Featured Article(s)
RANK(), ROW_NUMBER(), and PARTITION to Solve Business Needs
This article presents a business case and solution showing how Common Table Expressions, RANK(), ROW_NUMBER(), and PARTITION can be used to get specific sets of data, in a clear concise manner. The article provides an overview of the functions, and the procedures needed
Experiences Keeping Up With Releases
Kathy wrote in with her experiences with keeping up with SQL Server (and tech changes in general) – I think this is a really common situation:
"When I first started learning SQL Server 7 in 1999 (along with Visual InterDev, html, VBscript, JavaScript – all for creating new-to-me ASP apps), I just dived into the deep end of it all, trying to learn as much as I could, but only to the point that I could be productive. Once productive, the learning declined almost to the point of non-existence. I never had any difficulties with SQL Server 2000 and only a small learning curve with ASP.NET. With SQL 2005, however, accumulated changes have reached the point that I am sometimes a bit hesitant to do anything beyond what is normal/usual for my own work. I am feeling the need for more knowledge.
I thought then, and still think today, that if I knew more I could do more and be more effective/efficient at what I do. On the other hand, I do want to have some kind of personal life away from work (which I mostly gave up while coming up to speed back in 1999-2001).
Early on, I had asked my manager what kinds of administrative things I should be doing. (We don’t have any (MS) administrators – not for Windows servers, not for IIS, not for SQL Server.) I had thought we would discuss options. Instead, the answer I got was “minimal” (and that is a quote, by the way). So I have focused my attentions and time on the software development tasks I have been assigned (5 year backlog, at this point).
For the most part, when it comes to performance, the server I am responsible for has no issues at all. But then it helps that it only serves up data and apps used by only 400-500 internal users who input/view data in maybe 10-12 databases using almost as many apps, none of which generate heavy usage. There is another server (someone else is responsible for that one) that has encountered some performance issues intermittently. One solution was to purchase more powerful hardware, which helped. One other performance issue was greatly alleviated when I added an index on a table (I’m not sure that the people who work on that db server truly understand the concept of primary keys, and I know they don’t know anything about the internals of SQL Server).
Since I am the default go-to person when others have problems, I, too, have the same concerns – how to keep up with it all (hey, how to keep up with what I need to know to do my job, much less fill in as an unofficial administrator). What it all boils down to is that when my need is pressing I will pull out the books and start studying. Meanwhile, I attend conference once/year to at least stay on the sidelines, to have some idea of useful information/techniques/features."
Maybe we could come up with a technology "IV Drip" – it would just keep you learning while you do other things. Or perhaps the uplink technology from The Matrix – just plug in…
Featured White Paper(s)
EMC CLARiiON Data Replication Options for Microsoft SQL Server Deployments Technology Concepts and Business Considerations
Read this white paper, EMC CLARiiON Data Replication Options for Microsoft SQL Server Deployments, and discover how EMC Recov… (read more)
EMC Metropolitan Recovery for SQL Server 2005 Reference Architecture
Learn about EMC’s Metropolitan Recovery for SQL Server 2005 solution in this Reference Architecture guide. See how you can us… (read more)