It seems like we continue to write our authentication applications using the same old techniques that are less secure for a number of reasons. First let me explain what I mean by old techniques. Your password must have at least one upper case letter Your password must have at least one lower case letter Your password must contain at least […]

Dave Comments Online "I am seeing companies looking for SQL Server developers frequently going back as far as SQL Server 2008" "What’s your perception and experience? Is it realistic that companies concurrently use multiple versions of SQL Server and the ancilliary tools?" You may not have a choice if you work at an ISV. My ISV still had customers on […]

How many versions of SQL Server are you running? With the limited number of enhancements made in the SQL Server engine it seems that companies are less likely to upgrade their current version that previously. That may be an error on my part, but that is my perception based on the versions of SQL Server being requested on Job Postings. […]

Here’s an old problem for which the solution continues to creep out now and again. How do you make your database connection string for applications? I was reminded of this again on one of my group forums for Java. The author was pointing out that many times our connection strings are not only visible, but sometimes find themselves embedded in […]

A good friend of mine is a REALLY good COBOL programmer. I didn’t say was. I said is. And he makes really good money programming in COBOL wellbecause there isn’t a lot of competition. His company has a huge investment in systems written in COBOL. So, they keep rolling along because it gets the job done, and it doesn’t make […]

Here’s an old topic with a new twist. Back in the old days we used to worry about using Engine Specific sql code on order to be able to port an application to another database engine than the one on which it was developed. The way you did this was to use (as much as possible) only ANSI syntax in […]

With HTML5 we are experiencing many of the same issues we had when Java was young. The problem is not with the Java specification, or in this case the HTML5 specification. The problem is with the implementation. Not all features are implemented. Not all specifications are complete, so browsers have their own implementation of the rough draft. The result is […]

The advances of browsers as they continue to implement HTML5 features have begun to redefine how we write code and where it is placed. With the expansion of RESTful services and the power of new JavaScript based libraries we are seeing more code executed in the browser than ever before. Browser code has become more testable and better organized. Code […]

Utilizing sharded data can be a complicated process. By now you probably know that sharded data is the distribution of data into multiple tables or even multiple databases. The problem then becomes how to retrieve that data from the distributed shards if you don’t have an already built in method such as partitioned tables in SQL Server? MySql has a […]

The last couple of editorials I have been considering the topics of Technical Debt and Code Smells. Two brave people have contributed their thoughts on these practices. Dilip writes: This Topic is of prime importance not just because of the situations mentioned by you such as : Fixing errors, Readability, trying to follow standards etc. but also because Every technology […]