One of the things that frequently happens in a business is that it is moving faster than the groups that support it. Back in the early ‘90s I worked on a seed data warehouse that was started by a scientist working in seed design for a farm co-op. His skill was not in database design or applications. He knew how […]

We posted a new episode of the weekly summary program for SSWUGtv on Monday – it’s available now on the site and ready to go. I’d love to have your feedback – Here’s a direct link to the show: https://sswug.org/katm/uncategorized/sswugtv-ai-air-raids-technology-lock/ Take a look, let me know what other things you’d like to see covered from time to time – and […]

When working with sets there are a lot of ways to transform them using the SQL language. One of the things we often do with sets is to combine two or more into a single set. Perhaps you have a query based on some value, and another query based on a completely other value. Now you want to get the […]

When you’re putting plans together, sometimes it helps to take pause… We’ve been talking a bit about lock in on tools and technologies, but today I wanted to bring up a recent experience putting together a system plan for a company… and the push to move faster. In the dot com days, there was a saying that always bugged me. […]

We’re re-launching SSWUGtv – and we have some ideas of the things we want to include, but I’d love to have your feedback and thoughts as well. The show will be short-ish, except of course on those rare (!!) occassions when I can’t seem to be quiet. But I’m thinking 5-10 minutes/week. It’ll be including new information and tips and […]

I have talked a lot about database migration scripts allowing you to promote database schema changes from one environment to another with reliability. Because this task is daunting, there have been a number of tools built around the process to simplify it for you. Depending on the tool, they may not migrate data as seamlessly as they do schema modifications. […]

Started talking yesterday about the apparent issues with cloud based solutions, components, etc. Of course the whole story is really one of choosing the right tools for specific tasks… can lead to lock-in on those tools. And, with the use of more specific tools and technologies and then bringing them together to build an overall solution environment, there are some […]

Reading Stephen’s editorial, “Check Out Any Time You Lilke…” reminds me of software patterns intended to help reduce the feeling of being tied to a specific technology. The reality is that it is very difficult to future proof anything. You can loosely couple, inject, micros kernel and much more, and still have dependencies you can’t walk away from. I do […]

From a comment yesterday – perhaps the biggest cautionary tale and planning point if you’re using online services in your environment. AZJim pretty much called out one of my biggest planning points and concerns when it comes to working with online services (platform, services, virtual machines, whatever) AND on-premise solutions architectures in this world of “many tools make a solution.” […]