Recently I’ve been working on implementing logging in a new application. Logging is a common feature we find ourselves constantly implementing. I hope were not implementing it from scratch. There are a number of logging libraries, especially in Dot Net, that handle just about any logging need you can think of. This time, rather than write software that is directly […]

In my opinion, the greatest value of the Internet of Things (IOT) is the ability to capture actionable data. Here’s a simple example. A refrigerator manufacturer produces an internet aware refrigerator. As the owner of the refrigerator is using products they keep cool inside, they find they need to replenish something. They can tell the refrigerator to re-order from their […]

What makes one hedge fund more profitable than another? Knowledge. A person who knows information that can impact the value of a traded asset prior to other consumers can purchase or sell those assets at a time to make the most profit. They call this the Edge. There are degrees of the Edge. They can range from Extreme which is […]

A little bit of documentation goes a long way. Recently, I’ve been using a technique where the documentation can do even more. What if you could manage your server environments in a manner similar to unit testing of software? Ok, that probably doesn’t make a lot of sense. So, let me break it down a little bit. In an Agile […]

As I have been thinking about encryption, the value it provides, and the applications to which it is applied, I started reviewing the types of encryption that still have some degree of efficacy. In 2014, when Snowden released documents with a lot of NSA capabilities, it was revealed publicly that the NSA had cracked the majority of the encryption schemes, […]

I came to this topic from Eilenblogger’s comment on one way hashing. He reminds me that most systems using passwords have a number of requirements to make them more difficult to crack. You’ll see a lot of rules: The password must be so many characters long The password must have an upper case letter The password must have a lower […]

I’ve had the opportunity to work on private data once again. Every time this comes around we ask a few questions to help determine the best approach for handling sensitive data. We’re assuming that the data will be encrypted. But encryption has many options. How soon can we perform encryption? Is there a reasonable value that can be used for […]

Your server assets are essential to the performance of your business. Most businesses can’t afford to lose a server. It costs money, and the cost escalates as the time offline increases. This may not be true in all situations. I would estimate that the majority of us face real financial pain when our servers go offline. If the loss of […]

Today I want to wrap up the discussion on high performance OLTP databases with the topic of indexing. The design of the schema is important. The syntax used is significant. But, if all of those things are aligned appropriately, and your indexes are off, you performance may still lag. Here is one way I have seen it happen. You put […]

One of the most effective techniques I have found to optimize transactions in high volume OLTP databases is to persist your data in sets. Once you have a set of data available in SQL Server, you need to process that set using efficient SQL Syntax. Regardless of how you pass a set of data to SQL Server, there are some […]