Friday, June 12, 2015

Beer Cheese

What is beer cheese you ask? Well, that really depends on who you ask.  They may tell you a certain brand or may not have a clue of what it is. Beer cheese combines 2 of my favorite things. No, it isn't rain drops on roses or whiskers on kittens. It is beer and cheese.

Beer cheese is a sharp cheddar or processed cheese (aka Velveeta) spread found mostly in Kentucky. There are many different local brands and many different takes on it, but they all have about the same ingredients. Either a sharp cheddar or a processed cheese, beer, paprika, garlic, dry mustard, horseradish, cayenne pepper, just to name a few. There are also different varieties like "mild" and "hot" that set each unique recipe apart from one another. Beer cheese is mostly ate with random crackers or carrots or celery. It is also found in some soups or on certain southern sandwiches.


There are many different stories about beer cheese's began, but it appears to have first been served in the late 1930s at a restaurant in Clark County, Kentucky known as Johnny Allman's. He use to call it his 'Snappy Cheese' and it was a hit. His 'Snappy Cheese' aka Beer cheese is so popular in the city of Winchester, Kentucky that an annual Beer Cheese Festival.





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Memorial Day, To Honor Our Heroes

Memorial Day is a national holiday in the United States that is observed every year on the last Monday in May and is known as Decoration Day. Most governmental offices are closed and most people have the day off work. Memorial Day originated after the Civil War to honor Confederate and Union soldiers that gave their lives during battle. In modern day, it has been extended to honor anyone who has died serving during the US military. On this day, people often visit cemeteries and decorate the graves of their loved ones or people who have died while serving our country.  Many volunteers also take the time to place a small American flag on every grave in our national cemeteries.

While you are grilling out and partying with family and friends, remember those who came before you and fought for your country. It is their great sacrifice that gave you the freedom to celebrate this three day weekend. So pop a cold one, raise a toast to the men and women who paid the ultimate price this land. Wishing you a blessed and safe Memorial Day.
Picture from www.familyfirst.com


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Thursday, June 11, 2015

Altering Length of a Varchar Field on Production SQL Table

If you are using MS SQL Server 2008 R2 DB Server, and needing to alter the length of a varchar on a live production table without effecting the current data.

Example:
You have a table called MyTable and have a column called MyColumn that is currently varchar with length of 500 and wish to make it length of 1000.  This table is actually a production SQL Table.


ALTER TABLE MyTable
ALTER COLUMN MyColumn VARCHAR(1000)


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Tuesday, June 2, 2015

SQL Joins (INNER JOIN Tutorial)

SQL joins are used when you want to combine rows from more than one table in a database. A JOIN is a means of combining fields from two or more tables by using a common field.

First things first, before I show you an example, I will tell you the most common types SQL JOINs you can have:

INNER JOIN:
This will return all rows when there is at least one match in both tables.
LEFT JOIN: This will return all rows from the left table, and the matched rows from the right table.
RIGHT JOIN:
This will return all rows from the right table, and the matched rows from the left table.
FULL JOIN:
This will return all rows when there is a match in at least one of the tables.

The most common type of all the JOINS is the INNER JOIN or a simple join. This is the example I will be showing you more of today.

Table 1: Customer
IDName
1Walmurt
2Turgat
3Mojulrs
4Kroogers
Table 2: Orders
CustomerIDOrderIDDateAmount
210011-1-2015$100
410021-4-2015$400
210031-6-2015$200
310041-6-2015$100


Now, lets JOIN these two tables with a SQL Select Statement.

Select Customer.ID as CustomerID, Name, OrderID, Date, Amount from Customer
INNER JOIN
Orders on Orders.CustomerID = Customer.ID;



The results to this statement will produce the results below.
CustomerIDNameOrderIDDateAmount
2Turgat10011-1-2015$100
4Kroogers10021-4-2015$400
2Turgat10031-6-2015$200
3Mojulrs10041-6-2015$100

Please note, several operators can be used to join tables, such as =, <, >, <>, <=, >=, BETWEEN, LIKE, and NOT, just to name a few. However, the most common operator is the equal symbol.


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