

I was able to install the database successful. He informed me that he has created database diagram so I can easily understand his database tables. As soon as I tried to open the database diagram I faced following error. For a while I could not figure out how to resolve the error.

Error:
Database diagram support objects cannot be installed because this database does not have a valid owner. To continue, first use the Files page of the Database Properties dialog box or the ALTER AUTHORIZATION statement to set the database owner to a valid login, then add the database diagram support objects.

Workaround / Fix / Solution :

Well for a while I attempted few things and nothing worked. After that I carefully read the error and I realized that solution was proposed in the error only. I just have to read it carefully. Here are the steps I did to make this work.

-- Replace YourDatabaseName in following script
ALTER AUTHORIZATION ON DATABASE::YourDatabaseName TO sa
GO


• Select your database >> Right Click >> Select Properties
• Select FILE in left side of page
• In the OWNER box, select button which has three dots (…) in it
• Now select user ‘sa’ or NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM and click OK.

This should solve your problem.

Please note, I suggest you check your security policies before changing authorization. I did this to quickly solve my problem on my development server. If you are on production server, you may open yourself to potential security compromise.

Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)

This whitepaper discusses two major points. Following is the abstract from book online:

High Availability and Disaster Recovery Concepts. Provide a brief discussion of the drivers and challenges of planning, managing, and measuring the business objectives of a highly available database environment. This discussion is followed by a brief overview of the high availability and disaster recovery capabilities of SQL Server 2012 AlwaysOn and Windows Server solutions.

SQL Server AlwaysOn Layers of Protection. Provide a deeper discussion of the feature capabilities, rationale, and dependencies of the layers of protection offered by a SQL Server AlwaysOn solution. It will cover infrastructure availability, SQL Server instance-level protection, database-level protection, and data tier application capabilities.

Microsoft SQL Server AlwaysOn Solutions Guide for High Availability and Disaster Recovery

Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)

-- Identify Virtual Processors in for SQL Server 2005, 2008, 2008R2, 2012
SELECT cpu_count
FROM sys.dm_os_sys_info
GO
-- Identify Virtual Processors in for SQL Server 2000
CREATE TABLE #TempTable
([Index] VARCHAR(2000),
[Name] VARCHAR(2000),
[Internal_Value] VARCHAR(2000),
[Character_Value] VARCHAR(2000)) ;
INSERT INTO #TempTable
EXEC xp_msver;
SELECT Internal_Value AS VirtualCPUCount
FROM #TempTable
WHERE Name = 'ProcessorCount';
DROP TABLE #TempTable
GO

Yesterday I shared on facebook page about I am writing this blog post, SQL Server Expert Simran Jindal shared following script which is applicable to SQL Server 2005 and later versions. I just got update from her that this query is of my dear friend and SQL Server MVP Glenn Berry. Thanks Glenn.

SELECT cpu_count AS [Logical CPU Count], hyperthread_ratio AS Hyperthread_Ratio,
cpu_count/hyperthread_ratio AS Physical_CPU_Count,
physical_memory_in_bytes/1048576 AS Physical_Memory_in_MB,
sqlserver_start_time, affinity_type_desc -- (affinity_type_desc is only in 2008 R2)
FROM sys.dm_os_sys_info

If know any other reliable method to get the count of logical CPU, please share that in comment and I will update this blog post with due credit.

Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)

Given the success of our UG meetings in Bangalore, this year we tried to accommodate even more people by hosting two technical tracks at the same event.  I think this plan worked out well and I have heard a lot of supportive comments about it.

Because we now were able to provide six speaking slots, we had a lot of great speakers this year.  Karan Gulati spoke about BI in Denal, Amit Banerjee gave a talk titled “Demystifying SQL Server Memory Dumps.”  My co-author Vinod Kumar even gave a talk about “Security with SQL Server – Discovering Pitfalls”, and some of the pitfalls you might come up against. Very interesting and inspiring session. I learned lots of tricks from this session and wished that this session never ends.

I was proud to be asked to speak at this event.  I was third in the line-up in the Developer track.   I think the talk went very well.  My topic was “SQL Server Performance Tips & Tricks,” and I started out with a Q&A with the audience.  I think group participation like this is a great way to learn about a subject.  The questions from the audience came fast and furious, but I think I answered everyone to the best of my ability, and I am happy to report that everyone laughed in the right places.

After my talk, Balmukund Lakhani spoke about a topic he called “Always on Unplugged.”  He talked about a new feature that is coming up in SQL Server called Availability Group.  Last was Rick Morelan, who gave a talk called “Basic Performance Tips & Gotchas.”  I think readers may recognize his name from another book I co-authored (SQL Wait Stats), and it was exciting to share the stage with him again.

When all the talks were over, the fun was not finished!   I am also very excited to tell all my readers that a special give-away at this event was none other than my book, SQL Server Interview Questions and Answers.  There was even time for book signing afterwards, and it feels like everyone wanted their copy signed.  The book wasn’t the only giveaway, either.  Every attendee received a free 7-day trial subscription to Pluralsight, which I hope everyone takes advantage of. Vinod and I have co-authored SQL Server Questions and Answers course on Pluralsight as well. Thanks to SQLPASS, Sponsors, and Microsoft for making this event a bit success.

In the end, the conference was a great success and I am very pleased with the amount of attendees and participation.  I am now very tired after all that hard work, but I am also feeling very satisfied with a job well done.

Here are few write ups on by community members:- Vinod, Lohit, Sudeepta, Manas, Varun

Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)

When our SQL Server Interview Questions and Answers book got published I ran to my grandma with a copy of the book for her blessings. Well, just like every grandma, she loves me, her grandson, unconditionally. She is not into the technology domain (obviously), but she loved the book. She read the first few pages where I was mentioned and read about my co-author Vinod Kumar. After reading the introduction she looked at me and said “When I was young we used to read books, now all those good books are converted into the movies, when do you think this book will be converted into a movie?“

Silence. A very long silence.

I just could not answer her right away.  As a matter of fact, I went into a deep thought. I never thought that she could actually ask me such question. It may be a very simple question, but I felt that it was very important to me. I was just stunned and speechless. I returned home from my grandma’s place, with her blessings and an interesting thought of a “Movie from the Book”. I just could not get this out of my mind.

Jan 24, 2012 - Movie from Book

I talked to my grandma very often, but since the last conversation my wife called her often and I did not talk to her at all. There was no reason to talk to her maybe because I constantly felt that she is with me. Her blessings were with me. I could not get her question out of my mind, still. I was extremely motivated and inspired from my last conversation with her. I called her early morning on January 24. Her very first questions were how I was doing and how was her great granddaughter. I told her that regarding our last conversation, there is actually a movie which is inspired from the book. Her very first reaction was that she knew this would happen as she was confident that my book would reach milestones. We talked for long hours.

Today – Fast Forward

Well, the book was an inspiration for the course, but the video course was developed using totally different angle. We made sure that we’d take the broader idea from the book but wanted present something unique and novel. Vinod Kumar and I thought about it for a long time. We wanted to decide on the format of our course. We spent hours talking about the course – how we could make it unique and give a different experience to every attendee. We wanted to keep the subject light enough to digest, yet deep enough to satisfy everyone’s learning eagerness. After spending some days and efforts for the preparation of the unique content and exceptional demos, the course has become a reality for us.

SQL Server Questions and Answers

This course is designed to help you have a better understanding on how to use SQL Server effectively. The course presents many of the common misconceptions about SQL Server, and then carefully debunks those misconceptions with clear explanations and short but compelling demos, showing you how SQL Server really works. This course is for anyone who works in SQL Server databases, and basically for those who want to improve their knowledge and understanding of this complex platform.

In this course, each topic starts with a question and ends with an answer which is supplemented with a demo. Every question has an exercise file and a demo associated with it. Additionally, in the very last session, we have covered lots of SSMS tips and tricks. Here are the topics we have covered in this course:

• Introduction
• Retrieving IDENTITY value using @@IDENTITY
• Concepts Related to Identity Values
• Difference between WHERE and HAVING
• Order in WHERE clause
• Concepts Around Temporary Tables and Table Variables
• Are stored procedures pre-compiled?
• UNIQUE INDEX and NULLs problem
• DELETE VS TRUNCATE
• Locks and Duration of Transactions
• Nested Transaction and Rollback
• Understanding Date/Time Datatypes
• Differences between VARCHAR and NVARCHAR datatypes
• Precedence of DENY and GRANT security permissions
• Identify Blocking Process
• NULLS usage with Dynamic SQL
• Appendix Tips and Tricks with Tools

Today we are very happy that our course is out. The journey from the book to the Training Course took 80 days and the experience was wonderful. In a future post, I will share the experience of writing book and building the training course.

In the end, we just want to thank YOU, our dear reader, who made this experience possible.

Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)

Beyond Relational has come up with a very interesting concept – they have converted a few of the questions from my book into the SQL Quiz. The quiz is indeed focused on my two goals. In addition, it’s going to put the learning of the book to a higher stage. Looking at this novel concept, Vinod Kumar (Co-author) and I have decided to help every participant and reader by giving a few hints and suggestions to solve the quiz.

SQL Quiz

Reporting and analytics cannot be achieved without a very good data model at the background. And using Analysis services for reporting requirement is always something very common architecture to this. But getting data from relational engine and keeping data for analysis up to date is the challenge. Having these in mind, what is the concept of Slowly Changing Dimension? And what is a Hybrid Slowly Changing Dimension?

Link to participate in SQL Quiz

Notes of Vinod Kumar

Modeling can be a tricky activity. The way to load a SCD  can be achieved interestingly via the SSIS route. Though the basics of SCD can be a larger discussion, tell us more about a thing or two on what you have learned so far in loading SCD.

Notes of Pinal Dave

Let us talk about a product in a shop. Let us assume the product is newly launched. The price of the product is very high and it is put in the ‘newly arrived products’ section. After. a while the book becomes best seller and it is moved to the ‘best seller’ section. As time progresses, the rate of sales of the book declines, leading to it getting moved off the best sellers’ group to the ‘regular items’ section. Eventually, the same book is moved to the bargain section and with a very low price value. Well, this product life process is slow changing. If we consider the price of the book as well as the duration it spent in particular section, it is very much comparable to a slowly changing dimension in SQL Server. Now that you know this simple comparison, the quiz should be easier for you.

Additional Notes

SQL Server Interview Questions and Answers ISBN: 1466405643 Page#179-180

Prize

There are exciting prizes awaiting the winners. Click here for Prizes and Frequently Asked Questions.

Link to participate in SQL Quiz

Note: SQL Quiz, winners and prizes are administrated by Beyond Relational. The goal of this blog post is to provide additional learning pointers only.

Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)

Beyond Relational has come up with a very interesting concept – they have converted a few of the questions from my book into the SQL Quiz. The quiz is indeed focused on my two goals. In addition, it’s going to put the learning of the book to a higher stage. Looking at this novel concept, Vinod Kumar (Co-author) and I have decided to help every participant and reader by giving a few hints and suggestions to solve the quiz.

SQL Quiz

As databases volumes become bigger and bigger, the best way to optimize would be to take the huge problem and break it up into smaller chunks. During a large server deployment, a DBA used this advice; he suggested implementing an extensive partitioning for our transaction tables. In line with this, what are the basics of creating, managing and deploying SQL Server partitioning?

Link to participate in SQL Quiz

Notes of Vinod Kumar

There are several options when it comes to using partitioning concepts inside SQL Server. Here’s a hint: choose and explain what SQL Server introduced and what has been enhanced in SQL Server 2008 version.  In relation to this, can you tellm at Aligned Indexes are when it comes to partitioning?

Notes of Pinal Dave

Partitioning is a very old concept, yet it has always been implemented indirectly. I remember durinv my very early career years, we used to create partitioning using the work around. When any table gets very huge and has an enormous amount of data into the table, we used to create new table by means of appending it with _1 or _2 value. After doing that, we created the view on the top of this table and selected the data from it. This way, we had to change a few parts of our code and we had to implement the concept of partitioning right away. Now, in SQL Server, we get the partitioning feature as a native feature, as well as means of getting a cool syntax to populate and remove data.

Additional Notes

SQL Server Interview Questions and Answers ISBN: 1466405643 Page#168-170
Database Table Partitioning Tutorial – How to Horizontal Partition Database Table
White Paper – Partitioned Table and Index Strategies Using SQL Server 2008

Prize

There are exciting prizes awaiting the winners. Click here for Prizes and Frequently Asked Questions.

Link to participate in SQL Quiz

Note: SQL Quiz, winners and prizes are administrated by Beyond Relational. The goal of this blog post is to provide additional learning pointers only.

Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)

Beyond Relational has come up with a very interesting concept – they have converted a few of the questions from my book into the SQL Quiz. The quiz is indeed focused on my two goals. In addition, it’s going to put the learning of the book to a higher stage. Looking at this novel concept, Vinod Kumar (Co-author) and I have decided to help every participant and reader by giving a few hints and suggestions to solve the quiz.

SQL Quiz

From Perfmon to SQL Profiler to other third Party tools, there are a good number of performance troubleshooting tools which a DBA can use inside SQL Server. One of the hidden features of most troubleshooting tools is the Data Collector inside SQL Server. What is a Data Collector, anyway? What are the predefined collectors inside SQL Server which can be used?

Link to participate in SQL Quiz

Notes of Vinod Kumar

Data Collector is truly a hidden gem in SQL Server. Data Collector is a great tool to track what is happening inside the SQL Server. Are you using the Data Collector? Have you extended it by any chance? Let us hear your stories and how would you have implemented the same in SQL Server 2005 versions?

Notes of Pinal Dave

Data Collection is our old habit. Isn’t that the very reason why we have reached this far? I think we might have started to count because we wanted to remember how much inventory we have (may be not – but you got the point). Now, collection of the data is not really helpful unless they are arranged, filtered, cleaned up and put together in a nice algorithm. These can make data start talking and reveal its various intelligence. Data Collector is a very important subject, but I often see it not getting the proper exposure as it deserves.

Additional Notes

SQL Server Interview Questions and Answers ISBN: 1466405643 Page#144

Prize

There are exciting prizes awaiting the winners. Click here for Prizes and Frequently Asked Questions.

Link to participate in SQL Quiz

Note: SQL Quiz, winners and prizes are administrated by Beyond Relational. The goal of this blog post is to provide additional learning pointers only.

Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)

Beyond Relational has come up with a very interesting concept – they have converted a few of the questions from my book into the SQL Quiz. The quiz is indeed focused on my two goals. In addition, it’s going to put the learning of the book to a higher stage. Looking at this novel concept, Vinod Kumar (Co-author) and I have decided to help every participant and reader by giving a few hints and suggestions to solve the quiz.

SQL Quiz

Recently, I was contacted by one of my friends who operated a large database. He told me he was running out of disk space because some tables with many indexes were unnecessarily created. Even after truncating the table, the space was not given back to the OS. When does SQL Server give the space back once data is deleted?

Link to participate in SQL Quiz

Notes of Vinod Kumar

There are multiple options, but to get the space back, but what are your other options to explore to reclaim the space and yet not get into fragmentation problems. Let me give you a hint.

Notes of Pinal Dave

There was a time when hard drives were expensive and space was the most important asset. I remember having my very first computer with only 2 GB of hard drive and 16 MB of RAM. At that time, space was truly a very important concept. File splitter was very important as we needed to fit every thing in multiple floppies. But in the modern age we have today, the once-expensive hard drives became so much cheaper, which led the importance of the space to become not as much as it was years back. In spite of this, I still see lots of efforts in the database world to reclaim the space back from the database. I often come across people become worried about keeping the database size as small as possible. Their worries made them attempt DBCC ShrinkDB and other tricks that are seriously not recommended. I think today’s question is in this similar line. We all have faced a situation when the table is deleted and yet the space is not released to OS by SQL Server. Any idea why this occurs?

Additional Notes

SQL Server Interview Questions and Answers ISBN: 1466405643 Page#136
SHRINKDATABASE For Every Database in the SQL Server
Shrinking Database is Bad – Increases Fragmentation – Reduces Performance
Reclaim Space After Dropping Variable-Length Columns Using DBCC CLEANTABLE
Data and Page Compressions – Data Storage and IO Improvement

Prize

There are exciting prizes awaiting the winners. Click here for Prizes and Frequently Asked Questions.

Link to participate in SQL Quiz

Note: SQL Quiz, winners and prizes are administrated by Beyond Relational. The goal of this blog post is to provide additional learning pointers only.

Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)

Beyond Relational has come up with a very interesting concept – they have converted a few of the questions from my book into the SQL Quiz. The quiz is indeed focused on my two goals. In addition, it’s going to put the learning of the book to a higher stage. Looking at this novel concept, Vinod Kumar (Co-author) and I have decided to help every participant and reader by giving a few hints and suggestions to solve the quiz.

SQL Quiz

Using datetime functions inside SQL Server have always been a struggle even if there are multiple options. There have been interesting usages of GETDATE, but appealing functions like SYSDATETIME(), GETUTCDATE() and SYSYTCDATETIME() functions were also introduced. When would you use these functions and what are their differences?

Link to participate in SQL Quiz

Notes of Vinod Kumar

GETDATE() from the SQL Server 2000 days has been a common function which developers started to utilize. To answer the question, read the hint here. The changes on usage are fascinating as the precision levels and storage needs of these can be altered drastically. Can you name some of these changes?

Notes of Pinal Dave

I remember an old story told to me when I was just a beginning DBA. I had set up a job which was supposed to run at exact 12 AM (midnight). After a few runs, we realized that the job was running always 30 seconds earlier than the desired time. Every single day, at precisely 30 seconds before 12 AM, it would start to run. After a while, we had to create a complete investigation team on this subject. A senior DBA eventually figured it out – it was because we had used SMALLDATETIME datatype for a variable. This variable was storing the current datetime, and as precision of SMALLDATETIME is in terms of minutes, we had to face that issue. Our IT manager finally made all of us to go through every single datatype available in the SQL Server and get familiarized with all of them. I learned the lesson very well so now I want to share this experience with everybody.

Additional Notes

SQL Server Interview Questions and Answers ISBN: 1466405643 Page#133
Difference Between DATETIME and DATETIME2
Difference Between GETDATE and SYSDATETIME
Get Time in Hour:Minute Format from a Datetime – Get Date Part Only from Datetime
Datetime Function TODATETIMEOFFSET Example
Information Related to DATETIME and DATETIME2
Datetime Function SWITCHOFFSET Example
Difference Between DATETIME and DATETIME2 – WITH GETDATE
DATE and TIME in SQL Server 2008

Prize

There are exciting prizes awaiting the winners. Click here for Prizes and Frequently Asked Questions.

Link to participate in SQL Quiz

Note: SQL Quiz, winners and prizes are administrated by Beyond Relational. The goal of this blog post is to provide additional learning pointers only.

Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)

Beyond Relational has come up with a very interesting concept – they have converted a few of the questions from my book into the SQL Quiz. The quiz is indeed focused on my two goals. In addition, it’s going to put the learning of the book to a higher stage. Looking at this novel concept, Vinod Kumar (Co-author) and I have decided to help every participant and reader by giving a few hints and suggestions to solve the quiz.

SQL Quiz

As part of performance tuning exercises, our developer always suggest to use SET based operations rather than procedural languages. One of the suggestions given as a substitute for hierarchical data structure was to use CTE. What are CTEs inside SQL Server, what are their advantages and how can you rewrite a subquery using CTEs?

Link to participate in SQL Quiz

Notes of Vinod Kumar

Common Table Expressions a.k.a CTEs are an important addition to SQL Server. Though CTE is available as an alternative for Views, Subqueries, there is a special case scenario for using CTEs. Tell us, how innovatively have you used CTEs? Can there be recursive CTEs? If yes, have you ever tried them?

Notes of Pinal Dave

CTEs are often confused with Temp Table and Subqueries, but there are more facts about this subject. While working with recursive CTEs, one has to make sure that they do not go into an infinite loop and stop after certain numbers of fixed iteration. SQL Server does have an option to limit the numbers of iteration; however, there is a default number which is associated with number of loops. CTEs are also very useful in terms of readability. I’ve started to use CTEs in many places, but before I began to practice CTEs, I made sure that I’d spend a good amount of time to learn about them, and so I did.

Additional Notes

SQL Server Interview Questions and Answers ISBN: 1466405643 Page#109-112
Common Table Expression (CTE) and Few Observation
Multiple CTE in One SELECT Statement Query
Delete Duplicate Rows
Simple Example of Recursive CTE
SQL SERVER – Simple Example of Recursive CTE – Part 2 – MAXRECURSION – Prevent CTE Infinite Loop
T-SQL Paging Query Technique Comparison (OVER and ROW_NUMBER()) – CTE vs. Derived Table

Prize

There are exciting prizes awaiting the winners. Click here for Prizes and Frequently Asked Questions.

Link to participate in SQL Quiz

Note: SQL Quiz, winners and prizes are administrated by Beyond Relational. The goal of this blog post is to provide additional learning pointers only.

Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)

Recently, the kind folks of INETA APAC – Sanjay Shetty and Raj Chaudhuri – conducted an interview with myself and Vinod Kumar (co-author of my book). We had lots of fun during the interview. Sanjay asks questions which, even as an author, I did not think of. My hope is that talking more about our book will help the community in the same way they all helped motivate me to write this book.  Another benefit of the interview was that Raj always has questions which dig out the secrets of the book publishing business. Well, we answered each question candidly. When the interview was about to be over – we realized that book publishing is indeed long process and, just like us, many need help understanding this subject.

I know that I cannot be the only person who ever dreamed of becoming a published author. We would like to offer help to anybody who wants to write book. Writing this one book has taught us a lot and we are eager to share our hard-earned knowledge with you. If you have also written a technical book about computers, SQL Server, or just technology in general, I know that we will be able to help you in some way. Even if you are the sort of person who writes short stories in their free time, give us a try and we might be able to help you, too!

Once again: Thanks Sanjay and Raj for giving us the honor to be featured in an interview with you.

Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)

Beyond Relational has come up with a very interesting concept – they have converted a few of the questions from my book into the SQL Quiz. The quiz is indeed focused on my two goals. In addition, it’s going to put the learning of the book to a higher stage. Looking at this novel concept, Vinod Kumar (Co-author) and I have decided to help every participant and reader by giving a few hints and suggestions to solve the quiz.

SQL Quiz

Compliance is one of the non-negotiable things in this era. SQL Server has had so many options like C2 Auditing since the SQL Server 2000 days. With the advent of Policy Based Management inside SQL Server 2005, what are the different aspects involving PBM one needs to know?

Link to participate in SQL Quiz

Notes of Vinod Kumar

Tough Auditing is a great way to monitor SQL Server, but when you try to explore what all methods does the PBM give when compared to Auditing, Policy Based Management can help you take the management of SQL Server to the next level better than Auditing. Also, there are some interesting ways to extend and make your own custom policy using special commands. To learn more, explore these concepts and tell us your views.

Notes of Pinal Dave

Have you ever desired to know who has touched your data? In this tightly conformed world, it is very important to know who has an access to the data and which among the data has been accessed. There are important cases when some data are never accessed by anybody. Preventing data access is one story, while being a DBA who might have his best practices is another story. A DBA may never want the Auto Shrink to become activated in their databases. All these and more can be done using Policy Based Management.

Additional Notes

SQL Server Interview Questions and Answers ISBN: 1466405643 Page#154-155
Policy Based Management – Create, Evaluate and Fix Policies
Introduction to Policy Management – Enforcing Rules on SQL Server

Prize

There are exciting prizes awaiting the winners. Click here for Prizes and Frequently Asked Questions.

Link to participate in SQL Quiz

Note: SQL Quiz, winners and prizes are administrated by Beyond Relational. The goal of this blog post is to provide additional learning pointers only.

Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)

Beyond Relational has come up with a very interesting concept – they have converted a few of the questions from my book into the SQL Quiz. The quiz is indeed focused on my two goals. In addition, it’s going to put the learning of the book to a higher stage. Looking at this novel concept, Vinod Kumar (Co-author) and I have decided to help every participant and reader by giving a few hints and suggestions to solve the quiz.

SQL Quiz

Any database design can include only the Normal forms. But while a DBA performs a product deployment, it is critical to take care of certain factors for Index creation. With this noted, explain FILLFACTOR and PATFACTOR inside SQL Server. What are their uses and when would you use each of them?

Link to participate in SQL Quiz

Notes of Vinod Kumar

Tough FILLFACTOR is used from the side of performance tuning techniques. It also has an impact on storage needs – the IO increases for Reads if done incorrectly. This Hint has the information related to these notes. Is there a skill that you use regarding this matter? Feel free to share.

Notes of Pinal Dave

Fillfactor is an interesting concept. When I tell several DBA and developers that fillfactor 0 is the same as 100, I have seen them not believing what I said. An appropriate fillfactor can have a heavy impact on performance. The fillfactor can be adjusted at server level as well as at index level. A similar concept is PATFACTOR. I have seen it being abused, leading to a terrible performance on server. Aside from fillfactor, there are many additional performance tuning concepts one needs to master if performance is his primary concern for database.

Additional Notes

SQL Server Interview Questions and Answers ISBN: 1466405643 Page#151-153
SQL SERVER – What is Fill Factor and What is the Best Value for Fill Factor
Fillfactor, Index and In-depth Look at Effect on Performance
Rebuild Every Index of All Tables of Database – Rebuild Index with FillFactor
Change Default Fill Factor For Index
Comparison Index Fragmentation, Index De-Fragmentation, Index Rebuild – SQL SERVER 2000 and SQL SERVER 2005

Prize

There are exciting prizes awaiting the winners. Click here for Prizes and Frequently Asked Questions.

Link to participate in SQL Quiz

Note: SQL Quiz, winners and prizes are administrated by Beyond Relational. The goal of this blog post is to provide additional learning pointers only.

Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)

Beyond Relational has come up with a very interesting concept – they have converted a few of the questions from my book into the SQL Quiz. The quiz is indeed focused on my two goals. In addition, it’s going to put the learning of the book to a higher stage. Looking at this novel concept, Vinod Kumar (Co-author) and I have decided to help every participant and reader by giving a few hints and suggestions to solve the quiz.

SQL Quiz

Though high availability is something critical for all large database deployments, there are other multiple options one can use. For today’s discussion, what is database mirroring option? What are the Database Mirroring enhancements done in SQL Server 2008 R2 edition? How is it different from Log shipping?

Link to participate in SQL Quiz

Notes of Vinod Kumar

DBM is a very famous method of HA options that I have seen enterprises use in their environments. The concepts are simple and well-explained. There are also fine-prints when implementing DBM, which need special attention.

Notes of Pinal Dave

“Is database mirroring a high-availability solution, or a disaster recovery solution?” When I ask this question, I keep on getting a different answer every single time. Database mirroring maintains two copies of a single database that must reside on different server instances of SQL Server Database Engine. Now, mirroring requires that the database has to be in full recovery mode and the database resides on different instances. A lesser known fact is that mirroring is also related to the Page Restore concept. Why not spend time to know what the main interesting factors related to database mirroring are? I’m sure it would be a worthwhile learning experience for you.

Additional Notes

SQL Server Interview Questions and Answers ISBN: 1466405643 Page#158-159, 166
Quick Note of Database Mirroring
Standby Servers and Types of Standby Servers
Mirroring Configured Without Domain

Prize

There are exciting prizes awaiting the winners. Click here for Prizes and Frequently Asked Questions.

Link to participate in SQL Quiz

Note: SQL Quiz, winners and prizes are administrated by Beyond Relational. The goal of this blog post is to provide additional learning pointers only.

Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)

Beyond Relational has come up with a very interesting concept – they have converted a few of the questions from my book into the SQL Quiz. The quiz is indeed focused on my two goals. In addition, it’s going to put the learning of the book to a higher stage. Looking at this novel concept, Vinod Kumar (Co-author) and I have decided to help every participant and reader by giving a few hints and suggestions to solve the quiz.

SQL Quiz

The work of a DBA is never to be underestimated. An effective DBA’s role maybe understated for the 364 days in a year, but that 1 day when the database gets into a corrupt state is when all the skills come to the fore.

 Recently, while working on a 24×7 large database split into multiple filegroups, it suddenly got into a corrupt state. The DBA brought the database ONLINE quickly and was doing a restore process in the background. To understand what he had done, what is Piecemeal Restore inside SQL Server? When was this introduced and what are the options of using this feature?

Link to participate in SQL Quiz

Notes of Vinod Kumar

The behaviors and options of using a Database backup are indeed critical, yet an effective DBA should be able to harness the best results in the shortest time. Hint: it is like a great bookmark to understand the options available when looking for restore strategies with SQL Server. To help you more, read topics around ONLINE restores.

Notes of Pinal Dave

Here are a few quotes from users I often hear:

“I have all the necessary backups but I could not restore the backup.”
“Three hours have passed and yet our restore is still going on?”
“We have a mirroring set up and never faced an issue of corruption.”

When I hear them, I often wonder if they really know the aspects of backup and restore. Piecemeal is another similar concept that people often overlook, ignore and avoid learning. I think all of us should explore this technology further and see if we can avoid saying the above quotes.

Additional Notes

SQL Server Interview Questions and Answers ISBN: 1466405643 Page#161
Backup Timeline and Understanding of Database Restore Process in Full Recovery Model
Effect of Compressed Backup Setting at Server Level on Database Backup
Target Recovery Time of a Database – Advance Option in SQL Server 2012
A Quick Script for Point in Time Recovery – Back Up and Restore
Copy Database from Instance to Another Instance – Copy Paste in SQL Server
Mirrored Backup and Restore and Split File Backup
Corrupted Backup File and Unsuccessful Restore

Prize

There are exciting prizes awaiting the winners. Click here for Prizes and Frequently Asked Questions.

Link to participate in SQL Quiz

Note: SQL Quiz, winners and prizes are administrated by Beyond Relational. The goal of this blog post is to provide additional learning pointers only.

Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)

Beyond Relational has come up with a very interesting concept – they have converted a few of the questions from my book into the SQL Quiz. The quiz is indeed focused on my two goals. In addition, it’s going to put the learning of the book to a higher stage. Looking at this novel concept, Vinod Kumar (Co-author) and I have decided to help every participant and reader by giving a few hints and suggestions to solve the quiz.

SQL Quiz

Even though storage as a subsystem is cheap these days, we have seen several DBAs struggling to find Log files run out of space and stop transactions. Understanding the size of Log files is a critical aspect. And now, table data, index data, log data and other related data are becoming important competencies of an effective DBA. In relation to these, how do you enable and disable an Index? What is the behavior of the size when compared to dropping an Index? How does storage change?

Link to participate in SQL Quiz

Notes of Vinod Kumar

Understanding the Indexing basics will demystify the differences of how Clustered Index and Non-Clustered Indexes work. The nuances of how the de-allocation happens are completely dependent on the specifics of the version. In line with this, it would be helpful to learn about the formula for calculating the size of a non-clustered index.

Notes of Pinal Dave

I admit – there was a time when I had absolutely no clue about the difference between CREATE and DROP Indexes versus REBUILD Indexes. Not knowing this simple fact, I have often used each other in place where I should have not used it. There are many differences between them; the one which stands out the most is related to performance as well storage. After sometime, I came to learn about this so I started practicing what is right and more appropriate. Today, I have the puzzle put in front of you. Do you really know the difference between them or do you just use whatever comes to mind first?

Additional Notes

SQL Server Interview Questions and Answers ISBN: 1466405643 Page#149
Unused Index Script – Download
Missing Index Script – Download
Disable Clustered Index and Data Insert
Generate Report for Index Physical Statistics – SSMS
Understanding ALTER INDEX ALL REBUILD with Disabled Clustered Index
Disabled Index and Index Levels and B-Tree
Index Levels, Page Count, Record Count and DMV – sys.dm_db_index_physical_stats
Size of Index Table for Each Index – Solution 2
Computed Columns – Index and Performance
Index Created on View not Used Often – Limitation of the View 12
Video – Performance Improvement in Columnstore Index

Prize

There are exciting prizes awaiting the winners. Click here for Prizes and Frequently Asked Questions.

Link to participate in SQL Quiz

Note: SQL Quiz, winners and prizes are administrated by Beyond Relational. The goal of this blog post is to provide additional learning pointers only.

Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)

Beyond Relational has come up with a very interesting concept – they have converted a few of the questions from my book into the SQL Quiz. The quiz is indeed focused on my two goals. In addition, it’s going to put the learning of the book to a higher stage. Looking at this novel concept, Vinod Kumar (Co-author) and I have decided to help every participant and reader by giving a few hints and suggestions to solve the quiz.

SQL Quiz

From SQL Server 2000, XML has gained more and more popular due to its many applications. With SQL Server 2005 XML, became a first class datatype and applications are likely to use more natively. In line with this, what are the basic 5 methods provided by XML Datatype for access? When would you use one over the other?

Link to participate in SQL Quiz

Notes of Vinod Kumar

The standard methods of using XML are interesting. Read here for further details. Using the right option is what makes the usages remarkable, though. Just dig a little more in understanding Typed Vs Untyped XML as part of this learning.

Notes of Pinal Dave

XML is a very exciting subject. I often see two different kinds of opinion about XML; some developers like it very much while others just hate it. I have seen expert developers sweltering when they have to deal with XML.

Let me ask you one question: “If a webpage has 100 of the form element and we want to capture all of those which are filled, how would you do it?” See, there are cases where XML just works and moreover it works like a charm. Learning how to read XML data is essential.

Additional Notes

SQL Server Interview Questions and Answers ISBN: 1466405643 Page#137-139
SELECT * FROM XML
Shredding XML
Validate an XML document in TSQL using XSD
Simple Example of Reading XML File Using T-SQL
Simple Example of Creating XML File Using T-SQL

Prize

There are exciting prizes awaiting the winners. Click here for Prizes and Frequently Asked Questions.

Link to participate in SQL Quiz

Note: SQL Quiz, winners and prizes are administrated by Beyond Relational. The goal of this blog post is to provide additional learning pointers only.

Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)

Beyond Relational has come up with a very interesting concept – they have converted a few of the questions from my book into the SQL Quiz. The quiz is indeed focused on my two goals. In addition, it’s going to put the learning of the book to a higher stage. Looking at this novel concept, Vinod Kumar (Co-author) and I have decided to help every participant and reader by giving a few hints and suggestions to solve the quiz.

SQL Quiz

In any performance-testing discussion for a huge, significant development, one of the common requirements is to send multiple values to SQL Server in a single shot. So to help achieve this this requirement, SQL Server introduced the MERGE statement. What is the construct of a MERGE statement? What are the restrictions of using the MERGE?

Link to participate in SQL Quiz

Notes of Vinod Kumar

A MERGE statement has great benefits as ETL requirements. Read for more details. As you use them in relational engine, can you tell how you can get details of how many INSERTS, UPDATES and DELETES have happened as part of the database?

Notes of Pinal Dave

What is UPSERT? It is commonly used word for INSERT and UPDATE. How about adding DELETE to the UPSERT as well – what will you call? I will call it MERGE. When I came across MERGE I was very happy as it was not only INSERT, UPDATE and DELETE but if used correctly there were many advantages associated with this operation. Initially, it was very hard into use MERGE statement as I was so used to writing INSERT, UPDATE and DELETE. As I kept myself open to this new procedure; I learned that this can be very helpful. To master any feature, solution or tool, one needs to learn about the limitations of MERGE . Today’s question is based on the main questions above: “What is MERGE and what are the restrictions of the MERGE statement?”

Additional Notes

SQL Server Interview Questions and Answers ISBN: 1466405643 Page#112
Merge Operations – Insert, Update, Delete in Single Execution
Introduction to Merge Statement – One Statement for INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE
Explanation SQL SERVER Merge Join

Prize

There are exciting prizes awaiting the winners. Click here for Prizes and Frequently Asked Questions.

Link to participate in SQL Quiz

Note: SQL Quiz, winners and prizes are administrated by Beyond Relational. The goal of this blog post is to provide additional learning pointers only.

Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)

Beyond Relational has come up with a very interesting concept – they have converted a few of the questions from my book into the SQL Quiz. The quiz is indeed focused on my two goals. In addition, it’s going to put the learning of the book to a higher stage. Looking at this novel concept, Vinod Kumar (Co-author) and I have decided to help every participant and reader by giving a few hints and suggestions to solve the quiz.

SQL Quiz

As an effective DBA, it is critical to keep updated on the various server side databases. Recently, I encountered a Developer who was saying that the “sys” schema objects were no longer in the MASTER database. Interestingly, what is the use of RESOURCE Database inside SQL Server? Tell us one change in RESOURCE Database inside SQL Server 2008 R2 edition. Also, how can we find the properties of the RESOURCE database, like what its version is, etc.?

Link to participate in SQL Quiz

Notes of Vinod Kumar

RESOURCE databases are special databases. And these were created separately for a specific reason. Can you also tell how we can find the details of a RESOURCE database version, and other description of this database? In addition, in your plan to backup the system databases, are you also planning to take the backup of the RESOURCE database? Answering these questions can lead you to the right answer to the SQL Quiz question mentioned earlier. Tell me your views.

Notes of Pinal Dave

Today, instead of hint and sound bytes, let me give a question back at you. How many system databases are there in SQL Server? I often end up receiving the answer “FOUR”.

I think that during the course of SQL Server evolution, DBAs and developers frequently miss their respective rhythm to keep updated. I often say that there’s no empty knowledge; we can find small knowledge from everything. At one place, I have seen a developer deleting a resource database, then SQL Server began to face issues when it was attempting to start. This experience tells us that resources database is very important and it has a specific and crucial use. Honestly, every single system database is very significant, and one should know more about them and keep their knowledge updated.

Additional Notes

SQL Server Interview Questions and Answers ISBN: 1466405643 Page#104
Resource Database ID – 32767
Location of Resource Database in SQL Server Editions
mssqlsystemresource – Resource Database
Importance of Master Database for SQL Server Start-up

Prize

There are exciting prizes awaiting the winners. Click here for Prizes and Frequently Asked Questions.

Link to participate in SQL Quiz

Note: SQL Quiz, winners and prizes are administrated by Beyond Relational. The goal of this blog post is to provide additional learning pointers only.

Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)

Beyond Relational has come up with a very interesting concept – they have converted a few of the questions from my book into the SQL Quiz. The quiz is indeed focused on my two goals. In addition, it’s going to put the learning of the book to a higher stage. Looking at this novel concept, Vinod Kumar (Co-author) and I have decided to help every participant and reader by giving a few hints and suggestions to solve the quiz.

SQL Quiz

Auditing is always fun when we do code reviews. And in a product back-end check we found a lot of junk names for the Default constraints inside the database. What are the different ways you can use to create a CONSTRAINT inside SQL Server?

Link to participate in SQL Quiz

Notes of Vinod Kumar

CONSTRAINTS are critical from a business requirement as we design the databases. Read more about them. Are you still using the RULE mode? Well, be careful because this is getting removed in the future release.

Notes of Pinal Dave

When I heard of a question about how many different types of ways there are in order for us to create a constraint, I could not believe the answers given to this, at first. Maybe it’s because I find it a bit confusing at times. However, I think the real answer to this question can be achieved if we understand the fundamentals properly. It is important to know how many types of constraints exist in SQL Server before trying to figure out how many different ways the constraints can be created. There are also cases when the constraint has not only helped maintain data integrity but also performance.

Additional Notes

SQL Server Interview Questions and Answers ISBN: 1466405643 Page#137-139
Prevent Constraint to Allow NULL
Create Default Constraint Over Table Column
Create Primary Key with Specific Name when Creating Table
Creating Primary Key, Foreign Key and Default Constraint
How to ALTER CONSTRAINT
Disable CHECK Constraint – Enable CHECK Constraint
Query to Display Foreign Key Relationships and Name of the Constraint for Each Table in Database
List All The Constraint of Database – Find Primary Key and Foreign Key Constraint in Database

Prize

There are exciting prizes awaiting the winners. Click here for Prizes and Frequently Asked Questions.

Link to participate in SQL Quiz

Note: SQL Quiz, winners and prizes are administrated by Beyond Relational. The goal of this blog post is to provide additional learning pointers only.

Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)

Beyond Relational has come up with a very interesting concept – they have converted a few of the questions from my book into the SQL Quiz. The quiz is indeed focused on my two goals. In addition, it’s going to put the learning of the book to a higher stage. Looking at this novel concept, Vinod Kumar (Co-author) and I have decided to help every participant and reader by giving a few hints and suggestions to solve the quiz.

SQL Quiz

Recently, a DBA said that the Log files were growing bigger than the data file size. During the discussion, he mentioned using CHECKPOINT to solve this problem. In relation to this, what does CHECKPOINT do inside SQL Server? Is the behavior change based on Database recovery models?

Link to participate in SQL Quiz

Notes of Vinod Kumar

Database CHECKPOINTS are interesting. Read more about them. And, as you read more and more, you will surely stumble upon these related questions: What are the correlations of RECOVERY models and their effect? Do dirty records also force flushed to data file during CHECKPOINT? As a DBA, go ahead and play around with this; you’ll find out this is an interesting exercise, trust me.

Notes of Pinal Dave

CHECKPOINT is very exciting concept. I have seen how this function is used, and mis-used. The only advice I have for everyone who is not familiar with this command is that NEVER experiment with it on your production server. In one of the recent technical presentations, I noticed that a few attendees were using CHECKPOINT incorrectly. When I asked a few follow up questions, I learned that their understanding of the dirty records was incorrect. All the advanced concepts require a solid understanding of the basic concepts. Without the basic understanding one person can never master the subject.

Additional Notes

SQL Server Interview Questions and Answers ISBN: 1466405643 Page#137
Target Recovery Time of a Database – Advance Option in SQL Server 2012

Prize

There are exciting prizes awaiting the winners. Click here for Prizes and Frequently Asked Questions.

Link to participate in SQL Quiz

Note: SQL Quiz, winners and prizes are administrated by Beyond Relational. The goal of this blog post is to provide additional learning pointers only.

Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)