Louis has been in the IT industry for over 20 years as a corporate database developer and data architect. Currently he is the Data Architect for CBN in Virginia Beach. Louis has been a Microsoft MVP since 2004, and is an active volunteer for the PASS locally and globally. He is the author of a series of SQL Server Database Design books, most recently Pro SQL Server Relational Database Design and Implementation.
Twelve and a half years ago I wrote my largest hit count article of my writing career Ten Common Database Design Mistakes. It currently shows as having over 1.2 million hits, despite having a misspelling in the first paragraph. After this length of time, you would think that things would have changed and we would … Read more
A feature I have never actually used professionally is filestream and filetable. We have a few file based solutions, but they are all packaged solutions. It is a feature that has intrigued me since it was released, but it has never been a fit for the kind of work I typically do (mostly transactions and … Read more
When I am not working on or writing about SQL, I am posting theme park pictures on Twitter of DisneyWorld (@DisneyPicADay) and Dollywood (@DollywoodP). The fun part of it is taking the pictures. The HARD part is deciding what to post every day. So instead of picking things from my head, I decided to harness … Read more
Writing data integrity code in TRIGGER objects is generally is pretty simple. Typically you write a query to see “is there a row in inserted/deleted that is not set up as desired for the current transaction?” and no bad data is found, keep moving. And because MOST of the time, you would only use a … Read more
As I have been writing a section on SQL Server graph tables in my Database Design book, (and prepping for a hopeful book on the subject next year), I find that there are a few really annoying things about dealing with graph tables. This blog serves to clear up the first, most annoying of them. … Read more
Before taking any time with the rest of my SQL Saturday Chattanooga, Home Edition teammates to discuss what went right and wrong with our event (it felt mostly right, honestly as far as I could tell, but we won’t totally know until we get the feedback from attendees), I was thinking as I was enjoying the … Read more
In this last entry in the initial series of posts on building a SQL Agent Job Generator, I am going to add the ability to schedule the jobs that we generated in the previous post. The code that is available here in github: https://github.com/drsqlgithub/SSISDeployTool/tree/e8c44505bba6b3c764531c8b489101b39b5c27a7, is likely sufficient for some smaller organization’s needs with jobs. (Future … Read more
In this entry in the SQL Agent Job Generator system series, we are going to turn the corner and actually start producing working SQL Agent jobs. We will start with simple, standalone T-SQL jobs, that you can kick off or schedule (and that is how I have labeled them, as scheduled since that is how … Read more
In the previous entry in this series, I implemented Environment Variables that will let me have one code base that can easily generate jobs in DEV, PROD, or whatever environment you desire. In this entry, we are going to implement the basic building blocks of the process. I will build: A file with defaults for … Read more
As a relative neophyte to PowerShell (something I will remind readers of every time I start a blog in this series!), I am not always sure I have the best way of doing things. In this blog, I am going to lay a bit of foundation for my job creation system, by building a set … Read more
Note: Please be kind on my PowerShell programming techniques. If I am doing something really horrible, let me know. I will change my code. As our team struggles to get to a place where we can do continuous integration, some of the biggest issues we have needed to work on is figuring out how to … Read more
Graph structures are something that I have lightly covered in my Database Design book in the last few book editions (the last coinciding with SQL Server 2016), implementing them with relational tables. In the next edition of my book that I am starting to write now, my goal will be to cover one of the … Read more
Boy does time fly, and it is already mid January. The holidays flew by, and now the Christmas tree and (most of) the Christmas décor has been boxed up in the attic (yeah, there is a Santa on a shelf staring at me that he needs to be put up!). The college bowl games are … Read more
This has been quite a year, which is why this year’s resolutions are not in October as had been my previous practice. This year for me has been defined by three major things: Knee replacement – Having had one of my hips replaced twice, I figured I had this knocked out cold and would actually … Read more
This blog is different than my normal T-SQL blogs I almost always do. But I know that I cannot be the only computer programmer who wants to wear a smart watch when working to get some of the health and alert benefits that they can provide. The band though, has always been a blocker to … Read more
Recently, we started adding compression to some of our larger tables in our data warehouse where columnstore indexes didn’t make sense. (For example, some very large dimension tables, and a few facts where they are not used for large aggregates in the common manner). The changes were checked into source control, we monitored performance, all … Read more
It has been a fun summer, sort of. 13 weeks ago, I had my left knee replaced to balance out my other two hip replacements on my right side. This is hopefully the last time that Dr Morrison of Southern Joint Replacement Institute ever has to cut into parts of my body with power tools. … Read more
My dad and I had a very interesting and complex relationship. Some of this was due to his complex upbringing. His father was an alcoholic who died fairly early in his life, and his mom, well, his mom liked me a lot, but she was a messed up woman in many ways. After his father … Read more
The process of putting together a team of technical people once was largely centered around getting a group of similarly minded people. How people worked was valued more than how well they could accomplish their job. Finding people who could work together smoothly was a big focus when picking new team members, and was a … Read more
Coming up this weekend, I will be in Virginia Beach, VA for their first ever SQL Saturday event. I have strong ties to the area, as the company I work for is located there, and they are helping me out to be able to come in for the event at a more reasonable pace than … Read more