Are you keeping up with updates for your SQL Engine? I know this is not the easiest thing to do. It is difficult to find a time when the databases are not in use, or you invest a lot of money having failover systems allowing you to perform updates. Still, the risk of not applying service releases to your database […]

One database optimization solution is to duplicate a database, or a portion of it, when the database supports both online processing and reporting. The basics of the practice is to have two databases, essentially the same. All data entry is made into the OLTP instance of the database. All of the create, update and delete actions are replicated into a […]

It appears from the lack of feedback that open system software participation or utilization is not much of an issue for this audience. We did have one response, however, from a reader having worked at a large company that had an open, free for all, acceptance of open software selection and implementation. This worked well for individual projects. It fell […]

My editorial today consists of some questions regarding open systems software. Do you use open system software? If so, what libraries do you find useful for Java, Java Script or Dot Net? Do you contribute to open source software initiatives? If so, what are the factors that motivate you? Are you trying to enhance code to make it work better […]

When you are interviewing someone for an SQL Server job, and you want to know what their capabilities are, or could be, how do you evaluate their potential. There are a lot of blogs and editorials out there with SQL Server interview questions. They include things such as “What is the difference between a merge, loop, or hash join in […]

Readers Comments Daniel: RE: Corporate DNA I like this article. I think I would add… – Stewardship of your organizations skillset inventory and toolset. I think to keep an organisations dna intact and progressive, you need to feed not only your skillset but those of your peers and interested parties. Many people intend to do well for the organization but […]

Database normalization is still an important skill, and may even be applied to object design as well. One of the first rules of normalization is that all the attributes in a table must be dependent on, and only on, the primary key. This means that you cannot have a column in a table that changes meaning based on the value […]

As humans we are members of many different social groups, each with its own individual DNA. One of those groups we probably share is that of an IT professional. Regardless of your specific skillset or expertise, there are things you share with other technical professionals in your organization. Since the DNA of the organization consists of all participants you have […]

Yesterday I had a good comment in regards to optimizing Dot Net code http://bitonthewire.wpengine.com/editorials/readed.aspx?id=3284, and using ToList() as a materializer of Linq statements. Craig writes: One comment on point #1: when you *do* ToList() your query be sure that you have already included all your Where’s. When you ToList() the query will execute and all the data will head from […]

Recently I have been thinking about different things I have done to optimize Dot Net code over the last few years and trying to come up with some of the top performers. Here are two big performance optimizations. Materialize Dot Net Linq expressions. When you perform Linq expressions resulting in values that will be enumerated (pretty much anytime) be sure […]