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Thu, Aug 27 2009 23:06

More SQL Conferences coming up, including SQL Bits and SQL Down Under

I know I won’t be there, as I’m a million miles away in Australia, but being from the UK myself, I always have an interest in the UK SQL community and in particular, events like SQL Bits. This is the fifth SQL Bits conference , and they keep getting larger...
Posted by Rob Farley | 1 comment(s)
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Wed, Aug 5 2009 10:09

Still learning… foreign keys don’t need to reference a primary key

…but you should still have a primary key on every table of course. It’s just that I only recently discovered that you can have a foreign key that references something else, so long as it’s known to be unique through a unique index / constraint. The scripts...
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Wed, Aug 5 2009 0:22

SSRS: Removing the Navigation link using an Expression

There are times when you want to have a Navigation property of a textbox (typically providing a link to a URL or other report), but you don’t always want the link to be there. Sometimes you just want it to be an ordinary textbox. This particularly applies...
Posted by Rob Farley | with no comments
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Sat, Jul 25 2009 10:34

Counting consecutive instances with DENSE_RANK

It’s hard to think of a practical use for DENSE_RANK(), but here’s one. It’s one of the ranking functions that was introduced in SQL Server 2005, along with RANK(), NTILE(n) and the incredibly useful ROW_NUMBER(). But apart from producing reports, it...
Posted by Rob Farley | 2 comment(s)
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Thu, Jul 9 2009 22:57

The new brand is Microsoft SQL Azure

It used to be SQL Server Data Services. Then SQL Data Services. Then we started hearing about SQL Services, and now (I hope finally), we have Microsoft SQL Azure instead of SQL Services, and the Microsoft SQL Azure Database instead of SQL Data Services...
Posted by Rob Farley | 1 comment(s)
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Sun, Jul 5 2009 22:11

Excel dates counted differently and a reliable way of working out the day of the week

Following my recent post about 40,000 days , I got a couple of emails telling me that Excel disagrees about when the 40,000th day is. And this is true – Excel counts Day 40000 as July 6th 2009, not July 7th. Unfortunately for Excel users, they’re wrong...
Posted by Rob Farley | 4 comment(s)
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Wed, Jul 1 2009 11:12

40,000 days since the beginning of ‘time’

Next Tuesday feels like a significant day. Not only is it 7/7, and the fourth anniversary of the London bombings (in 2005), but it’s 40,000 days since the beginning of time. Well, not proper time, but since the start of the 1900s. SELECT DATEDIFF(day...
Posted by Rob Farley | 2 comment(s)
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Thu, Jun 11 2009 22:25

Access’ DISTINCTROW keyword explained – it means WHERE EXISTS

Steve Koop spoke recently at the Adelaide SQL Server User Group , talking about things which don’t convert particularly nicely when upsizing from Microsoft Access to SQL Server 2008. I think this is a really important thing for SQL people to know, as...
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Tue, Jun 9 2009 22:10

Putting a Calculated Member into a Display Folder

There are some blog posts that are there to inform other people – this isn’t one of these. This is something I always seem to forget, and I’m hoping that writing it in here will cause me to never forget again. It’s the knot in my handkerchief, or the...
Posted by Rob Farley | 2 comment(s)
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Wed, May 6 2009 13:56

Seriously cheap exams in Australia

If you’re an MCP in Australia and you haven’t passed any exams over the past couple of years (since July 1, 2007), then Microsoft has an offer at the moment to let you do an exam for only US$25 (until June 30, 2009). Ok, so that means the price really...
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Wed, Apr 8 2009 12:01

SQL Server 2008 SP1 download

You can get it from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=66ab3dbb-bf3e-4f46-9559-ccc6a4f9dc19 For all those people who have been waiting for SP1 before considering a migration to SQL Server 2008, it has now been...
Posted by Rob Farley | 1 comment(s)
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Wed, Apr 1 2009 20:00

Time zone limbo

Australia is currently in an interesting week for time zones. Up until a couple of years ago, Daylight Savings finished on the last Sunday in March. That’s when the clocks got put back to Standard Time, as the Australian summer ended. Last year though...
Posted by Rob Farley | 6 comment(s)
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Wed, Mar 25 2009 18:51

Converting to (and from) Julian Date (YYDDD) format in T-SQL

I often get asked how to convert a datetime into Julian Date format in T-SQL. People have differing opinions about what Julian means, but the one I got asked about most recently meant YYDDD, as often used by mainframe systems (I think this is Julian Date...
Posted by Rob Farley | 4 comment(s)
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Tue, Mar 17 2009 10:44

Things You Know Now

This blog meme is doing the rounds… I’ve been tagged at least twice now ( Jason Strate and Greg Linwood ), so I suppose subconsciously I’ve been thinking about this stuff for a few weeks already. Since I do a lot of training, I tend...
Posted by Rob Farley | 2 comment(s)
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Mon, Feb 16 2009 10:27

A reason to visit Manchester

I shouldn’t knock Manchester – I’m sure it’s a great place. Being from the London area though, I’ve always had to find reasons to consider visiting Manchester. Now that I’m living in Australia, finding reasons to go is even harder. Manchester’s stock...
Posted by Rob Farley | 3 comment(s)
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Tue, Feb 3 2009 12:23

SQL 2008 Books Online update

I’ve just installed the January 2009 refresh for SQL Server 2008’s Books Online. I’ve only glanced at what’s different ( http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd408738.aspx ), but I just love the fact that SQL Books Online is a work in progress. Books...
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Sat, Jan 31 2009 8:27

Jamie’s SQLMesh

Jamie Thomson is a useful guy. He’s a SQL MVP, generally considered one of the world’s authorities in Integration Services (SSIS), but also very keen on the Live space . So it makes sense that he’s now combining the two – he’s gone and created a Code...
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Wed, Dec 17 2008 11:51

70-113, the Virtual Lab exam, gives Microsoft Certification new hope

We all know what's wrong with Microsoft certifications. The multiple-choice format means that people can cheat too easily, and over the years, the questions have often felt too specific, asking the kinds of questions that proper IT professionals just...
Posted by Rob Farley | 7 comment(s)
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Sat, Dec 6 2008 8:19

GO - repeating batches

GO is very cool. More so than you might think, and in a couple of interesting ways. This is the 6th tip from my TechEd Australia talk, from which you can see my slides and scripts in other posts. In SQL Server, GO is the traditional batch separator. But...
Posted by Rob Farley | 2 comment(s)
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Mon, Nov 17 2008 7:53

The problem with America - spatial data

Ok, it's not really a problem with America, just a problem with the perception of straight lines like the USA-Canada border. It's roughly the latitude line 49 degrees north. A line that goes East-West, on a straight line. Except that latitude...
Posted by Rob Farley | 4 comment(s)
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