(Troy Coleman) If you’ve been in IT for any length of time you know that change is constant. You must regularly make improvements to the systems you develop and support. On top of that, the tools you use are also changing. As a DB2 for z/OS specialist, it’s very important for me to stay up on the la
Other News
DB2_MEMORY_PROTECT and DB2 9.5
(Martin Hubel) In DB2 9.5, the database engine has switched from a process-based model to a threaded model. This means that the entire database engine is under one address space (any piece of code can access any global variable). This, naturally, has both pros and cons. One advantage is that threads
MySQL Blob Compression performance benefits
(Peter Zaitsev) When you’re storing text of significant size in the table it often makes sense to keep it compressed. Unfortunately MySQL Does not provide compressed BLOB/TEXT columns (I would really love to have COMPRESSED attribute for the BLOB/TEXT columns which would make them transparently comp
DB2 and System p virtualization
(Punit Shah, Basker Shanmugam and Sunil Kamath) Learn best practices for deploying IBM DB2 9 with the IBM System p virtualization technologies. System p virtualization technologies offer a richer set of platform-deployment features. These features range from simple resource isolation to an array of
Easily manipulate data with LINQ
(Tony Patton) The buzz around .NET Language-Integrated Query (LINQ) is hard to ignore, especially since Microsoft is embracing it with the latest release of the .NET platform (beginning with C# 3.0 and Visual Basic 9.0) and Visual Studio 2008.
Caching in ASP.NET 2.0
(Raj Beniwal) Caching is a technique of storing a copy of data in memory. For example, you may cache the a page or the results of a query. The advantage of caching is to build better performance into your application. Accessing cached data in memory is much faster than re-building a page or re-query
Application Locks (or Mutexes) in SQL Server 2005
(Mladen Prajdiæ) Application locks aren’t a well known area of locking in SQL Server, but they can be very useful for special scenarios. They work in a analogous way to the lock() construct in .Net and are basicaly user defined mutexes in SQL Server.
An Experiment in Optimization
(Jim Mischel) When I needed a method to reverse a string, the first thing I did was check the .NET String class to see if it has such a thing. I was surprised to learn that there is no Reverse method for strings. At least, up until .NET 3.5, there wasn’t. In .NET 3.5, Reverse is an extension method-
Storing Images and BLOB files in SQL Server
(Don Schlichting) This article explores the data types and methods used for storing BLOBs (Binary Large Objects), such as images and sounds, inside SQL Server. Legacy data types used in SQL Server versions 2000 and SQL 2005 will be examined as well as the new SQL 2008 FILESTREAM binary type.
Evaluating How Filtering Options Affect T-SQL Performance
(John Magnabosco) Filtering is an important aspect of writing most complex queries. While there may be instances where you don’t need a filter, such as a simple query that retrieves a list of all U.S. states, in the majority of cases you need to filter the data to a more precise set. For example, yo