From what I've seen, this site seems to be all about data, but there's a stigmata about asking questions not directly related to administration of those databases.
The on-topic help page mentions Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing, but I'm talking about Data Mining, SQL Server to Crystal Reports, better ways to go about analyzing the requirements of your business in specific situations, that sort of thing. A very broad list, but in general questions that refer more to analysts than DBA or Programmers.
As an analyst, is this a good place to ask my questions about issues I'm having interacting with and analyzing my database, or should I leave this site for SO? It seems analysts are given the short end of the stick when it comes to SE in general, so is this the place for me to get answers to my questions?
ETA (Possible Questions):
My company (a collection agency) is currently undergoing some growing pains regarding expansion, and the new system we brought in has some issues with linking and naming conventions. How can I familiarize myself with the various relationships in the database short of trial and error?
I have a SQL statement in which I use a sub-query to pull specific information from another field. Without grouping, the data pulls perfectly, but shows the field only on a duplicated line. The subquery is:
(Select RDate From RField Where RID = SID and RActive = '*' and RType in ('1','2') and RDate > DATEADD(month, DATEDIFF(month, 0, getdate())-1, 0))
When I run the query without a grouping I get:
RID | RDate | RType | SDate | 1111 |(Null) | 1 | 1/2/2015 | 1111 | 4/16/2015 | 1 | 1/2/015 |
I need to group this to remove the duplicate, but I would need the RDate to come before the Null value. How can I sort this before grouping it? (SQL Server 2008)
Crystal Reports is a well known but (in some cases) difficult to work with tool for reporting. Is there any real performance difference using it versus connecting our Database to Excel using Microsoft Query?