It is sometimes refreshing to crawl out from the hothouse of SQL Server to take a look at other platforms. I returned from the recent Oracle Open World show with my head full of all the hottest new features in Oracle 11g, but what struck me most was not so much the features themselves but … Read more
Microsoft’s Visual SourceSafe (VSS) will soon cease to exist. Mainstream support will end in April 2011, and so users will be forced to make the leap to an alternative: But which one? Visual SourceSafe was bought by Microsoft to fill in a hole in their development IDE. It was originally a DOS command-line tool that … Read more
Back in 2003, Microsoft launched a project that they hoped would “capture people’s ideas, requirements and hopes for software” and turn them into distributed applications. It was variously described as the “Excel” of the database world; a people’s data repository. In short, this project, codenamed Oslo, set out to create a general-purpose software-modelling platform that … Read more
Everyone knows the difference between a live SQL Server database file and a backup file. However, it seems that this distinction is being eroded, gradually, by the third-party tool providers. First, we saw tools that could compare live databases with backups, in order to report the differences in data or structure. Now we are seeing … Read more
WebMatrix, currently in beta, is Microsoft’s newest initiative aimed at those of us who take no pleasure in using the overweight Visual Studio, but need to develop websites easily. For web-based applications such as blogs, forums, CMSs and wikis, WebMarix’s design seems ideal, though it is currently working only in parts. At the heart of … Read more
For many migrant Oracle DBAs, SQL Server, or at least its support structure, must seem like the Promised Land: here is a well-documented database, supported by a vast landscape of practical, community-contributed content. It’s a credit to Microsoft that they have built such a solid set of tools, content and community-support around their RDMBS. An … Read more
Visual Studio 2010, or perhaps its apparently-forthcoming sister, “SQL Studio“, is being geared up to become the natural way for developers to create databases. Central to this drive is the introduction of ‘data-tier application components’, or DACs. Applications are developed as normal but when it comes to deployment, instead of supplying the DBA with a … Read more
Most database developers don’t use Source Control. A recent anonymous poll on SQL Server Central asked its readers “Which Version Control system do you currently use to store you database scripts?” The winner, with almost 30% of the vote was…none: “We don’t use source control for database scripts”. In second place with almost 28% of … Read more
When Microsoft executives wake up in the night screaming, I suspect they are having a nightmare about their own version of Frankenstein’s monster. Created with the best of intentions, without thinking too hard of the long-term strategy, and having long outlived its usefulness, the monster still lives on, occasionally wreaking vengeance on the innocent. Its … Read more
Sometimes, I wonder whether writers of documentation, tutorials and articles stop to ask themselves one very important question: Does the reader really need to know this? I recently took on the task of writing a concise series of articles about the transaction log, what is it, how it works and why it’s important. It was … Read more
It is hard to believe that it was once possible to corrupt a SQL Server Database by storing perfectly normal data values into a table; but it is true. In SQL Server 2000 and before, one could inadvertently load invalid data values into certain data types via RPC calls or bulk insert methods rather than … Read more
Over a leisurely beer at our local pub, the Waggon and Horses, Phil Factor was holding forth on the esoteric, but strangely poetic, language of SQL Server internals, riddled as it is with ‘sleeping threads’, ‘stolen pages’, and ‘memory sweeps’. Generally, I remain immune to any twinge of interest in the bowels of SQL Server, … Read more
Why are so many blogs about IT so difficult to read? Over at SQLServerCentral.com, we do a special subscription-only newsletter called Database Weekly. Every other week, it is my turn to look through all the blogs, news and events that might be of relevance to people working with databases. We provide the title, with the … Read more
Why is it that Windows has so much difficulty in finding content on its file system? This is not an insurmountable technical problem; on my laptop, I have a database within which I can instantly find text or names within millions of records, within 300 milliseconds. I have a copy of Google Desktop that can … Read more
A recent Simple-talk article by Kathi Kellenberger dissected the fastest SQL solution, submitted by Peter Larsson as part of Phil Factor’s SQL Speed Phreak challenge, to the classic “running total” problem. In its analysis of the code, the article re-ignited a heated debate regarding the techniques that should, and should not, be deemed acceptable in … Read more
The English language has, within a lifetime, emerged as the ubiquitous ‘international language’ of scientific, political and technical communication. On the one hand, learning a single, common language, International English, has made it much easier to participate in and adopt new technologies; on the other hand it must be exasperating to have to use English … Read more
When I first joined the industry in the late 90’s, Microsoft was in the process of shunting the ODBC driver into the background in favour of OLE-DB and ADO. The ODBC driver was still included in Microsoft’ Windows MDAC framework, but it had gained a rather unfair reputation for obtuse connections strings, unreliability and slow … Read more
I’ve always taken comfort in the fact that T-SQL belongs to an enlightened age of computer languages in which the operations that were specified were close to real language. When one sees a command called DBCC_CHECKDB, then one could feel pretty confident that it checks your database for any problems. Or so I thought…until I … Read more
The doggedness with which certain SQL Server “myths” cling to the coat of the SQL Server community is really quite astonishing. They are the proverbial “sheep ticks”; very annoying and incredibly difficult to dislodge. And even when you think you’ve managed it, their embedded jaws remain to provoke further irritation. A classic case in point … Read more
One of the big advances in Microsoft’s “2008 platform”, with regard to Reporting Services, was that there would be a single, consistent Report Definition Language (RDL) across all the products. This means that reports developed in Report Builder can be shared with reports developed in BIDS, and vice-versa. While one can immediately appreciate the advantages … Read more
