There are several initiatives that have ambitions to replace the Internet. Some of these, in the States and Europe, we know about, but the ones that should concern us are the ones we know almost nothing of. In China, the funding and the political will is at its strongest. 'They are so much more clear sighted than we are. And they need the money!' . We sent our man in the raincoat, Richard Morris, to investigate.
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When the incredible news broke, last week, that a trader at the third-largest bank in France, the Société Générale, had allegedly managed to over-ride the entire compliance mechanism of the bank, implemented at immense cost by a department of 2000 IT compliance 'officers', to cause a massive $7 billion loss, it sent waves of panic throughout the IT industry, as well as the money markets. So we sent our roving reporter, Richard Morris, to try to find out what went wrong.
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Numeral systems can be fascinating. In everyday programming, we are now becoming quite insulated from the need to convert between binary numbers and their representation, so it is a novelty to try out ways of doing it in SQL, and experiment with other number systems from the past.… Read more
In Reporting Services, It is not difficult to provide flexible grouping and to display the detail records in a drill-down on-demand method. It is more difficult to combine custom ranking and aggregations on filtered table groups in table based reports. David Leibowitz shows you how.… Read more
Simon Sabin explains why he is always cagey about giving advice on the sort of hardware to run SQL Server on, but admits to some general rules.… Read more
Alex starts of a series of articles on 'Unit Testing' your database development work. He starts off by describing five simple rules that make all the difference.… Read more
William Brewer argues that, although there are technologies around that will minimise downtime in most circumstances, they are only part of the solution. At the heart of every robust system, there is planning, documentation, scripting, testing and drill. … Read more
In systems that require, for auditing purposes, advanced logging and reproducibility of reports between runs, a straightforward update, insert, or delete may be counter-productive. In such circumstances, a bitemporal model is necessary. Adam Machanic explains how it works.… Read more
If you work with SQL Server 2000, then you know how painful it is to triage a server that has "gone astray". Eric Brown thinks that the new Dynamic Management Views in SQL 2005 are a big step forward.… Read more
For those times when you absolutely, positively got to perform a cross tab query in SQL, Keith Fletcher's T-SQL stored procedure will allow you to do it "on the fly". You can add it to your database and start cross tabbing immediately, without any further setup or changes to your SQL code. Check it out, and then take the cross tab challenge. If you can compile a cross tab report that displays the order value by customer, by quarter, using the stored procedure, you may win a much-coveted prize!… Read more
See for yourself the flexibility of XAML, as Jesse Liberty and Alex Horovitz show you how to create an interactive Windows application declaratively, in .NET 3.0.… Read more
In which Phil, under the influence of a surfeit of lobster, some fine wine and a large book, conjures up an imaginary Bill Gates, lets him know why people aren't flocking to SQL 2005, and offers him a turning off of the path to ever more complex and bloated database software.… Read more
Grant Fritchey steps into the workbench arena, with an example-fuelled examination of catching and gracefully handling errors in SQL 2000 and 2005, including worked examples of the new TRY..CATCH capabilities.… Read more
The ability to authenticate .NET application users against Active Directory is a common requirement. Here, Jeff Hewitt demonstrates how to build wrapper classes in Visual Basic that can convert AD data types into ones that can be used in a .NET application.… Read more
The need to produce Excel reports from SQL Server is very common. Here, Robyn Page and Phil Factor present practical techniques for creating and manipulating Excel spreadsheets from SQL Server, using linked servers and T-SQL. The pièce de résistance is a stored procedure that uses OLE Automation to allow you full control over the formatting of your Excel report, and the ability to include sums, ranges, pivot tables and so on.… Read more
Most DBAs don't have time to perform routine processes manually. Everything has to be scripted, automated and scheduled. Here, Dan Sullivan describes how a combination of PowerShell and SMO ("PowerSMO") can provide a familiar but powerful command line tool for managing common SQL Server tasks.… Read more
One of the biggest challenges in running any publication is balancing editorial freedom ...the ability to report on all events that affect the community without fear or favour ...against the need to meet your "bottom line". Currently, the advertorial, pop-up and page-peeler are ubiquitous, but can other models work? And regardless of the model used, what is the price of losing editorial freedom?… Read more
A keen new manager, with ambitions to make his mark, can cause all sorts of unpleasantness in the workplace. Phil Factor explains how to train your new manager to the required standards...… Read more
