Private or Public Cloud If you define the Cloud as an environment where the specific machine or machines are executing your process are not specifically known there are few differences between a private and a public cloud. Some colleagues believe private clouds are gaining popularity. What makes the difference? Costs for a private cloud are easier to predict. Public cloud […]

The Perfect Work Environment The perfect work environment varies for individuals. Some people like open spaces, windows, bright lighting, and lots of collaborative workspace. Others like cubicles or offices where they can close out the rest of the world and concentrate. What works for you will not always be the same for other individuals. One office I worked in was […]

Data Table Serialization I have found a need to save the results of a query as an ADO.Net DataTable. Granted, the results can easily be saved into a database table with a foreign key to select the specific rows of a set. But I have a need where the requirement is to retrieve the whole set, or nothing from it. […]

Sequence Table Ideas Yesterday I introduced the concept of a Sequentially numbered table, and the value of having a persistent on available for any instance of SQL Server. Personally, I like to create one in my model database resulting in a Sequence table being included whenever I create a new database. This does not help me when I restore or […]

Set Based Recursion When a developer first transitions to working with SQL or set based code they begin to apply the same techniques used in a procedural language. Cursors are very attractive because they work within a loop very much like a “for” or ‘foreach” structure. We know how to work with them intuitively because they work much as we […]

Azure Table Storage Did you know Azure provides data storage in a NoSQL engine? In addition to SQL Azure, Microsoft also supports BLOB storage for large objects and Table Storage for objects under 1Mb. Table Storage is an alternative for data that may be structured, but does not require relationships with other data. According to Microsoft common uses may be: […]

SQL Job Error Notification I am a big proponent of not putting code in a database server that does anything other than serve up data. If data can be pivoted in a data consumer with less load on the server the offload the work. Formatting is a user presentation task, and is better done outside of the database server. It […]

Finding SQL Agent Job Failures SQL Agent jobs have the ability to notify an operator should a failure occur when a job executes. The problem is that many times a job may have multiple, autonomous steps, requiring a failing step to continue execution with the next step. When steps within a job are configured in this fashion, the job does […]

Formatting Date and Time Values Stored as an Int Before SQL Server 2008 introduced the DATE and TIME data types, it was common to store these values in a single INT column. Dates would be stored as an Integer consisting of yyyymmdd where yyyy = the four digit year, mm = the two digit month and dd = the two […]

Script First Change Management Gains Seal of Approval Many have written in with positive experiences using a Script First change management approach. David Writes: I like the coverage of database change management. We also go with the script first methodology. Over time SQL skills have become a required skill for developers in our shop. The developers creating, fixing, and modifying […]