SQLServerCentral.com Community Update for {date}

The Voice of the DBA

I’m In Charge of Books Online

I'm in charge of Books Online. Well, not just me, but Microsoft has appointed a select group of MVPs to become the moderators of the Books Online documentation on GitHub. This is the official repo where the source for the online docs and downloadable help are stored, and anyone can submit a potential change. I've written about how to do this and many people have submitted changes over the last year.

This creates a problem. As with many large Open Source projects, the maintainers soon become overwhelmed with submissions and start to spend more time triaging and evaluating submissions than making their own changes. In addition, people change roles inside Microsoft quite often with many of the owners of a particular topic moving on to a new area inside Microsoft. They don't want to go back, try to understand, re-evaluate, and test changes in another part of SQL Server, so the pull requests get delayed. Microsoft also sees documentation as a necessary item, but not one they'd like to put resources into managing.

Microsoft recognizes that there are experts in the community and has awarded some of us with the MVP designation. They also realize that many of us passionately care about SQL Server, with plenty of expertise that we can use to evaluate pull requests and decide if they add to the documentation. As a result, they asked a number of MVPs to apply and at the recent MVP Summit, they gathered some of us together and told us we would be given rights to the GitHub repo to approve requests.

We have to do this in a controlled fashion, so we were given internal Microsoft contractor email addresses and access that we can use to approve changes. I assume this is also to ensure that Microsoft can quickly revoke access if necessary. It's not a big deal to me since I'm already using 4 emails, so what's another one?

I don't know if I can announce who else is participating in this, but I was given special permission to announce that I am a part of this project. I can also disclose that this is an April Fool's prank and I'm not in change of anything. Well, I am in charge of my volleyball team, but that's about it. Maybe Microsoft will use MVPs to triage some requests at some point, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

I hope you got caught up in the excitement and enjoyed this short piece. Don't believe much of what you read today. Keep your head down and focus on code that you know is true.

Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Featured Contents

SQL Server 2019 Adds CosmosDB Support

SQLServerCentral.com | SQL Server 2019

SQL Server 2019 will bring more than graph query languages. We will be able to use a document query engine and a specific JSON engine.

Converting a History Table into a System-Versioned Temporal Table

SimpleTalk | SQL Server 2016

Temporal tables were introduced with SQL Server 2016. To take advantage of this feature, you might start fresh with a brand new table. It is possible, however, to convert an existing table with accumulated history to the new functionality. In this article, Mala Mahadevan explains how to create temporal tables for both scenarios.

Customizing Statistics Histogram in SQL Server 2019

SQLServerCentral.com | statistics

The use of statistics in SQL Server is tightly embedded in the query optimizer and query processor. The creation and maintenance of statistics is usually handled by the SQL Server engine, though many DBAs and developers know that periodically we might need to update those statistics to ensure good performance of queries. SQL Server 2019 gives us more options.

SQL in the City Summits – UK, US & Down Under

Redgate | event

Redgate are inviting senior data professionals to attend one of the upcoming SQL in the City Summit events taking place in April, May and June. If you’re interested in learning how your business can benefit from implementing Compliant Database DevOps this event is for you. Find out who’s presenting and register for a Summit near you today. Register now

Question of the Day

Today's question (by Steve Jones - SSC Editor):
	Sneakers Quotes
Sneakers was a thriller movie released in 1992. Finish this quote from the movie: "The world isn't run by weapons anymore, or energy, or money. It's run by little ones and zeroes, little bits of data. It's all _________."
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)

Dynamic SQL calls

I have this code:

DECLARE @cmd NVARCHAR(1000) = N'SELECT oh.OrderKey,
                                       oh.OrderTotal
FROM dbo.OrderHeader AS oh WHERE CustomerKey = @CustomerKey';
DECLARE @params NVARCHAR(1000) = '@CustomerKey int';

EXEC sp_executeSQL @cmd, @params

What's wrong with it?

Answer: There should be a third parameter for sp_executesql that includes the value to be used for @customerkey

Explanation: The way sp_executesql works is by taking a statement to execute and then a parameter list to pass into the first statement. Each parameter can be included as the 3rd, 4th, etc. parameter, or the values can be in the second parameter embedded. Ref: sp_executesql.

Discuss this question and answer on the forums

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Dynamic SQL calls - Comments posted to this topic are about the item

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