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Featured Contents

Question of the Day

Power BI Build In Expressions

The Voice of the DBA

Daily Coping Tip

Take time to notice things you find beautiful

I also have a thread at SQLServerCentral dealing with coping mechanisms and resources. Feel free to participate.

For many of you out there working in a new way, I'm including a thought of the day on how to cope in this challenging time from The Action for Happiness Coping Calendar. My items will be on my blog, feel free to share yours.

Onboarding Remote Employees

I guess that I was a remote employee that needed to onboard at a new company at one point. When Redgate Software bought SQL Server Central, I lived in Colorado and the company was (mostly) in Cambridge, UK. However, I was hired mostly to continue the same work I did at SQL Server Central, so I didn't really on board with the company. I signed a contract, and set up payroll paperwork, and that was it. I used my same workstation and laptop, albeit with a new account, password, and VPN, but almost everything was the same for me.

Over the last two years, we've hired many people at Redgate, with most of them being brought onboard remotely. Plenty of them have never seen any of our offices, and quite a few didn't meet any other employee in person for months. Our blog posted a couple of stories from people we've hired in the last year about the remote onboarding process.

The stories are a bit light on details, but I know that we send out packets of info and boxes of equipment to people, and we use Zoom and Slack extensively to help people get themselves configured and set up for work. I also know that our managers are good about regularly reaching out to people and connecting them with resources if they need assistance.

For many technical people, I think getting a pre-configured machine and then credentials would allow us to get working easily. A URL or path to source code and server names ensure we can work on a database or a set of code. Asking a few questions of current employees should solve any minor issues with connecting to development resources.

I don't envy anyone that starts a new job without being able to see or talk to someone in person at a new company, doing new work. However, I do think this is a process that is likely to continue for some time. Even those companies that have open offices and employees available likely have learned how to send someone packages and get them productive quickly without needing to schedule everything face to face. Even most signatures can be handled electronically these days.

I do think we miss something by not getting together, at least periodically. I know I enjoy traveling to the Redgate offices, and I think most people would gain something from being in the same room as their co-workers some of the time.

Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Join the debate, and respond to today's editorial on the forums

Featured Contents

Stairway to SSAS Tabular Level 9: Security and Roles

Thomas LeBlanc from SQLServerCentral

In the ninth level of this stairway, learn how to add security to the tabular model.

2021 Session video library available

Additional Articles from Redgate

Want to get a flavor of the type of quality training sessions offered at PASS Data Community Summit? Dive into the full video library from Summit 2021 of over 250 sessions. Take your pick from sessions covering the following themes, Reach for the Clouds, Level Up and Back to Basics, presented by top data experts from around the world.

How to run Kubernetes clusters locally on Windows

Additional Articles from SimpleTalk

Kubernetes production clusters are typically run on cloud platforms. However, running and deploying Kubernetes applications on cloud platforms such as Google Kubernetes Engine is costly. These high costs can restrict the Kubernetes learning process for beginners. However, running Kubernetes clusters locally helps you efficiently test applications without disrupting the production environment or paying for cloud services.

From the SQL Server Central Blogs - Metadata-driven pipelines in Azure Data Factory | Part 3

Rayis Imayev from Data Adventures

(2022-Jun-06) This blog post is a collaborative effort of several people, some of them I currently work with, and others' contributions came from their writing, so it’s more than natural...

From the SQL Server Central Blogs - Backing up to s3 Compatible Object Storage with SQL Server

aen from Anthony Nocentino Blog

Introducing S3 in SQL Server 2022 S3 compatible object storage integration is a new feature introduced in SQL Server 2022. There are two significant areas where SQL Server leverages...

Question of the Day

Today's question (by Steve Jones - SSC Editor):
	Power BI Build In Expressions
I want to get the Execution time and a few other pieces of metadata for my Power BI reports in the Report Builder. What is the prefix for the variables to use in an expression for variables like ExecutionTime, OverallPageNumber, etc.?
Think you know the answer? Click here, and find out if you are right.

Yesterday's Question of the Day (by Steve Jones - SSC Editor)

Creating a Columnstore Index

What is wrong with this CREATE INDEX statement?

CREATE NONCLUSTERED COLUMNSTORE INDEX "FIBillOfMaterialsWithEndDate"  
    ON Production.BillOfMaterials (ComponentID ASC, StartDate)  
    WHERE EndDate IS NOT NULL;

Answer: The ASC ordering cannot be used

Explanation: The ASC and DESC ordering cannot be used with columnstore indexes. Ref: CREATE COLUMNSTORE INDEX - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/t-sql/statements/create-columnstore-index-transact-sql?view=sql-server-ver15

Discuss this question and answer on the forums

Database Pros Who Need Your Help

Here's a few of the new posts today on the forums. To see more, visit the forums.

SQL Server 2017 - Development

How to avoid using operator when there are different values on two tables ? - I work on sql server 2017 I need to get different of feature value based on partid and feature name I search for alternative way to compare different values based on partid and feature name without using <> not equal operator because i face slow when using <> not equal so what i do so […]

Error: excel automation Open File does not work in SQL 2017 - This code works on other 2005 SQL Sever but my 2017 SQL Server gives error. /* Excel Automation*/ declare @xlApp integer, @rs integer Declare @FileName varchar(500) declare @xlWorkbooks integer declare @xlWorkBook integer declare @xlWorkSHEET integer declare @xlCell integer declare @xlLastRow INTEGER DECLARE @sql VARCHAR(4000) execute @rs = dbo.sp_OACreate 'Excel.Application', @xlApp OUTPUT select @rs, @xlapp execute […]

SQL Server 2016 - Administration

Upgrading from sql server 2012 to SQL server 2016 - I upgraded the SQL server from 2012 to 2016 and it successfully completed with one error during upgrade. The error is " Invalid Namespace" click retry the failed action, or click 'cancel' to cancel the action and continue setup. I clicked retry first but got same message again then clicked cancel and it went succesful […]

How to confirm if the replication is using Push/Pull subscription? - Hello, On an existing configured replication setup, how to confirm if it's using a Push or Pull subscription? Basically working on setting up a similar replication in a new server, but am unable to find the details of the existing legacy server's configuration!

Development - SQL Server 2014

explicite alternative to FORMAT() concerning DATE - Hi all, I have been using FORMAT() FORMAT(Tab.date, 'yyyy-MM-dd') AS 'date_begin', but been told it would be slow when it comes to big queries. How can I still want the result to be a date (NOT STRING) But I want to 'discard' the Days, Hours, etc (2020-11-01 00:00:00.0000000) Leaving a year/month only date field (2020-11) […]

SSIS execute SQL - I am running SSIS >> Execute SQL task with Direct sql Statement , connected to MySQL via ADO.Net as CREATE TABLE Test_abc ( task_id INT AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY, title VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL ) Insert into Test_abc(title) values('abc'); but when I run the package, following error is displayed Problems with the query, "ResultSet" property not […]

SQL Server 2019 - Administration

Faster Retstore options. - Hi, I'm looking for a third-party backup and restoration solution because native restore takes roughly 7 hours for a 4TB database. Some of the object restore solutions really do a full restore in the background then just pull out the tables selected. This does not alleviate the 7-hour time limit. Is the Lite Speed version […]

Uninstall SQL 2012 Install SQL 2019 use the existing AOG Listener & cluster name - i have a task: Uninstall SQL 2012 Install SQL 2019 use the existing AOG Listener & cluster name Can any one guide step by step?

How can I generate a key for this column which is part of a database model? - I am normalizing a larger table. Here is a screenshot showing part of the relationship of the normalized table: I'm using MS SQL Server and SSMS. The plan was to create the empty tables then insert values from the denormalized table. I started doing so until I realised that I hadn't generated 'Type codes' in […]

SQL Server 2019 - Development

UNION from many linked servers - Hello! Here is an example of a script that selects into one table the same data spread across 2 linked servers --/****** Script for SelectTopNRows command from SSMS ******/ DECLARE @DateTimeStart DATETIME; DECLARE @DateTimeEnd DATETIME; SET @dateTimeStart = '2022-06-10 10:00:00' SET @dateTimeEnd = '2022-06-10 11:00:00'; IF OBJECT_ID(N'tempdb..#TQC') IS NOT NULL BEGIN DROP TABLE #TQC END […]

Inner Join with multiple filter - Table 1 Bank ID Transaction ID Date Amount 1 1 30-06-2020 50 1 2 30-06-2020 80 1 1 31-12-2020 72 1 2 31-12-2020 71 2 1 30-06-2020 70 2 2 30-06-2020 100 2 1 31-12-2020 67 2 2 31-12-2020 82 Table 2 Bank ID Transaction ID Date Amount 1 1 31-03-2021 83 1 2 31-03-2021 […]

SQL that copies and pastes data in a database that changes - Good Morning, I have programmed a SQL coding that copy "z" data under the "a" data but the number "a" rows can change (It finishes row number 16 in my example below but it can finish row number 25) I have added below the coding that I had programed Can you change my coding in […]

Strategies and Ideas

Proper DW Fact and Dimension design questions - Sorry, I'm not great at Data Warehouse design. =( I'm modeling a bakery for a friend of mine. He purchases ingredients and the prices for them may change over time. (Flour prices are crazy). The design for that part of the problem is kinda like this: BakeryProduct --- (1,m)---Recipe(BaleryProductKey, IngredientKey, Weight)--(M,1)--Purchase (IngredientKey, DateKey, VendorKey, Units, […]

Integration Services

SSIS - ignore the file that has issue and continue with the others - I have 10 text files and file 4 at nth row has special character that cant be loaded to sql server table required is to log the issue AND ignore processing the 4th file and process the rest

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