How is SharePoint as a Wiki Microsoft SharePoint is a great place for collaboration. Companies build so many different kinds of things with SharePoint as a central engine. It makes a great repository for sharing reports, lists, PowerPivot sets, and many other kinds of documents as well. Did you know that SharePoint also supports Microsoft’s version of a Wiki? Now […]

Will Hybrid Devices Become the Norm? I use a Hybrid drive today on my laptop and love it. The drive is a combination of SSD and traditional Hard Disk. The controller on the disk keeps frequently accessed files on the SSD, and all files on the hard disk. This allows the disk to have really good performance. Before I installed […]

As I was talking with a DBA, we were talking about the different pieces of SQL Server – from performance to disaster recovery management and beyond. I was surprised when they indicated that performance and tuning were not something they allocated a lot of time to. The payoff just wasn’t there. I figured they were simply brilliant and had tuned […]

Using Date Functions in TSQL I was recently asked what was the scope of a date function in a TSQL script or procedure. I remembered it as having been resolved at the time the script or procedure was compiled and executed. Turns out my memory was flawed. I found out because I decided to test my memory. First a ran […]

When I wrote about denormalizing your tables, it was with an eye to optimizing things for different data use cases. While do I do think there are cases where it can be helpful, one of the comments received was important as you consider how you want to address this. From Jim: "***[E]very*** time I have denormalized, I have later regretted […]

Abstraction vs. Automated Development While automated development and Abstracted/Loosely coupled software are not mutually exclusive, there are compromises made when using automated development tools. For example, I love Object/Relational Mapping generation software. Tools like hibernate, nHibernate, Entity Framework, and dozens more, all produce well architected software following extensible patterns. Once you modify the generated code you raise the risk of […]

We’ve just launched Class Pass, the option to have full access to all courses and virtual conferences (and more goodies are on the way) from SSWUG.ORG. It’s a great way to take your time with courses, while at the same time staying up to date on skills and having the references you need. Have you seen the class directory? And […]

What is the Correct Amount of Abstraction? The purpose of abstraction in software is to make it easier to modify in the future adding un-anticipated requirements. Rather than trying to think of every possible contingency, build your software so that it can more easily be extended with the least amount of effort. Software having very rigid contracts between components is […]

Temp Table Scope Works In Your Favor Temporary tables are a useful feature in Microsoft SQL Server. You may even be using them without even knowing it. SQL Server will often break down queries into steps, using virtual temp tables as intermediate steps to resolve complicated queries. If you use persisted temp tables by defining them like a regular table […]

Should You Monitor Deprecated Software? Software features are frequently deprecated in most active software packages. For those of you not familiar with the term Deprecation, a simple description may be that a feature is considered obsolete, and future releases may not support the feature any longer. Deprecation happens for a number of reasons. Sometimes features are deprecated and re-introduced in […]