Get Index Definition with Include Column List One of my favorite features added to SQL server was the ability to create indexes and have additional columns included in the index, not participating in the key values. This capability increases the capability of creating useful covering indexes. Because you can include columns not participating in the key of the index, you […]

JavaScript Coding Standards Today David writes in with his typical amount of detail. He responds to our recent topic of Naming standards with a focus on JavaScript that I find quite useful. Even if you don’t agree with everything here, I’m sure you can see some thought placed around David’s constraints far beyond personal preference. Each technique has a benefit. […]

$$SWYNK$$ Featured Article(s) Troubleshooting problems with SQL Server 2008 R2 alerts In this article, Alexander Chigrik explains some problems you can have with SQL Server 2008 R2 alerts. He also tells how you can resolve these problems. Featured White Paper(s) Demystify Tempdb Performance and Management In this white paper, Robert L Davis demystifies the best practices that work some of […]

Featured White Paper(s) Encryption & Key Management for Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Written by Townsend Security Simplify encryption and key management on … (read more) Featured Script convert_ident_to_guid.sql Script to find all ident columns in db, find out if they are in an index, (if so)drop the index, recreate the ident as guid, … (read more) Modern Documentation We had […]

Modern Modeling Strategies One current software development trend is to allow code to model as much as possible. Agile shops are the best examples of this strategy. As a result, many times a team can go to the complete extreme of not producing any models such as Class Diagrams or Database Diagrams. IMHO, these two concepts are not mutually exclusive. […]

Reader Comments Today I’m including more comments from our readers. Maurice shares his thoughts on Database Naming Conventions. William shares a new topic about the Activity Monitor interface inside Management Studio. Feel free to share your thoughts on these or other topics by sending an email to btaylor@sswug.org. Database Naming Conventions Maurice: What is the gain in adding a prefix […]

Reader Response – DB Naming Conventions Paul Writes: A couple of observations, based on the discussion so far. For me, some things that give me some initial pointers: – How does it look ‘out of the box’ ? – What does MS do? – What happens when you use the visual tools? – How do we avoid valueless annotation? For […]

Database Naming – One Last Time I had some good thoughts come through from a few readers today that I felt were helpful and touched on areas we haven’t really covered at this point. So, I’ll drop them in here without comment, and move on with the discussion about code naming conventions in the editorial section. Ken provides some thoughts […]

Foreign Key Names Today Thomas shares his thoughts on constraint names as well as indexes: For Foreign keys I use FK_PARENTTABLE_parentcol1_parentcol2_CHILDTABLE_childcolum1_childcolumn2 Currently, we don’t have any keys more complex than 2 columns and we are well under the 128 character limit. Our child column names are usually the same as their parent’s so I’ll probably resort to some kind of […]

Naming Conventions – Primay and Foreign Keys Hank writes in with a scenario revolving around system assigned key names. In Microsoft SQL Server you can declare constraints without providing names. In these situations, the system assigns a name on your behalf, usually part of the key looking like a GUID. There is little meaning or value in the name. The […]