Conversations with Gran about Databases

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So, what’s going on in your databases world this week, young man? I paused, as always, a little unsure of what I was getting myself into. I’d been having these little “technical chats” with Gran ever since her ‘computer incident’, when a blue screen informing her of a “Fatal error: catastrophic failure“, had thrown her … Read more
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The Wrong Way to Clean Up the Internet

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Having successfully fought several privacy battles, granting people the right to have themselves taken off Google search, and to have their records deleted from databases, it looks as if the European Union may soon want to regulate and license what you can watch on YouTube or other video content sites, and the audio-visual content you … Read more
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IT Aphorisms for Developers

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Developers enter their trade fizzing with untamed creative energy. They envision spending their days dashing out intricate algorithms that compile first time, developing creative applications that dazzle colleagues and users alike, before leaving the office each evening, with a swagger in their step, to work their new GitHub ‘side project’, which will one day soon … Read more
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Who was that masked man anyway?

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Whenever you require a visit to the doctor, or hospital, a lot of personal data will likely be recorded, alongside details of your condition, the treatment you required, drugs prescribed and so on. At some point, you might have signed a consent form, one of the clauses of which allowed your data to be analyzed … Read more
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Over-SQL-Engineering

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In a recent blog post, Jonathan Kehayias demonstrates a clever way to “multi-thread” maintenance tasks, when they need to run against very large (i.e. multiple terabyte) databases. The tool he used? Good old-fashioned Service Broker. Simply create some basic Service Broker objects, an activation procedure to automate Ola Hallengren’s maintenance procedures, bind the activation procedure … Read more
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SSMS Renaissance

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For many good reasons, DBAs and database developers use SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS), not SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT). It is a great relief for them, after several SQL Server releases-worth of general neglect, to see some renewed developmental vigor behind SSMS. Until the approach of SQL Server 2016, DBAs could have been forgiven … Read more
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9 Clickbait Simple Talk Titles You Won’t Believe Exist!

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At Simple-Talk, we specialize in practical, down-to-earth technical articles, and usually choose our titles to match. There’s no mistaking what “Comparing Networking options in Azure“ might be about, for example. Nor is there much room to doubt what’s in store in “Debugging data flow in SQL Server Integration Services“. Are we wrong to be so … Read more
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JSON-rise

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Microsoft was slow to meet the demand to be able to store and retrieve data in JSON, the native data format of ubiquitous JavaScript-driven web sites and mobile applications. Its late entry into the market, Azure DocumentDB, still has a lot of ground to make up; in the meantime, MongoDB has managed to fill the … Read more
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A Programmer Walks Into a Bar…

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Conference season is upon us. Sessions, hands-on labs, round table debates, so many opportunities for learning! Of course what they don’t admit on the conference websites and brochures is that all the important business at a conference takes place not in the sessions, but at the many impromptu social events, usually at a local ale … Read more
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Does Anyone Do This Stuff

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“Does anyone actually do this stuff?” This question came from a member of the audience at one of Brent Ozar’s training classes on SQL Server Database Continuous Integration. Mercifully, plenty of people confirmed in the comments that Database CI was alive and well, which was a relief, since I’d been toiling for several days on … Read more
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Real Developer Heroics

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One of the strange paradoxes of team development is that effort beyond the call of duty is generally discouraged. Developers who are new to team working assume that, if they work wonders to solve apparently intractable programming problems in record time, then all around them will smile in gratitude. The instinct to solve problems is … Read more
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The Genuine Article

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On Simple-Talk, we try to make sure that Information Technology is presented in an interesting way. We all tend to have more patience with a pedestrian article or blog that has information that solves an immediate problem, and we find the necessary energy to wade through the dull bits to get to the nectar. More … Read more
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Workplace Politics

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The IT workplace can often be stressful when untoward things happen. Maybe, it is business managers who demand new platforms, applications, and functionality to support bold new strategic objectives. The IT team, perhaps, begins to crack under pressure of an ever-increasing backlog of work to unrealistic deadlines while somehow holding together a creaking and patched-together … Read more
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Squaring the NoSQL Circle

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NoSQL was a bold new revolution. Many of these databases are schema-less, or rather the schema is implicitly defined by the developer, and therefore is flexible and can evolve. NoSQL databases lend themselves to very simple key-value access patterns; there is no need to design complex relations, or perform joins in ‘archaic’ languages such as … Read more
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Issue Tracking Systems: Good Servant, Bad Master

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Over time, many bug and issue tracking systems decline into a graveyard for bug-reports, a place where problems are buried rather than resolved. I’m not a developer but even so, any mention of bug-tracking systems elicits unhappy memories. I was once one of the Business ‘stakeholders’ for a system. We performed user-acceptance tests to check … Read more
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