Featured Article(s) Column-Level Security with DECODE To restrict access to a certain column or columns within a table, you might create a view upon that table hiding unnecessary columns as needed. Sometimes, however, making a certain column completely inaccessible is not exactly what you’d like to get. Instead, you might mask the column values so that the user can access […]

What is the best configuration for Source Control and Build Management? Today I’m posting a response from Sunny about automated build management and source control. He is writing in response to the topic we considered regarding the software skill of Release Management, and things that go into it. Sunny describes the problem clearly in tool selection, methodology, and practices, asking […]

The Skill of Releasing Software I opened this topic yesterday and received valuable responses from many readers. Scott wrote a lot, so that’s all I have room for today. Here is what he says: As someone who has recently co-lead a mission-critical software project through two major releases successfully, including a complete hardware replacement/virtualization plus Windows Server and SQL Server […]

Help. My Data Is Sharded! I’ve come across a company that has very large databases that work together as a whole. They were separated in order to maintain disaster recovery requirements. In some databases a great amount of the data is modified or replaced daily. In others, the data is static in comparison. Because they already have their data sharded, […]

SSWUGtv: BYOD – Bring Your Own Device With Stephen Wynkoop Lets face it…its easy to bring your own devices into a work environment. They are small, convenient, and useful. But, how do you lock down devices and stay secure when you allow BYOD? Watch the Show Separation of Environments I have written a lot about separation of concerns from a […]

SSWUGtv With Stephen Wynkoop What is dual-control, and why should you care? Patrick Townsend talks all about security on today’s show. Watch the Show SQL Authentication Questions Today we have many different kinds of responses wrapped around SQL Authentication. Mark and Richard write in with solutions for Remote Server Authentication problem shared by John yesterday. In my example of using […]

BLOB Storage Inside the Database Today I’m including responses from those on the fence or looking for BLOB direction. Others have written in advocating putting BLOB data inside the database. The question is one that many developers still face. And, many people are still having to work with legacy systems as well. I would guess the percentage of SQL Server […]

Big Data in Your Database Today I wanted to bring up the topic of storing big data in your database. I’m not talking about big data such as unstructured data used for data mining. I’m talking about big data in the form of Binary Large Objects (BLOB) which has structure internally, but no meaningful value as a database attribute. This […]

SSWUGtv with Stephen Wynkoop Simplify Managing your systems: local/private systems, on the cloud – or wherever! Watch this edition of SSWUGtv as Don Boxley from DH2i brings you solutions. Watch the Show Flights, Dates and Times The last couple of days we have been talking about Business Rules and where to apply them. An example of an Airline Flight was […]