Change tracking for SQL Server is a flexible and easy-to-use technology for monitoring tables for inserts, updates, and deletes. In this post, I’ll discuss getting started with change tracking in SQL Server, and will show an example of how to get started with it. Change Tracking in SQL Server Change tracking is a lightweight mechanism for tracking which rows have…
There’s a brand new business intelligence conference launching next month in Denver, Colorado. The Mile High Tech Con is a three-day event taking place July 24-26, 2014, and is aimed at business intelligence practitioners, data analysts, and information managers/CIOs. From the event website: Featuring three days of sessions and events focusing on Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence. Mile High Tech…
Have you ever noticed unexpected gaps in sequences in SQL Server identity columns? Even though you’ve got transactions set up for your inserts and a no-deletion policy, you find that there are missing values in what should be an unbroken sequence of numbers. The problem could be partially related to transaction rollbacks. Conventional wisdom would lead one to believe that…
Should you ever delete data? Data quality is important, and completeness is a measure of the quality of data. Whether you refer to it as data integrity, permanent retention, or simply maintaining a complete audit trail, it can be effectively argued that purging old data clouds the big picture that the data presents. After all, any data that is worthy…
Recently I discovered a little quirk in T-SQL when using NOT IN with NULL values in the list of values to check. I use the term “quirk” loosely here because the behavior is exactly as designed in SQL Server, though it may not be obvious. Using NOT IN with NULL Values Here’s how it works. If you use a static…