Recently I needed access to the list of commits that were included with each of my TeamCity builds. TeamCity provides a pretty big list of Predefined Build Parameters, but it doesn’t provide access to details of the commits it is currently building. Having Powershell and Git on my server, though, I can write some scripts to extract not just information about the latest commit, but about any series of commits that have occurred.

Here is an overview of the articles I published in the third quarter of 2014. INTENSE SCHOOL MCSE Prep (SQL) – Using Parameters in Reporting Services Reports (Part 2) Book Review: SQL Server 2012 Integration Services Design Patterns MSSQLTIPS Adding Custom Reports to SQL Server Management Studio More Text Analysis with the SSIS Term Lookup Component Custom SSMS report to show SQL Server tables per filegroup I have two more tips in the pipeline, one about formatting durations in SSAS and one about creating box plots in SSRS, so keep an eye on the MSSQLTips website.

This month’s T-SQL Tuesday is hosted by Tracy McKibben (blog | twitter) and is all about heroes (not the TV show). Ada Lovelace has been an inspiration to many. In keeping with my blog theme, let’s call her a hero. We all have our heroes, those people who we admire, who inspire us, who we strive to be like. Who is your hero? Your assignment is to acknowledge, in writing, your hero (or heroes).

Some time ago I was writing some windowing functions on a set of data. Basically I was looking for the last date an event had occurred for each type of event. Let's illustrate with an example: ```sql CREATE TABLE dbo.TestOver (ID INT IDENTITY(1,1) PRIMARY KEY NOT NULL ,[Group] CHAR(1) NOT NULL ,Value INT NOT NULL); INSERT INTO dbo.TestOver([Group],Value) VALUES (‘A’,1) ,(‘A’,2) ,(‘A’,3) ,(‘A’,4) ,(‘B’,5) ,(‘B’,6) ,(‘B’,7) ,(‘B’,8) ,(‘B’,9); ```Using the data above, I need to find the value 4 for group A and the value 9 for group B.

SQL Server Days 2014 is over, but it has been one great event. A very big thanks to the organizers! My session went pretty well, somewhere around 60 attendees I would guess and they didn’t seem too bored. I saw some other great sessions as well, such as Buck Woody (twitter) on Big Data (and a fantastic keynote) and a demo session on Azure ML. I also attended Grants (twitter | blog) precon on execution plans and I definitely learned a lot.

I’ve been working with transactional replication in SQL Server a lot this year. A lot. I understood the basics of how it worked, but I wanted to know more – particularly about security, how log readers work, monitoring, and troubleshooting. So, I downloaded a free e-book from Simple Talk, Fundamentals of SQL Server 2012 Replication by Sebastian Meine. [ ]1 The description says the book “will walk you through setting up different replication scenarios.

This year is flying by! September has been an excellent month. My 24 Hours of PASS Summit preview session went well, speaking for user groups is always encouraging, and IT/Dev Connections was a blast! Now, on to October! First up, I’m presenting at my user group, FoxPASS, in Appleton, WI on Wednesday, October 1. I’ll be delivering “Are Your Indexes Helping You or Hurting You’?” This session, which I’ll also be giving at PASS Summit in November, covers checking index basics such as which indexes support WHERE clauses, using included columns, statistics, and sargability to make sure your indexes support your workload.

It’s time for the annual PASS Board of Directors elections! If you work with SQL Server and aren’t familiar with the PASS organization, please take a few minutes to check it out. (Also note that if you aren’t a member yet, you won’t be able to vote this year.) PASS offers data professionals networking and training through local user groups; virtual user groups; in-person training events like SQL Saturdays, PASS BA Conference, SQL Rally, and PASS Summit; and virtual training events like 24 Hours of PASS.

All this negative junk flying around makes for a waste of a lot of time. Negative is good but there is always a positive. Although, I’m thinking…how about the real reason of me telling you I am voting for my friend, Grant Fritchey? Honestly, look at him Such a cuddly little teddy bear. How can you not want this guy leading? Even more, the way that light gleams off the top of his head.

Lately I have been using more and more the awesomeness of the Alt-button in SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS). What do I mean with this? While holding the Alt-button on your keyboard, you can select a block of text instead of lines of text. Note that this is not an exclusive feature, you can do this in some other applications as well (like Word and Notepad++). An alternative is holding Alt+Shift and moving the cursor with the arrow keys.