War Story I’m not sure how universal the term “War Story” may be, but this term is used to describe a painful event experienced in the life of an IT professional. It may be related to infrastructure, processes, software development, product management, software development lifecycles, etc. The value of a "war story" is that it provides real life experiences substantiating […]

Optional Parameters Unlike many programming languages, SQL does not lend itself to optional parameters, especially when using stored procedures. I’m going to share a SQL tip today regarding different methods to implementing optional parameters. All code is written in TSQL for MS SQL Server, but may be modified to work in other SQL engines. For this demonstration I’m going to […]

Jeopardy on SSWUG.org Today’s Jeopardy question pretty clearly demonstrates why it is difficult to create a Computer that can think like the Human Mind. I was amazed by the number of responses regarding yesterdays SSWUG Jeopardy question…and they were all nearly identical. What is dropping/mixing a stack of unnumbered programming cards? In the 60s programmers didn’t have direct access to […]

$$SWYNK$$ Featured Article(s) Tips for designing SQL Server 2008 tables (Part 2) In this article, you can find some useful tips to design SQL Server 2008 tables. Featured White Paper(s) Structuring the Unstructured: How to Dimensionalize Semi-Structured Business Data Written by Interactive Edge The Business Intelligence industry … (read more) Implications of IBM Watson If you heard the presentation of […]

Reader’s Comments Today I’ll share a number of comments from our readers covering Disk Partition Alignment and Visual COBOL. Disk Partition Alignment Leif Writes: This is true for Windows Server 2003 and earlier where the default alignment was 16K, 32K or 48K depending on the storage system behind, but for Windows Server 2008 and later (atm. Windows Server 2008 R2) […]

SSWUG TV With Stephen Wynkoop Get the latest news on Oracle’s purchase of RightNow Technologies Watch the Show Disk Partition Alignment How much would it be worth to get significant improvement on you Windows Servers for Files, Exchange, or even SQL Server? What if your only investment was time? Well, if the concept of Disk Partition Alignment is new to […]

SSWUG-TV With Stephen Wynkoop SQL Server Injection prevention and help, interview with Philip Japikse, Patterns and Practices Evangelist for Telerik. We also have the latest news on Oracle’s purchase of RightNow Technologies, IBMs push into unstructured data analysis and more. [Watch the Show] Last week’s show: Interview with Peter Serzo, Senior SharePoint Architect with High Monkey Consulting. We also have […]

Organic Computers Dreaming about future technology is often rooted in current trends, failures, or fantasy. It wasn’t long ago the thought of nano-bots was mere science fiction. Today, there are so many things we can do. The primary question anymore is how do we pay for it? How can we make a living? How can we produce and package it […]

Some Dare to Predict I’ll be honest with you; I have no clue what is coming next. I foresee a lot of growth in distributed data and processing technologies. That is a bit of a wimpy prediction based on the current velocity. Agile SDLC will continue to grow. Even though it has not been shown to produce more successful software […]

What will the future be? I don’t know if I am a hoarder or a pack-rat. When it comes to tech journals, I just can’t seem to throw them away. Recently I have been going back through my piles to see what we thought the future held 10-15 years ago. It’s really interesting to see what ideas became reality and […]