SSWUG Free Expo Event: Real-World SharePoint Administration
Friday, February 11, 2011, 9 a.m. – 1 p.m. PST
Build you skills for deploying and supporting SharePoint by attending this virtual conference. Experts will teach you techniques for managing access control, implementation strategies and tips you can use immediately. With registration you also receive a free complimentary membership to SSWUG for one month. After the expo, the content will be available for further review and study.
Register today to reserve your place!
DBTechCon – Spring 2011
The SSWUG Spring 2011 virtual conference is quickly coming together. Without a doubt, this will be the largest virtual conference in the information technology industry. Access more than 70 sessions from well seasoned professionals with in-depth instruction on technologies such as SQL Server, SharPoint, .Net, Business Intelligence and much more. Register any time from now to April 19th. There are early registration discounts for those who register early. go to the Registration page for more details and to get signed up right away.
$$SWYNK$$
Featured Article(s)
Tips for using views in SQL Server 2008
In this article, you can find some tips to performance tune and optimize SQL Server 2008 views.
Featured White Paper(s)
An Introduction to Workload Tuning
Workload Tuning is just what it sounds like: tuning the performance of all processes that comprise a database workload in one… (read more)
Information Schema Views…Are They Obsolete?
Personally, I love the Information_Schema views. I was more comfortable for years using the original system tables (prior to SQL Server 2005) simply because I had used them for years, and knew the schema by heart.
When I started writing automated unit testing code for database objects, I started transitioning to INFORMATION_SCHEMA views, for no particular reason other than Unit Testing database objects and code was new to me in the first place. As a result, I’m glad I did make the transition. Now I can point my same unit tests to data stores other than SQL Server and still have them work with little (if any) modification, depending on the vendor implementation of INFORMATION_SCHEMA views.
Beginning with the release of SQL Server 2005 SQL Server has added so much more to the system views. The DM and SYS views provide so much more insight into objects and performance of your database I find them invaluable. Well, that brings me to the question of this Editorial. Are the INFORMATION_SCHEMA views somehow obsolete? I still like their cross platform capability. Most developers really don’t have to be concerned with the ability to run a database on multiple engines (or do they?).
That being the case, are you really coding yourself into a hole by using a more robust set of views? For unit testing, I don’t really have much advantage using anything other than INFORMATION_SCHEMA provides. I like to validate that the data structure, relationships, and interfaces (stored procedure and function input and output parameters) have not changed since code requires these objects to remain consistent. That can be done easily with INFORMATION_SCHEMA views as they exist today.
Well, what do you think? Are INFORMATION_SCHEMA views obsolete? Should we instead spend our time building our expertise on the MS Specific views and functions? Are you using these tools in your operations? Do you support multiple database engines with your applications, and how does that impact your selections? Drop me a note…let’s hear what you think. Send your comments to btaylor@sswug.org.
Cheers,
Ben