SQLServerCentral.com Community Update for May 23, 2025

Problems displaying this newsletter? View online.

Featured Contents

Question of the Day

Creating a new API in Data API Builder

The Voice of the DBA

Developer Time is More Valuable Than Ever

Note: This editorial was originally published on Feb 14, 2020. It is being re-published as Steve is traveling today.

We ask a question about the drivers for DevOps adoption each year in the State of Database DevOps Report. Responses to this question have remained relatively steady in previous years. In the 2020 survey, the top three responses remained ranked in the same order as in prior years, but we saw an interesting change:

To increase the speed of database changes – 28% (down 2%)
To free up developers’ time for more added value work – 24% (up 7%!)
To reduce the risk of losing data during the deployment process – 12% (down 1%)

Notably, more people responded that making the most of developer time for added value work is their top motivating factor when it comes to DevOps adoption.

It’s interesting to think about developer time when it comes to the top two results: the “freeing up developer time” isn’t simply about allowing them time to code more changes which are delivered more quickly. This choice also specifies that it’s important that the time be used for “added value” work: in other words this is related to increasing the business value of the work in some way and not simply related to routine or expected changes to maintain existing functionality.

This result may be related to findings from other studies which are beginning to be understood by more organizations. The 2018 Developer Coefficient report found that “companies waste $300 billion of developer productivity every year,” citing the time developers spend on maintenance issues and repairing code defects. The 2019 Accelerate DevOps Report used a research model which shows that “organizations can improve engineer productivity by investing in easy-to-use tools and information search, a culture of psychological safety, and by reducing technical debt.” Along with other studies, these pieces of research have helped uncover the “toil” which takes up engineer time and reduces the ability of developers to deliver quality new features quickly.

Whether you are a database specialist or not, this shift in responses is helpful to be aware of if you want to influence change in your organization: when talking about why you want to do something, explaining this in terms of added value for the company is more important than before. While people still care about “speeding up” and “reducing risk” quite a bit – those are still important – it’s increasingly important to think about the specific business value of a proposed change, and to express that in a way your audience can understand. Our data suggests that doing so will help make your proposal more persuasive.

Kendra Little

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

Featured Contents

Analyzing Tempdb Spills and Usage Across Recursive Queries

shukla.chandan12 from SQLServerCentral

This article examines how tempdb is affected by recursive queries, using a few different methods.

Introduction to GitHub Actions Part 2: GitHub-hosted runners

Additional Articles from MSSQLTips.com

In this article, you’ll learn about the many options for using a GitHub-hosted runner, including Docker.

From the SQL Server Central Blogs - What’s new in SQL Server 2025 CTP 2.0

Randolph West from Born SQL with Randolph West

Three years ago, when the first public preview of SQL Server 2022 (CTP 2.0) was announced, I was a few months in at the SQL Docs team, and had...

From the SQL Server Central Blogs - Solar-Powered, Proxmox-Driven: A Tour of My Ultimate SQL Server Home Lab

Klaus Aschenbrenner from Klaus Aschenbrenner

Back in 2018, I wrote a blog post about my Home Lab environment, which I had built around VMware vSphere to showcase various SQL Server workloads and demonstrate how...

Introduction to PostgreSQL for the data professional

Site Owners from SQLServerCentral

Adoption and use of PostgreSQL is growing all the time. From mom-and-pop shops to large enterprises, more data is being managed by PostgreSQL. In turn, this means that more data professionals need to learn PostgreSQL even when they have experience with other databases. While the documentation around PostgreSQL is detailed and technically rich, finding a simple, clear path to learning what it is, what it does, and how to use it can be challenging. This book seeks to help with that challenge.

Question of the Day

Today's question (by Steve Jones - SSC Editor):
	Creating a new API in Data API Builder
If I run "dab init" to create a new API over a database, what parameters are required?
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)

Unlimited Text

If I want to get unlimited amounts of data back from a varchar(max)/nvarchar(max) column, what do I run?

Answer: SET TEXTSIZE -1

Explanation: SET TEXTSIZE with a -1 returns unlimited data. This is what the SQL Native Client v10+ does. Ref: SET TEXTSIZE - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/t-sql/statements/set-textsize-transact-sql?view=sql-server-ver16

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 - Development and T-SQL

Question on SQL Query with NOT condition - I have a record, in those the three columns where firstname / last name and full name is empty. ID = 198765 FirstName = empty LastName = empty FullName = empty Flag = 0 I am trying to pull the record with ID 198765 out from select query where first and last or full name […]

SQL Server 2019 - Administration

SSPI handshake failed error code 0x80090311 - Hi, I have a workstation with SQL Express 2019 installed and I have a PC with a .NET application built in VB.NET. The App logs in as Attendance and the SQL PC logs in as Phone System. They are on the same domain and the SPNs match the server and Attendance has access to the […]

SQL Server 2019 - Development

isnull, coalesce overhead - hi, one of our sister division's erp extract view is going thru at least one mod to do the equivalent of a coalesce on a column that if null brings down our dw load job. since they were doing that i asked if they could do the same on all columns that had never be […]

is there an elegant way for agent notification to show failure if any step fails - hi our corp dw load sqlagent job goes to the next step on the 14+ erp loads if they fail. but quits notifying of failure on any cube step at the end. most of the loads are ssis but there is some t-sql too. without making the job really ugly, is there an elegant way […]

Merge spans with Dates Logic - --for a given member if the startdate and endate is continous we need to keep in single record and if start date and end date is not continous i need to keep in separate record for a given member. drop table #test create table #test (ID int, startdate datetime, enddate datetime ) insert into […]

Problem creating a Linked Server to MS Access 97 database from SQL Server 2019 - Hi there I need help on creating a Linked Server to an MS Access 97 database from a SQL Server 2019 express instance. We have a SQL Server Express 2019 instance and we are trying to create a Linked Server to an MS Access 97 database located on a network drive. Now I know that […]

SQL Azure - Administration

Azure Managed Instance Backups - Could Backup Be Completely Lost? - Some of our more regulated customers (banks, gambling sites and suchlike) like to know that we have a robust and tested recovery routine. We use Azure Managed Instance (MI) and the backup/restore process for 'normal' requirements is quite simple. But this had me thinking - is it possible for Azure to be in such a […]

DP-300 exam - Hi, I would like to know if anyone has taken the DP-300 exam recently, so that they can recommend some material for me to study. The company I work for has taken on a project and I need to get this certification as soon as possible. Thank you.

Analysis Services

Connect tabular model to excel via Power BI semantic model - I have a tabular cube, with myself included in one of the roles. I can connect to this tabular model via Excel successfully, and would now like to connect to a Power BI semantic model rather instead. However I get the attached error. I suspect there additional security needed to be defined, but unsure where. […]

Integration Services

SSIS Automatically Coverting a NULL to a Blank Space - Hello, I was wondering if anyone knew how to prevent this issue I am experiencing. I have a SQL Source with a query that is just selecting data where fields are casted as a varchar value. When running the query in SQL Server, the values either have a valid value or are null as expected. […]

PostgreSQL

Need query help - MAX record - Hello - I have attached a Word document here with details about my issue. I have shown an excerpt from the main table in the first section. There are 5 different records for the subscriber in question. The second section shows how the MAX command restricts the output to 2 records. This output makes sense. […]

Need query help - MAX record - I am having trouble writing linking the MAX query that I created back to the table to produce other data elements about the MAX record. I have created a Word document showing an excerpt from the main data table, how the MAX query pulls in the appropriate records, but then I am stumped on how […]

SQL Server 2022 - Development

New lightweight pure‑T‑SQL unit‑testing framework (T‑TEST) — feedback welcome - Hi all, I’ve just open‑sourced T‑TEST, a tiny alternative to tSQLt that lives 100 % in T‑SQL—no CLR, no extra binaries. Why you might care one install.sql, < 10 KB of objects every proc in the tests schema is a test (auto‑discover by name convention) inline assertion functions (not SPs!) (test.assert_equals, test.fail, …) one-row recordset assertion (using […]

CAST(VARCHAR(n)) resolved performance issue? - Hi, I would love to hear if anyone can tell me why a CAST in a query can "resolve" this performance issue. Same symptom on test server with a copy of the database. weblab_reportlog = 207 850 195 rows Requisitions = 30 143 466 rows DBCC FREEPROCCACHE SELECT [LID], [Datestamp], [logmessage], [Reporttype], [UserID] FROM [dbo].[weblab_reportlog] […]

Merge data from two different source until the data is available from both sourc - I have two sources , one coming from datalake and another is file. we need to match date to combine both dates. But , the data from source may not be avilable daily or might be delayed. So, we have data from datalake coming daily but data from file comes only from Tuesday - Saturday […]

This email has been sent to newsletter@newslettercollector.com. To be removed from this list, please click here. If you have any problems leaving the list, please contact the webmaster@sqlservercentral.com. This newsletter was sent to you because you signed up at SQLServerCentral.com.