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Merry Christmas 2025

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

I hope most of you have been enjoying this season and work has slowed down. I actually took this entire week off, and part of next week, so it's a time for me to relax, recharge, hit the gym, catch up on a few chores and learn a few songs on guitar.

This has been a great year for me, the first one since the pandemic that felt relatively normal. I had my last kid graduate from college, and I got to take a few wonderful vacations with my wife.

Enjoy the holiday and I'll see you in 2025.

Steve Jones - SSC Editor

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

 
 
 Featured Contents
Stairway to SSAS Tabular

Stairway to SSAS Tabular Level 5: Cleaning up Dimensions

Thomas LeBlanc from SQLServerCentral.com

In this fifth level of the SSAS Tabular stairway, learn how to clean up dimensions.

External Article

Convert Excel Workbooks to CSV with Microsoft Fabric

Additional Articles from MSSQLTips.com

For my new mission, I set out to convert a list of files from Excel to comma-separated values (CSV). We upload the original Excel files to a Data Lake in Fabric. We then need to convert a specific worksheet and move the CSV files to a different folder in Data Lake.

Blog Post

From the SQL Server Central Blogs - A Very Cool Benefit in SSMS 21

Steve Jones - SSC Editor from The Voice of the DBA

I saw a post from Erin that Preview 2 is available. I’d gotten a message when I started SSMS v21 this morning, but got distracted. I made a short...

Refactoring Databases cover

Refactoring Databases: Evolutionary Database Design

Site Owners from SQLServerCentral

Refactoring has proven its value in a wide range of development projects–helping software professionals improve system designs, maintainability, extensibility, and performance.

 

 Question of the Day

Today's question (by Steve Jones - SSC Editor):

 

The Reindeer Count

How many reindeer does Santa have pulling his sleigh? (according to the famous song) Hint, the answers are not base 10.

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)

Superseded Indexes

Which of these indexes is superseded by another?

Answer: create index IDX1 on dbo.Customer (CustomerName)

Explanation: IDX1 is superseded by IDX3. IDX essentially contains IDX1 and more information. Since the ordering matters, IDX2 is not superseded by IDX4. Ref: A tidy database - https://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/a-tidy-database-is-a-fast-database-why-index-management-matters

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 2016 - Administration
Backup issues - I''m running a stripped backup (2 files) to a Network share. It's a 32gig machine in which 10gig free and has 4 cpu's .. Cpu % around 50%. I'm using compression and it's creating those 2 files 340gig each runs for about 10 minutes then fails. I have plenty of space on the network share. […]
Tempdb is filling due to background process. - I have it narrowed down to which session id is causing the issue, but that session is a background session with a command of "DB Startup"... I just cycled the instance less than a week ago due to the same issue, and I don't want to do it again without understanding why. DB is part […]
Development - SQL Server 2014
How can I tell which action happened from the UPDATE or INSERT in my SP? - I have the following Stored Procedure that attempts to UPDATE a table, and if there is no corresponding record INSERTS one. How do I indicate which case happened? GO /****** Object:  StoredProcedure [dbo].[insupd_tblMRBHistory]    Script Date: 2024-12-17 9:27:52 AM ******/SET ANSI_NULLS ON GO SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON GO ALTER PROCEDURE [dbo].[insupd_tblMRBHistory] (@BusinessUnit char(30) ,@PartNum char(25) ,@Description […]
SQL Server 2019 - Administration
Moving DB to new drive - Hi everyone I am planning on buying a new SSD to store my SS DB.  I plan to leave the actual SS on the old drive and just move the DB to the new drive.  I found the steps to do this online: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/relational-databases/databases/move-user-databases?view=sql-server-ver16 I have a few questions: Should I move the SS to […]
Filter a SQL Server Audit with a predicate - Hi Gents, Silly question, but it's been a long time since I've done this. I need an audit of all successful and failed login attempts, so I created an Audit, but I don't want to log everything, so I added a filter: WHERE ([action_id]=(538990668)) based on https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/sqlserver/filter-sql-server-audit-on-action-id--class-type-predicate/384140 SELECT [class_type] FROM sys.dm_audit_class_type_map WHERE [class_type_desc] = 'LOGIN'; SELECT […]
Copy a large table from one table to another - Hi, I have large table with 75 columns and 1.1 billion rows. Want to know the fastest way to copy from one table(non partitioned) to another(partitioned) table. Did anyone tried this. If yes, how long it took to load the data. I tried SSIS package with multiple threads, select- insert in batches and OPTION MAXDOP. […]
SQL Server 2019 - Development
New SSIS Package fails in Sql Agent when it includes a script component - I'm creating a new SSIS package using VS2022 to target Sql Server 2019 server. I have ended up with a new, very basic package that contains a script component to use C# only. This simple package will execute in VS2022 without errors. I have made no changes to the script and no code. When I […]
Aggregate Data to New Table - Hi , I am using webedition of 2019 MSSQL on AWS. I don't have SSAS or other license . I have a big table that is growing and part of active read and DML operations. I have a stored proc that is applying SUM and count on few columns. as this table has data for […]
how to generalize the LAG function so it keeps looking until a value is found? - Hi everyone There are situations where a value for a particular day is NULL so I use the previous day's value hoping it isn't NULL.  I use LAG for this.  The problem is that sometimes even the previous value is NULL so I have to use LAG(2) to get the 2nd previous value.  This approach […]
How to speed up this query? - Hi everyone I have a query that is taking a real long time.  It takes close to 30 minutes to process about 14 million records.  Is there any way to speed it up? Query: DROP TABLE IF EXISTS #TestTable DROP TABLE IF EXISTS #TEMP1 CREATE TABLE #TestTable ( [UNIT] [nvarchar](10) NOT NULL, [PURCHASE_DATE] [date] NOT […]
Azure Data Factory
Need ADF pipeline suggestion to copy 1 million files - I have an ADF pipeline that copies Files from source to destination. Both Source and destinations are different folders within adls only. My pipeline design is as follows   1.) Lookup activity-  A sql server Stored procedure that returns sourcepath and the destination path. This is connected to a Foreachloop 2.) Foreachloop activity - Has […]
Testing
Understanding allowed topics for testing - Hi, I am a first time writer looking to author some content here. I am in the software testing industry. Are we allowed to submit content that is not related to SQL or databases or should they all be related to databases?   Thanks, Arun
Analysis Services
Issue with IIF - I am creating a new measure in an SSAS cube and encountering an issue. The result is being displayed in an Excel pivot table sourced from the cube. Here’s the code I’m working with: MDX CREATE MEMBER CURRENTCUBE.[Measures].[New Column] AS IIF( [Date].[Month Of Year].[1] OR [Date].[Month Of Year].[2] OR [Date].[Month Of Year].[3], -- Logical condition […]
SQLServerCentral.com Website Issues
Topic marked as spam - by mistake? - I received the following notification a few hours ago. It seems legit but has been marked as spam – should it be resurrected? harrylune wrote: Do you have any advice on how to set up git repositories for the things indicated in the title? I'm particularly interested in hearing from anyone who have experience with […]
PostgreSQL
Permission issue in updating cron.job table in postgresql - I am using postgreSQL database for azure flexible server. I have enabled pg_cron extension on azure portal and created pg_cron extension on the database. I am able to see all the required tables/functions on the cron schema of postgres database. I am able to insert a cron job using cron.schedule function, since this inserts by […]
 

 

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