Float like an approximation; stings like a bee

I distinctly remember having to tell my CIO and a VP of Finances in 2005 that the reason their reports were off by one cent from the ledger was because the person who designed their reporting database had chosen to use the float datatype instead of the decimal datatype.  The implications of that one cent variation were astounding to me, but I wasn't a business finances guy.

Slidedeck: Using SSRS 2008 R2 to natively report from Sharepoint lists

Included in the below file is the slide deck from my lightning round presentation at the Baton Rouge SQL Server User Group on March 16, 2011 on using SSRS 2008 R2 to natively report from Sharepoint lists.  Thanks for attending!

Click here to download (PPT 1mb)

TSQL: Get the first date of a quarter

Here’s a script to find the first calendar date in the quarter, given any date.

So, given March 3, 2011, we want to return January 1, 2011, the first date of Quarter 1.