Using The DateDif Function in Microsoft Excel
Have you ever needed to work out the difference between two dates? DateDif allows you to do this, and show the result in Days, Months, Years, Month Days or Year Months.
by Mandy Doward - 24/5/2017
What Is Report Builder?
Report Builder is a report creation tool from Microsoft enabling you to develop simple to complex reports and dashboards based on data from a variety of data sources such as SQL Server, Azure, Oracle, DB2, Teradata databases, SAP, XML,ODBC sources.
Report Builder implements the same Report Designer that is provided by SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) and the SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT) development tool.
Merging Shapes using Microsoft PowerPoint
There are occasions when you can’t quite find the shape you’re looking for. With the Merge Shape tools, you are able to construct your own shapes. This blog will take you through the steps to creating your own shapes using the Union command from the Merge Shape Tools.
Creating Forms in Microsoft Word
Using a form for data entry is an excellent way to control what you allow a user to select and where you want them to type. Forms look professional, and have the ability to save the entered data as a text file. This data can then be easily imported into excel for data analysis.
by Mandy Doward - 28/4/2017
Monitoring Logical and Physical Reads & Buffer Cache Usage
Many SQL Server performance problems will come down to poor physical disk performance or inadequate memory resource. This article takes a look at the Buffer Cache and some of the tools that we have for troubleshooting poorly performing SQL Server instances and queries.
Throughout this article we will meet a number of Dynamic Management Views, Functions and System Views:
by Mandy Doward - 22/2/2021
What Is UNIX?
UNIX is a multi-user, multi-tasking Network Operating System.
UNIX was first developed in 1969 by AT&T for a DEC PDP platform and throughout the 80s was ported to many different hardware platforms, made possible through licenses to the source code. AT&T also made their source code available to some US universities, one of which was Berkeley University, and they developed their instances of UNIX.
By the mid 80s there were two main variants of UNIX source code available to computer manufacturers:
by Mandy Doward - 19/4/2017
What Is Linux?
In 1991 Linus Torvalds developed the Linux operating system. Linux is a UNIX look alike operating system, but was a complete rewrite and was not developed from the main System V or BSD source code.
The objective for the Linux operating system was to develop an Open Source operating system. Open source means that the source code is freely available in the public domain. As a result of this there are now a number of variants of Linux including (to name but a few): RedHat, CentOS, Suse, Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora.
by Mandy Doward - 22/2/2021
What Is Microsoft SQL Server?
SQL Server is Microsoft's server based Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) providing a robust, reliable and scalable solution for live OLTP business applications data and historic OLAP reporting and analysis systems.
The PTR SQL Server Training Course Portfolio
Our portfolio of SQL Server training courses caters for all job roles within the data management, development, and data analysis business intelligence areas of interest.
Using Formula to determine which cells to format
There are many options to choose from when using conditional formatting, however at times we will need to use formula to manipulate our conditions further.
by Mandy Doward - 28/3/2017
Using a SQL Server SELECT Statement to Query an Excel Workbook
Occasionally you may find that some of the data you need to reference in a SQL Server query is located outside of the database in an Excel Workbook.
In this article we look at how you can query an Excel workbook as if it were a table in a SQL Server Database.
The SQL Server OPENROWSET function can be used to connect to a variety of data sources by means of a data provider: