I haven’t written about some basic SQL for a while. Today I want to return to the topic by talking about the OUTPUT clause available in the TSQL SQL Syntax, with the equivalent of RETURNING in Oracle and others. Irrespective of the Key Word, the benefit is equivalent. The goal using OUTPUT is to be able to know the records […]

If you have been following the EAV Relational Database Pattern introduced last Wednesday, then you may be wondering what other patterns allow you can to gain similar benefit without the pain of an EAV? Today I’m going to suggest some other ideas. The problem with an EAV is that it is a many to many structure. Let’s say you want […]

The Entity Attribute Values (EAV) database pattern has been around for a long time. The purpose of an EAV is to store data where the shape is not known at the time the database schema is created. In essence, you simulate the SQL Engine by creating tables to define data. Then you create additional tables to contain the data defined. […]

While looking at in-memory database engines I started thinking about other in memory database engine types. SQLCE (SQL Server Compact Edition) is also a form of an In-Memory database engine. The difference is that what is in memory is the database engine alone, not the data it supports. The compact edition still uses a file for the data, just like […]

I’ve been seeing interest in the In Memory Database feature released in SQL Server 2014. Using a database maintained only in memory, available in SQL Server Enterprise edition for production systems, allows you optimized performance by only storing transaction logs to disk. By storing transaction logs to disk, in memory database data may be re-constituted when the database is closed […]

Have you ever worked with a pure object data store? If you are using object oriented software, wouldn’t it be easier if your data store was object oriented as well? I’m not talking about NoSQL per se. It’s more along the line of a fully object compatible structure. I was running a google search out of curiosity for what is […]

Your data is often an asset for any company. I’ve worked on systems for companies who actually carry the data they collect and manage as an asset on their books. It is something they valuate, and would be included in the total worth of the company. SSWUG is an example of data being an asset as well. The editorials, articles, […]

Almost all modern software is written in tools that are not relational, which is the design of a preponderance of database engines. Working in procedural code such as COBOL, PL1, RPG you don’t speak SQL. Using vector based languages such as R, or data warehousing tools using Cubes, again there is a dissonance between the relational configuration of data and […]

Entity Framework includes the ability to intercept execution of database commands, giving a developer a great amount of power. You will find a detailed list of things you can do with interception on MSDN, https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/data/dn469464.aspx. Why should you care? What would you do with this capability? You have the ability to capture the generated SQL being sent through EF. Capturing […]

I have chosen this topic as another of the signs of a computer professional, according to Uncle Bob Martin. He emphasizes this negative aspect, “do not write bad code.” We all have different definitions of Bad Code. According to Uncle Bob, any code that does not fulfill the requirements of a Unit test is bad code. Moreover, if the code […]