How is your skills with Linq? The reason I ask is because I find a lot of set problems work nicely in Linq much as they do in SQL. You can do joins, grouping order aggregation filtering and much more. The concepts are very similar to SQL, but different enough that it takes a little amount o f work to […]

A number of database optimizations methods have been added to or enhanced in SQL Server or Windows. They all do basically the same thing. They reduce the time needed to access data. In memory databases are the latest SQL Server optimization allowing databases to exist completely in RAM. Very high performance can be obtained from this implementation. SSD has been […]

Many systems today still have powerful batch processing engines. IBM based hardware has a history of powerful batch processing engines handling user defined job queues. This allows systems programmers to maintain multiple job queues allowing multiple processes to execute concurrently, and having jobs within a single queue run in sequence. When working in the Windows environment it seems like there […]

BI and Data Warehousing are two of the hottest topics I see today. Job Boards are flooded with companies searching for people with BI/DW experience. I mostly see advertisements for the Oracle or Microsoft BI stack. There are a number of IBM tools included as well. What seems to be on the decline are companies looking for NoSql kinds of […]

Here’s a response from Dilip on the topic of knowing when to quit: 1. There is a famous saying that "Your Cognizance never Increases; it is your incognizance that diminishes". So, we all are with serious limitations in many aspects and software is no exception. 2. If you do not indulge in "I am the only smart Alex in the […]

The idea behind RESTful services is the ability to expose methods and data to any consumer capable of making an HTTP connection. It differs from SOAP by reducing the complexity of the communication using a few basic HTTP verbs. The net result is that you can write applications on a web server, smart phone, tablet, computer, etc. all of which […]

Today I want to talk about a skill that I think is one of the most difficult for any IT professional; knowing when to quit or ask for help. As a professional we are employed for our abilities to solve problems. For me, solving software problems is a blast. I would do it even if it wasn’t my job. I […]

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. […]