| The Complete Weekly Roundup of SQL Server News by SQLServerCentral.com | Hand-picked content to sharpen your professional edge |
| How Important is Software? I have a mechanical gaming keyboard, not because I'm a gamer, but I did want to tactile, mechanical feel and I like the idea of lights on the keys. I've enjoyed the experience, but the software leaves something to be desired. I thought about my experience as I read this review of a more complex keyboard, with the title that notes it's so pretty you can almost forgive the software. The poor UI and the complexity of operations, not to mention the splitting of the remap functions being unnecessarily complex. That was my experience as the only thing I cared about was remapping the home and end keys to the places I was used to them being on Logitech devices. I have spent a few hours across the last year learning how to map keys, and then relearning when my profile is lost in an upgrade or hardware glitch. How much does software matter to customers? I'd argue it is becoming more and more critical all the time. The experience of using hardware, or really any device or service, is impacted by the software that drives it. Software is eating the world, and I think we need to understand that better software design and quality is needed. I find that the most talented hardware companies sometimes have the worst software. It's almost as if they assume their customers will be as talented as their hardware engineers and don't spent enough time understanding how to better design a user experience for their products. Keyboards, routers, motherboards, and more often use archaic, confusing methods to have customers configure or update the systems. I know UX is hard. This isn't even about graphics or visual appeal. In many cases, it's about just better understanding of how others view the process and what information they take from what appears on the screen. Over the years I've learned that this is not only hard, but also that it takes time and debate, just like features do. I enjoy these moments, and I like to think that I help my employer produce better software for our customers with my feedback. I urge developers to have others look at what they present on the screen, and spend time learning from users, both experienced and novice. We often forget how something appears to others when we look at it every day and rush through workflows as we test our latest code. It's easy to gloss over daily changes as minor when the sum of all changes can be a jarring experience for our users after an install or upgrade. UX is important, and it's worth putting effort into our software designs, our data models, even the metadata we expose to others. Steve Jones - SSC Editor Join the debate, and respond to the editorial on the forums | The Weekly News | All the headlines and interesting SQL Server information that we've collected over the past week, and sometimes even a few repeats if we think they fit. |
Vendors/3rd Party Products |
Leading Danish pharmaceutical company, Orifarm, has a mission to be 'Number 1 in making healthcare a better deal'. Find out why they chose SQL Monitor to give their whole IT team, developers included, the real-time metrics they need to highlight development issues and resolve them before they became problems. |
AI/Machine Learning/Cognitive Services |
This episode, we’re doing something a little bit... |
AI and machine learning models are being used to help companies stay competitive by discovering new revenue opportunities, improving risk management, detecting fraud, and streamlining business processes. But years ago,... |
To receive The Algorithm in your inbox every Monday, sign up here. Welcome to the Algorithm! Some technologists hope that one day we will develop a superintelligent AI system that... |
Administration of SQL Server |
SQL Server objects have many different property attributes and in this article, we look at how to use the OBJECTPROPERTY() system function to return various data about objects. |
Introduction Does making your SQL Server database ... |
Introduction In SQL Server there are several kinds of SQL partitions. However, in general, we can say that a partition is a way to divide a table (sometimes a... |
Learn how to correctly partition data in Azure Cos... |
Azure Databricks, Spark and Snowflake |
Whatever your database background is you will have... |
In this article, you will find the required steps ... |
When we connect to our Azure SQL Databases or Azur... |
Azure SQL Managed Instance |
In this episode of Data Exposed with Anna Hoffman and Sravani Saluru, they'll discuss the benefits of the newly announced Windows Authentication for Azure AD principals now Generally Available... |
In this blog post we are going to describe how to... |
We have been working recently on a case where Azure portal was not able to show Backup "Retention Policies" and it was showing all the time "Loading" message. The source... |
Career, Employment, and Certifications |
And no, the answer is not because you want to be a Microsoft MVP. Multiple surveys have been published over the decades that list “fear of public speaking” as... |
I thought I would do a short post outlining my car... |
Do the benefits of becoming a full-stack developer outweigh the drawbacks? Here are the pros and cons of full-stack development to help you decide. |
As we’re currently going through times of econom... |
Our survey of IT professionals’ compensation, tr... |
Computing in the Cloud (Azure, Google, AWS) |
Multiple providers say 'cloud data sprawl' makes ... |
CIOs say they need a more automated approach to managing their ever-increasing data if they are to produce meaningful analytics. |
It looks like my travel schedule is coupled with this Week In Review series of blog posts. This week, I am traveling to Fort-de-France in the French Caribbean islands... |
Hyperscalers offering composability and concerns about dependence on megavendors are among the trends molding the future of the cloud. |
Conferences, Classes, Events, and Webinars |
Digital transformation and data modernization are frequently cited as high-value strategic projects that are crucial to achieving competitive advantage. At the same time, delivery of code in agile and predictable ways has led to many businesses adopting DevOps practices. Throughout this event we will explore how Database DevOps can be the function that accelerates transformation projects. Join us On October 6th as we invite experts to share their insider tips and tricks. |
Take on the challenge of deploying database changes every 30 minutes in Redgate's Summit pre-con 'The Journey from Manual Deployments to Database DevOps' on November 15. Hosted by Steve Jones, Grant Fritchey and Redgate DevOps experts, you'll start with a manual process and slowly implement changes that allow you to reap the benefits of automation. |
As proud hosts of the PASS Data Community Summit, ... |
Data Privacy, Compliance, and Governance |
Ever since its official launch around October 2021, Microsoft Purview has been one of the more popular services in Azure, with a steady stream of new features expanding the... The... |
You’re down by 10 points in your NFL fantasy foo... |
The concept of Type S error in hypothesis testing ... |
In this previous post, we introduced the concept of Type S error in hypothesis testing, which is the probability of the effect size having the wrong sign, conditional on... |
Each day, one in four health care customers beco... |
ETL/SSIS/Azure Data Factory/Biml |
Introduction In previous articles, we learn how to... |
HA/DR/Always On/Clustering |
In this article, we will learn how to add a SQL da... |
In this guide, we’ll teach you how to arrange th... |
SK Hynix displays 48GB and 96GB DDR5-6400 RDIMMs f... |
Introduction I recently bought an ASUS ROG Crossha... |
Raptor shows its teeth: Core i9-13900K tops PassMa... |
I have seen a few great blog posts with regards to... |
RANKX is a simple function used to rank a value within a list of values. Its use is simple, but it can be a source of frustration for newbies.... |
RANKX is a simple function used to rank a value within a list of values. Its use is simple, but it can be a source of frustration for newbies. |
With the update, Microsoft adds features to allow ... |
PowerPivot/PowerQuery/PowerBI |
You can do amazing things in Power Query! Maybe yo... |
Recently I had an interesting use case where I had... |
In this article, I will demonstrate an approach to implementing incremental refresh on a data source that does not normally support Query Folding within the Power BI Service. |
Want to display visual-left hint to perplexed users that explains what your visual is supposed to reveal? Like me, you have missed the handy Power BI help tooltips feature... |
Learn how to build scatter plots in Power BI and use the clustering option to automatically find clusters within the report data for easy visualization. |
Power BI report performance could be slow because your corporate network forces some traffic to http/1.1 |
Product Reviews and Articles |
The role of the CTO in the past was to use technol... |
Product Upgrades and Releases |
Public preview enhancements and updates released f... |
Scale up your computing power by 60% with a new 12... |
SQL Server 2019 Cumulative Update #18 is available... |
Migrate your data from Azure unmanaged disk storag... |
Azure Database for PostgreSQL Single Server will e... |
Jamie Owen continues a series on building a packag... |
Continuing with our release cadence, we’re excited to announce the release of SQL Server 2022 Release Candidate 1. Since the first public preview in May 2022, anyone can download SQL Server... |
SQL Server Security and Auditing |
Ledger is a new feature that offers the power of blockchain in Azure SQL Database and SQL Server 2022. We’re making the data in the SQL database verifiable using... |
Survey of over 2,000 IT pros revealed that a quart... |
Okay, it’s an obscure threat. But people are res... |
The ongoing ad fraud campaign can be traced back t... |
Sometimes browser spellcheckers leak passwords: When using major web browsers like Chrome and Edge, your form data is transmitted to Google and Microsoft, respectively, should enhanced spellcheck features be enabled. Depending... |
T-SQL and Query Languages |
Takeaway: I look at different features to see whet... |
In this article, learn how to add a new column to an existing SQL Server table using the SSMS GUI or by using T-SQL to add the column. |
… and what of this all has to do with IBAN numbers. The modulus is the remainder of a division of two integers*. Suppose you divide 12 by 4,... |
Fun With KQL - DateTime_Part |
This article looks at a simple example of using explicit transactions when modifying data in SQL Server tables. |
Google is shutting down its Stadia game streaming ... |
Half of the respondents to SolarWinds' survey of I... |
Windows and Linux co-existing on the same machine.... |
Company unnecessarily collected consumers' personal data and failed to safeguard it, suit alleges, leading to two back-to-back data breaches. |
Microsoft has acknowledged a new issue with the recent Windows... |
The Vulcan II Mini is all pretty lights, not enough (software) support. |
NASA is celebrating the success of humanity’s first test of a planetary defense system: crashing a spacecraft into an asteroid in order to change its orbit. NASA’s Double Asteroid... |
Tools for Dev (SSMS, ADS, VS, etc.) |
Been There A lot of the code to do this is in the... |
Elder Gods For the last week of the series, I’m going to talk about the Blitz scripts. On top of using them for a hell of a long time, I’ve... |
Virtualization and Containers/Kubernetes |
I use a Mac (Intel, you can only run SQL Server on Edge on Apple chips) as my primary workstation. While I have a Windows VM locally, and several... | This email has been sent to [email protected]. To be removed from this list, please click here. If you have any problems leaving the list, please contact the [email protected]. This newsletter was sent to you because you signed up at SQLServerCentral.com. Note: This is not the SQLServerCentral.com daily newsletter list, and unsubscribing to this newsletter will not stop you receiving the SQL Server Central daily newsletters. If you want to be removed from that list, you can follow the instructions on the daily newsletter. |
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