Louis Davidson

Louis is the editor of this Simple-Talk website. Prior to that, has was ia corporate database developer and data architect for a non-profit organization for 25 years! Louis has been a Microsoft MVP since 2004, and is the author of a series of SQL Server Database Design books, most recently Pro SQL Server Relational Database Design and Implementation.

Follow Louis on

Louis Davidson 10 July 2007

Blogging the DMV’s

Blogs

Well, I am working on a project that is going to be a book on dynamic management views (and functions, but DMF is an interesting acronym, and objects, as in DMO, has a well known other meaning. What I will post will be one object in the following format: Name of object Type: Function or … Read more

Blogs

Louis Davidson 20 May 2007

Sorting and case sensitive collations

Blogs

This is an addition to my book, on page 255, to the end of the section on collation (before the statement that I won’t delve any deeper into collations, of course :)), I want to add the following bit of information about collations and how they affect sorting and searching. You can download the entire … Read more

Blogs

Louis Davidson 07 May 2007

Using application locks to implement a critical section in T-SQL code

Blogs

This is being added to the addendum (located here) for my “Pro SQL Server 2005 Database Design and Optimization” book and would have appeared in the pessimistic locking section on page 478 in Chapter 9: Coding for Integrity and Concurrency; Pessimistic Locking. You can download the entire addendum here: Addendum. The problem of the critical … Read more

Blogs

Louis Davidson 15 April 2007

Dynamic management function query to view index usage

Blogs

Last week, I presented a query to view I/O pressure, and (to me) more usefully, look at it in a slice of time, like when doing a performance test. Here is a a very similar solution for index usage using the sys.dm_db_index_usage_stats dynamic management views. I will probably do several more of these types of … Read more

Blogs

Louis Davidson 06 April 2007

Dynamic management function query to view disk I/O pressure

Blogs

The sys.dm_io_virtual_file_stats dynamic management function returns I/O statistics for data and log files [MDF and LDF file], with two parameters, one for database_id and another for the file_id. This function will help you to identify I/O file level. I was led here when doing a search because we were getting enormous amounts of disk … Read more

Blogs

Louis Davidson 03 April 2007

SQL Server Search Macro (plus build your own directed search!)

Blogs

Microsoft has built a little site for searching the books online on the web (which gives you links that are more readily shared with others): http://search.live.com/macros/sql_server_user_education/booksonline That is nice, but what is nicer is that you can create your own search macros and save them.. Just click the “create your own search engine” and go … Read more

Blogs

Louis Davidson 26 February 2007

Ten Common Database Design Mistakes

1882

Database Administration

If database design is done right, then the development, deployment and subsequent performance in production will give little trouble. A well-designed database 'just works'. There are a small number of mistakes in database design that causes subsequent misery to developers, managewrs, and DBAs alike. Here are the ten worst mistakes … Read more

1882

Database Administration