Feodor Georgiev Database Documentation – Lands of Trolls: Why and How? When database documentation is mentioned in an IT Department, everybody nods wisely, yet everyone does their best to avoid doing... 07 April 2011 12 min read
Joe Celko Check your Digits The most persistent struggle in data processing has been to ensure clean data. There are many ways that data can... 07 April 2011 11 min read
Nick Harrison A Developers’ Guide to Refactoring Databases When Agile meets 'Big Design', the result can be frustration on both sides. Is it possible for database development to... 04 April 2011 15 min read
Troy Hunt The unnecessary evil of the shared development database One of the greatest pain-points in developing a database-driven application happens when the application is in source control,but the database... 23 March 2011 16 min read
Hugo Shebbeare The Polyglot of Databases: How Knowledge of MySQL and Oracle Can Give SQL Server DBAs an Advantage Although switching between different RDBMSs can be the cause of some culture shock for the Database Administrator, it can have... 14 March 2011 16 min read
Fabiano Amorim Lipoaspiration in your SQL Server Database Once, when disk space was at a premium, DBAs fought hard to keep the size of their database down. Now... 03 March 2011 13 min read
Grant Fritchey Change Management and Source Control So, given the many good reasons for using Version Control systems for managing the changes in database applications, how does... 03 March 2011 47 min read
Troy Hunt Continuous Integration for SQL Server Databases When it comes to the subject of putting databases into source control, Troy Hunt is no shrinking violet. "Database source... 01 March 2011 28 min read
Jaap Wesselius SMTP Routing Changed in an Exchange Database Availability Group In Exchange Server 2010 it is possible to make the system more resilient by creating a Database Availability Group (DAG)... 03 February 2011 3 min read
Joe Celko Look-up Tables in SQL Lookup tables can be a force for good in a relational database. Whereas the 'One True Lookup Table' remains a... 01 February 2011 18 min read
Nick Harrison Database Refactoring Although the methodology of refactoring code has been adopted enthusiastically, the same has not really been the case with databases.... 01 February 2011 17 min read
Dennis Lloyd Sebastian Meine SQL Server Unit Testing with tSQLt When one considers the amount of time and effort that Unit Testing consumes for the Database Developer, is surprising how... 06 January 2011 11 min read
Joe Celko BIT of a Problem The BIT data type is an awkward fit for a SQL database. It doesn't have just two values, and it... 04 January 2011 12 min read
Troy Hunt Foolproof Atomic Versioning of Applications Bad things tend to happen to developments where the scripts for the database layer are left out of source control.... 08 December 2010 9 min read
Brad McGehee Brad’s Sure Guide to SQL Storage Compress SQL Storage Compress does just that, and encrypts as well, allowing the files associated with a live database to take... 07 December 2010 27 min read
Nick Harrison Some NHibernate Best-Practices NHibernate can help to build a project more quickly if the database it connects to is sound. Otherwise, there are... 25 November 2010 13 min read
Holger Schmeling SQL Server Statistics A Distribution Statistics object is a sampled map of the distribution of data in a table. Such statistics help the... 23 November 2010 3 min read
Red Gate Books The Red Gate Guide to SQL Server Team-based Development This book shows how to use a mixture of home-grown scripts, native SQL Server tools, and tools from the Red... 02 November 2010 5 min read
Joe Celko VALUES() and Long Parameter Lists – Part II The use of the comma-separated list of parameters to a SQL routine, that Phil Factor calls the 'comedy-limited list, is... 28 October 2010 10 min read
Alex Kuznetsov Defensive Error Handling TRY...CATCH error handling in SQL Server has certain limitations and inconsistencies that will trap the unwary developer, used to the... 28 October 2010 35 min read
