SQL Server introduced the XML data type in the 2005 release resulting in a lot of power when dealing with both XML data and native SQL. The engine even has the ability to validate XML against a schema, shard the data so that it can be indexed, and included XPath and XQuery syntax for searching XML data quickly and efficiently. […]

Before SQL Server 2008 there was no native method to pass sets to a stored procedure or function. With SQL Server 2008 they introduced the User Defined Table Type. You could define a type just like a table, and pass in data using a variable of that type allowing sets of data to be passed to stored procedures like never […]

Linked servers are a simple way to make remote data sources appear to SQL Server as a native table from a query perspective. You can link to the same instance of SQL Server, other instances of SQL Server, or even non-SQL Server data sources such as Oracle, Active Directory, text files, etc. I have been attempting to optimize queries written […]

Are you sure linked servers are being deprecated? No, I had equated Linked Servers with Remote Servers when writing the editorial yesterday. Please accept my apologies for the confusion. Linked Servers are not the same as Remote Servers, although they perform similar functions. It is not linked servers that are being deprecated. Remote Servers are being deprecated, which is something […]

SQL Server supported Linked Servers for years. Now Microsoft is letting us know this capability is going to be deprecated in a future release. When they do stop supporting linked servers, what will be the impact on you? For the un-initiated, a linked server may be created on an instance of SQL Server allowing access to an external SQL source. […]

This is probably old news to you. I didn’t know that running a program under Windows 7 Compatibility mode was actually running a virtual Windows XP session, separated from the Windows 7 operating system. A friend recently brought this to my attention and I went to learn more. You can find a lot of information about Windows XP running as […]

I was reading an advertisement in the Oracle magazine the other day where they were using backward capability as a valuable feature of the Spark/Solaris product line. If I understood this correctly, they were promising lack of obsolescence should you choose to move to a new platform Your older versions of software would continue to run. This caught my attention, […]

Keeping Enumerations synchronized between application code and database lookup tables is simply painful. I have played with the idea of creating my lookup tables needing to be synchronized with three columns, ID, Description, Enumeration. I’m working on a T4 template that will generate Enumeration C# code from these tables so they can be kept synchronized with no special effort. The […]

Enumerations are popular in most modern programming lanugages because they do away with “Magic” numbers. A number has a strongly defined definition verified at compile time. Problems occur when you attempt to keep those enumerations synchronized with values in your database. I was looking at the Enumeration data type found in MySql hoping to find a solution to Enumeration synchronization. […]

Dilip reminds us that the Single Page Application is not the invention of HTML5. Rather, HTML5 enables single page applications to be created much more easily. I worked on a project 13 years ago using Classic ASP; not ASP.Net. This application had a series of properties that were hierarchical in nature allowing the user to drill into more detail. At […]