All Articles - SQL Authority with Pinal Dave

Interview Question of the Week #047 – Logic To Find Weekdays Between Two Dates

November 29, 2015

SQL, SQL Interview Questions and Answers, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks

I often enjoy seeing interview questions where the contestant has to write SQL Scripts. Here is another such example. Question: How to find weekdays between two dates? Answer: Here is a function which can be used to find weekdays between two dates. CREATE FUNCTION dbo.getDayCount(@startdate date, @enddate date) RETURNS INT…

SQL SERVER 2016 – Comparing Execution Plans

November 28, 2015

Pinal Dave

SQL, SQL Performance, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks

Execution Plan, MySQL

New tools bring new capabilities and sometimes these are ingrained deep into the product that we can easily miss them out. And SQL Server 2016 is no different. After installing the CTP, I was pleasantly surprised to see this addition to help our DBA’s who are doing performance tuning and…

SQL SERVER – Installing and Getting Started With Semantic Search

November 27, 2015

Pinal Dave

SQL, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks

After I wrote about the basics in the blog SQL SERVER – What is Semantics Search Inside SQL Server?, I had multiple requests to understand and get started with Sematic Search. So I thought to set the building blocks of working with the same. Where do we start? Well, here…

SQL SERVER – Availability Group and the Six Critical Steps for DBAs to Follow – Notes from the Field #104

November 26, 2015

Pinal Dave

SQL, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks

Notes from the Field, SQL Function

Mike’s, “now what am I supposed to do?”, face. [Note from Pinal]: In this episode of the Notes from the Field series database expert Mike Lawell explains about Availability Group and the Six Critical Steps for DBAs to Follow. A few weeks ago, I asked questions in conferance, how many people…

SQL SERVER – What Resource Wait Are We Seeing?

November 25, 2015

Pinal Dave

SQL, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks

I have been a big supporter of the Activity Monitor capability inside SQL Server Management Studio. And I have written a number of articles before in this blog. Please take a moment to look at: SQL SERVER – Activity Monitor to Identify Blocking – Find Expensive Queries One of the…

SQL SERVER – How to Create Linked Server to PostgreSQL?

November 24, 2015

Pinal Dave

SQL

Linked Server, PostgreSQL, SQL Scripts

The databases world is expanding and I have been fortunate enough to learn and share my experiences around databases like MySQL, PostgreSQL apart from working with SQL Server. I always try to expand my horizon and try various database products. In case you don’t know, I have course on Pluralsight about PostgreSQL

SQL SERVER – New features in SQL Server 2016 Setup Wizard

November 23, 2015

Pinal Dave

SQL Tips and Tricks

SQL Server, SQL Server 2016, SQL Server Installation, SQL TempDB

In this world of change, the SQL Server product is also changing. One thing which is very clear is that Microsoft is listening to feedbacks from customers and enhancing the setup experience also. Some of the classic feedback implementation can be seen in the setup of the next version of SQL Server 2016. In this blog post, I will try to bring out some of the enhancements that are being incorporated in the Setup UI. Some are critical and worth making a note. Let us learn about SQL Server 2016 Setup Wizard.

Interview Question of the Week #046 – How @@DATEFIRST and SET DATEFIRST Are Related?

November 22, 2015

Pinal Dave

SQL, SQL Interview Questions and Answers, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks

SQL DateTime, SQL Scripts

Question: How @@DATEFIRST and SET DATEFIRST are related? Answer: The master database’s syslanguages table has a DateFirst column that defines the first day of the week for a particular language. SQL Server with US English as default language, SQL Server sets DATEFIRST to 7 (Sunday) by default. We can reset any day…

SQL SERVER – Inserting into ColumnSet with SPARSE Columns

November 21, 2015

Pinal Dave

SQL, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks

ColumnStore Index

There are a number of blogs around using SPARSE columns here. Here are few of them for reference and can be used as a great learning experience. SQL SERVER – 2008 – Introduction to SPARSE Columns SQL SERVER – 2008 – Introduction to SPARSE Columns – Part 2 SQL SERVER…

SQL SERVER – InMemory Table Creation Error Message: Msg 41337

November 20, 2015

Pinal Dave

SQL, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks

SQL Error Messages

I had recently gone to my hometown to visit my parents as it was holidays for my daughter because of festival. These are relaxing times and hardly try to get in front of my computer during these 2-3 days of family time. But who said that happens always. In this…