Thomas Williams blog

DBAs spend time dealing with SQL Server performance, capacity, monitoring, troubleshooting, provisioning, etcetera; I’ve previously mentioned that R is a powerful, open-source language with a great ecosystem of libraries for analysis and visualisation, so…

In my last post on improving inputs in R Markdown/Shiny, I covered four improvements to quality of life in interactive reports and dashboards.

Brent Ozar asks what makers us groan on reading in an SQL query, for this month’s T-SQL Tuesday.

Shiny - and R Markdown output to HTML - have a range of input controls available for data-driven interactive reports & dashboards: text, dropdowns, date, checkboxes, range sliders, and more.

Recently I came across Sam Wilson’s Python heatmap map of Strava runs, and wanted to see if I could get a similar result using R Markdown.

In my work I support Linux servers, which means focusing on the command line; that starts with the SSH command.

Mermaid https://mermaid.ai/ is “Markdown inspired” diagrams as code.

Ten years ago, I started this blog.

This is my entry for the 2026 #30DayChartChallenge https://bsky.app/profile/30daychartchall.bsky.social; day 26 is all about trends.

Linting helps catch potential issues in code before they cause problems, and helps keep coding style consistent, whether for yourself or as part of a team or project.