In the Tableau Desktop you can use a combination of keys to do things rather than reaching for your mouse to navigating a menu. A single Tableau Keyboard shortcuts can really improve your productivity and allow you to multitask very efficiently. Try a keyboard commands a few times, and you’ll find out just how useful...Continue reading
How to solve “Unknown Update time” error after adding a time of the last data refresh (a time stamp) to a view in a Tableau dashboard
In Tableau Desktop you can add last data refresh time / Update time (a time stamp) to the top of the view with following the below steps: Open your workbook and navigate to the sheet for which you would like to display the time of the last data refresh. Select Worksheet > Show Title. Double-click the title. In...Continue reading
11 different ways to select Second / Nth highest value in MS SQL Server Instance
Let’s discuss 11 different ways to select second highest value in MS SQL table. And as a bonus, 6 different ways to select the Nth highest value. I will be using a table called WorkOrder with three columns in it; WorkOrderID, ProductID, OrderQty. Here is a quick look to our table: WorkOrderID ProductID OrderQty 1 ...
How to solve missing DLL xpSLS.dll issue on SQL Server Instance
I recently performed an in-place upgrade of a SQL Server from SQL 2012 to SQL 2016. All seemed to work fine, until our nightly database backups failed. This SQL Server uses LiteSpeed for backups and the following error was being returned when it ran: Msg 17750, Level 16, State 0, Procedure xp_backup_database, Line 1 Could...
How to use ROLLUP in ‘Group By’ aggregate function in SQL Server Instance
The SQL Server GROUP BY ROLLUP is an extension of the GROUP BY clause that creates a group for each combination and adds results into sub-totals and grand totals. ROLLUP does not create all possible grouping sets based on the dimension columns. When generating the grouping sets, ROLLUP assumes a hierarchy among the dimension columns...Continue reading
How to Install SQL Server 2016 Service Pack 2 (SP2) and Cumulative Update 11 (CU11) Builds
Microsoft usually releases SP’s and CU’s to fix hundreds of bugs after the initial releases of the SQL Server 2016 RTM, and they have also has been adding a significant number of product improvements and new features after the RTM release. So, in my opinion each SQL Server SP’s and CU’s are very important hotfixes...Continue reading
How to Upgrade SQL Server 2012 / 2014 to SQL Server 2016
It has been several years and it was time for us to upgrade our SQL Server 2014 to SQL Server 2016. In this article, I will go over the steps that have been followed for in-line upgrade to SQL Server 2016. Before we start, make sure you have downloaded all up-to-date SQL Server 2016 Service...
How to use CUBE in ‘Group By’ aggregate function in SQL Server Instance
CUBE() function creates a group for each combination and adds results into subtotals and grand totals. CUBE is useful for situations that require cross-tabular reports. Syntax: SELECT … FROM … [ … ] GROUP BY CUBE ( groupCube [ , groupCube [ , … ] ] ) [ … ] For the reference of Group...
How to find who detached a database in SQL Server
Today, out of a blue, I have received an “SQL Server agent job failed” alert email. It was stating that one of our databases had gone missing. Technically speaking SQL Server databases can only be detached by a user who has sysadmin rights and can only be detached / attached with manual intervention. As either...Continue reading
How to list all the table names in all the databases using undocumented Stored Procedure ‘sp_MSforeachdb’ of a SQL Server Instance
There are times when I find myself needing to run a SQL command against each database on one of my SQL Server instances. There is a handy undocumented and not officially supported stored procedure that allows you to do this without needing to set up a cursor against your sysdatabase tables on the master database:...Continue reading