Today I am sharing one last hierarchy technique I have seen in rare instances. It is not the most pure form of an hierarchy and has a number of issues. Still, implementation is simple and quick, and for smaller amounts of data, this works really slick. This last hierarchy method simply uses a single VARCHAR column. In the column, the […]

Today we continue our series on hierarchy structures in a database. This last implementation I’m sharing is only known to me in SQL Server. Microsoft has implemented a Hierarchy data type, having built in methods for handling relationships between nodes. You can insert a record into the hierarchy as the last node of a parent node, or following a specific […]

The rest of this week I’m going to take a look at some of the options available to you for creating hierarchical data structures in a relational database. Today we look at a hierarchy built on a linked list through the use of a single table having a self join to a parent node. The table would have a primary […]

Lately I have been working on a database diagram (Entity Relationship Diagram) for a project that is over a decade old. I don’t know if there ever was a diagram for this system. So I am reverse engineering one to show how all the pieces fit together in a logical fashion. There are a lot of reasons why we don’t […]

As time progresses I find that more applications I write end up on the web than anything else. Either as a web application or hosting a REST interface for other application resources. With HTML 5 the browser has become much more of a power house for rich user experiences. This prompts me to ask the question once again, has the […]

A topic I come back to on a regular basis is monitoring your database servers. This is one of the most overlooked practices on database servers. However, monitoring your server can provide a wealth of information. There are a number of ways you can monitor your server. The best ways available are found in tools such as Spotlight. Some open […]

Readers Feedback: Database Documentation (ERD) Aaron Writes: I work for a university and our main student information system does not have a database diagram. The database has close to 900 tables and I have been asking the vendor for a full database diagram for years. The main reason I would find it useful is for reporting purposes. Alexander Writes: I […]

You’re setting up a new instance of SQL Server on a new machine, virtual or self hosted. What are the first things you need to do? Here is a basic checklist you might use. Create the service accounts for the various services hosted by SQL Server. Here is a list of some I have used: SQL Service account SQL Agent […]

Years ago I had a database that used transaction logs heavily. Under heavy load, database performance was diminished. One optimization technique you can use in this situation is to create more than one transaction log. This is a similar technique that is recommended for your tempDb today. Even if the separate transaction log files are on the same drive. With […]

Are you writing applications to run in the Android Platform? Android has a far reaching implementation, as you probably know, on a large number of small devices. You’ll find it on DVD/Blue Ray players, Smart TVs, phones, tablets, and much more. It is a very popular platform because it provides all the basic services necessary to host your application. As […]