A while back, I was reading the story of Susan Kuhnhausen, a nurse who came home one day to find a burglar in her home. After she came in, the burglar attacked her with a hammer. Apparently he got in at least one blow to her head, though it wasn’t enough to knock her out, … Read more
Sometimes, one of the most relevant skills that a developer needs to have, when working in the corporate environment, is to know how and when to bend the rules. A major high-street bank once offered me a completely impossible design brief. As I was being paid by the hour I took it gladly. The brief … Read more
I’m amazed at some of the things people have to put up with at work, especially when it comes to misguided policies designed to boost productivity when in fact all they really do is hurt morale. Too often, people are resigned to accepting these policies as a fact of life and mindlessly obey them for … Read more
Most software projects seem to go on an emotional roller-coaster voyage. Initial euphoria soon fades into confusion, followed by despair. If a project is going to succeed in reaching port, despair is followed by a consensus decision to save as much as possible from the wreckage of the initial ‘vision’. Maybe I’m unlucky, but I’ve … Read more
You may have thought this blog entry was about databases, but no. It’s about Ford fleecing me on a set of keys. Actually it’s more about me whining because I lost my keys and they are really expensive to replace, but whatever. If you have a newer car with a computer chip’ed key, then you will … Read more
Once, whilst I was working for a large international enterprise, I received a company edict, from the IT director, that two megabytes of memory were sufficient to run Windows-based PCs. So firm was this edict that it was made it part of corporate IT strategy. PCs were not to be purchased with more than two … Read more
There are exciting times for Red Gate’s SQL Backup development team at the moment. We have just released a minor version (4.6) which includes support for more keywords. Specifically PAGE level restore is now supported along with the KEEP_REPLICATION keyword. If you are an existing SQL Backup user you can upgrade via Check for updates … Read more
Sometimes I feel like I should just wire up my brain directly to this blog. Like most people, I’m aware that blogs are supposed to have a moderately “stream of consciousness” feel about them, but this is getting daft… The game is now most definitely afoot with respect to the SQL Prompt 3 beta and … Read more
Those of you that have so far signed up for the SQL Prompt 3 beta program, or at least those of you who signed up before about 11 o’clock this morning (British Summer Time), should now have received an email telling you a bit more about the beta. If you think you should have received … Read more
In a recent blog, Todd Bishop highlighted the fact that Microsoft had hired “more than 10,000 people worldwide in the fiscal year ended June 30, bringing the total to 71,553 (… the biggest annual increase in the company’s history)”. Subsequently, the anonymous Mini-Microsoft blogger duly wondered what exactly these 10K people actually did AT Microsoft – … Read more
Moving data from DB2 to SQL Server has been an experience and a half, fraught with lessons throughout. My latest lesson is on dates. While running a query to import data, I kept running into this particular exception: Error converting data type DBTYPE_DBTIMESTAMP to datetime I figured there was some issue with one of the … Read more
I often make use of the Regex.IsMatch( string ) method to check if a regular expression finds a match in a given string, however I do not often use the Match( string ) method which, unsurprisingly, returns an instance of Match. Matches( string ) returns a MatchCollection. Very handy. But what does the Match( string … Read more
Some good news! We’ve decided to extend the $99 per license introductory pricing to all orders placed on or before October 20th 2006, which gives you another 3 weeks to get your orders in before it reverts to its full price of $195. Full details are available at: http://www.red-gate.com/MessageBoard/viewtopic.php?t=2815 Enjoy!Bart… Read more
You know the one I mean: the one that comes up after you’ve gone through the wizard asking if you want to restart now or later… and then does the same thing over and over again every 10 minutes until you finally give in or go mad. Yesterday I finally reached breaking point, and having … Read more
Words I thought I would never have a legitimate reason to utter, particularly with respect to SQL Prompt 3. But then life’s full of surprises. Many of you will have noticed that late last week I finally decided to stick my head above the parapet and make some sort of comment that might possibly be … Read more
Well no actually. After maintaining a stance of silence bordering on outright evasiveness for some weeks now, it seems about time to say something. SQL Prompt 3 Beta will be going out at the end of next week; actually some time on Friday 11th August. And hopefully not too late I might add, given that … Read more
As the average concentration span of the adult human is less than forty minutes, I have always puzzled over the reason why meetings last any longer than this, particularly in IT where the concentration span strains to reach these giddy lengths. You will be astonished to know that there is actually a correct way to … Read more
A constant niggle in the arena of computing is the way in which nobody takes responsibility. If your computer crashes whilst you’re, say, playing an online game, and you call the manufacturer, they’ll explain it’s probably a software problem, perhaps a driver you, the user, stupidly installed. If you call the driver vendor, they’ll explain … Read more
(As you can tell from the title, this post has nothing to do with SQL Server or running a business. I’ve put it here because if you can’t write a random, opinionated piece on your blog where can you write it?) The England football team didn’t win the 2006 FIFA World Cup, they also didn’t … Read more
There have been quite a few posts on the SQL Server Central forums about SQL Prompt, our tool for providing Intellisense for the leading SQL Server editors. There are still concerns about whether v2 is truely free and also about the quality and design of it. http://www.sqlservercentral.com/forums/shwmessage.aspx?forumid=192&messageid=290553 The editor of SQL Server Central offered me … Read more
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