Introduction to SQL Server Reporting Services – Next Tuesday, August 25 Here’s your chance to sign up for the next virtual class, "Introduction to SQL Server Reporting Services". This "Made Simple" course, taught by Sherri McDonald, a Business intelligence expert from Pragmatic Works, is a great investment for your personal development. If you’re ready to up your game, come on […]

Introduction to SQL Server Reporting Services – Next Tuesday, August 25 Here’s your chance to sign up for the next virtual class, "Introduction to SQL Server Reporting Services". This "Made Simple" course, taught by Sherri McDonald, a Business intelligence expert from Pragmatic Works, is a great investment for your personal development. If you’re ready to up your game, come on […]

$$SWYNK$$ Tuning Unit Tests I hate fads. Fads, to me, are software, organization structures, or practices that are done because everyone else is doing it, without understanding the principles behind then, or if they are applicable to your specific situation. For example, SAP was a fad. It seems that every large company had to have SAP, regardless of how good […]

Unit Test Methodologies In the last couple of newsletters I have been talking about Unit Testing. Unit Testing is a technique used by software develoeprs to test the code they are writing to solve a software requirement. The tests are written to exercise the code modules directly, not through an external interface. Today I wanted to gloss over three general […]

$$SWYNK$$ Why Unit Test? Unit testing is tests written by developers, not QA. The purpose of unit testing is to confirm that the code works, and fulfills the business rules. In an Agile Software Development Lifecycle, unit tests also function as requiurements documentation.. Unit tests also document how to use the code. If you need to know how a certain […]

SSWUG Expo – Today SSWUG is hosting a Virtual expo today wrapped around Windows Azure and SQL Azure, Micorosft’s Cloud offering. Do you know what it is, how it works, when is the right time to use it, when it isn’t a good fit? If you have these questions and many others, then get in here for our in-depth sessions […]

$$SWYNK$$ Virtual Machine Experiences I recently had a discussion with my older brother who manages the servers for a large city on the West Coast. I was sharing how virtual servers, providing the same capacity as a physical server, actually cost more to own and maintain. My brother replied that Virtual servers had actually saved the city a great deal […]

Right on Cue: Facebook and Hadoop (Data Hoarding) Now, I’m not saying data on Facebook is "hoarding" but consider what’s there. They are setting a fine example of how to manage a massive store, make it readily available and dealing with exponential growth, all in one… they’ve just moved their Hadoop cluster to a new facility and, I have to […]

$$SWYNK$$ Are You Virtual? This is an old topic. Surveys and questionnaires abound for longer than a decade regarding the adoption of virtual operating systems and services. I’d like to revisit the topic as the game has changed considerably over that last few years. Most servers, even the low end servers for departmental or small business use, ship with 64bit […]

Data Hoarding Feedback I received some great feedback from people facing down the data hoarding issues that plague so many systems. The original question was essentially "we all hoard data… great. But what do you do about it??" It seems that the successes for people come from a multi-step process of addressing too much information stored. First, figure out the […]