SQL is an acronym for Structured Query Language so when getting started with it I think it’s best to think about how it was put together to be able to ask questions about data. With that in mind let’s a take a look at some beginning SQL to understand how to write queries. Queries can be very simple but they won’t answer very many questions in their most simple forms:

I’ve been thinking a lot about GDPR and similar legislation for the last year or so. I think that codifying how companies treat our data (and what they can and can’t do it with) is a huge step in the right direction. Late in 2018 I was happy to find myself working with Redgate on their SQL Data Catalog early access program as we started looking at ways to attach and track metadata about our data in our environment.

So I tried a very new thing (for me anyway) and after a fair amount of dithering about it I told the little naysayer that lives in the back of my head to shut the hell up and applied for the Friends of Redgate program at the end of December. I’m writing about it so of course you may easily guess the outcome: I was accepted into the program!

This is one of those posts so I never have to google this again (one hopes). Here is the PS code to pull back a set of details about every SSRS instance installed on a server including the SSRS instance name, & the first URL port it is running on, the service name and the name of the report server database etc. $servername = 'myserver' $key = "Software\\Microsoft\\Microsoft SQL Server" $reg = [Microsoft.

2018 was a challenging year for all sorts of reasons. I set some modest goals for myself and it was mixed bag. My work goals got kind of demolished: I failed to post much last year (although I am happy I now have a post to return to every time I need to write a pivot) and after multiple attempts I failed to pass the MS 70-463 exam on building a data warehouse (I just couldn’t seem to get the last 50-100 points to push me over the top).

I don’t find myself pivoting data often but when I do I seem to always need to do the “complicated” pivot. You know, the one where you have a collection of unique values like email addresses where the value isn’t the column name but you want the 4 email addresses connected to one person in a single row rather than four rows. I can never remember how to do that so here is my personal internet bookmark for that code.