Actionable Data I was reading the results of a survey about the capability of current data engines to capture data real time and present the data to decision makers in a manner resulting in Actionable Data. My initial gut reaction was, “Is real time data more Actionable?” I’m already feeling overwhelmed by the amount of data surrounding me, and my […]

How Long Will It Last? I was reading about capabilities of the new Visual Studio 2012 and came across a phrase in the description of LightSwitch that caught my attention. For those of you not familiar with LightSwitch, it is a 4GL code generator that builds apps. The resultant code is based on well established frameworks and patterns driven by […]

Using Version Control – git Ian writes in responding to my editorial yesterday about different techniques for utilizing Version Control to manage multiple initiatives and release timeframes. We were introduced to GIT about two years ago. The price was right and it did everything we wanted: it was also amazingly fast. There is a steep learning curve with GIT in […]

Version Control that Works at the Speed of Business A few months ago I wrote about skills a developer must have beyond simple syntax. Effectively using Version Control is one of those skills. Recently I have been considering different techniques for utilizing Version Control systems to allow the maximum amount of shared source while maintaining necessary separation of parallel initiatives. […]

Not Null Again If you don’t allow NULL values in your database, just skip this editorial section of the newsletter. Still there? Today I wanted to talk about the use of NULL in your table definitions. Not about if you should use them or not, or even about how it changes your code. What I want to talk about is […]

Transaction Log Truncation In response to the editorial from Friday one reader asks for a difinitive answer on how to keep a transaction log from growing in a fully logged database. Leon Writes: Hoping you can settle an discussion we are having amongst a bunch of seasoned dba’s and could point me to a respected article about it that would […]

Transaction Logs Killed My SQL Server Once again I have had a call from someone saying, "Something has stopped my SQL Server from running, and the error message says that the disk where my trasaction logs are is full!!" Well, the only way to keep from having this problem is to establish disaster recovery methods on your databases. As most […]

Balancing Simplicity With Complexity I’ve been ruminating on a tag line I read in an Email from one of our readers for a few months now. The phrase was, “It is twice as hard to test software than it is to write it. So, if your software is too complicated, it becomes impossible to test.” As I have been processing […]

Ingenious or Outrageous Thoughts As I was reviewing my thoughts and responses today on the “Ingenious or Outrageous” editorial from yesterday I started thinking about the bigger issue. Many times we try to find ways around the way things are designed in tools such as SQL Server because they don’t behave the way we want them to. I used to […]

Ingenious or Outrageous I came across a posting today where Dan Ryan came up with an idea of data rules validation using an Indexed View and a table containing two rows. He demonstrated using this technique to enforce a business rule against a parent/child table relationship. The parent and child tables both have a status flag. The rule states that […]