Recently I have been enjoying the flexible nature of RESTful services. Much like SOAP, REST allows applications to interact with flexible binding. The big difference is that it takes advantage of traditional HTTP verbs to perform CRUD actions (Create, Retrieve, Update, Delete) we are familiar with when communicating with database services. Also, similar to SOAP, data is communicated in a […]

Recently I read an article demonstrating how you can use SQL Server capabilities to translate HTML to SQL and back again. Web site contents could be pushed into SQL Server, parsed, and database manipulations exercised. In return, the database could take table contents and translate it back into HTML. I thought the whole thing was a cool exercise. I also […]

How do you bring value to your Employer? In most cases it is more than just putting in a full day work. Here are some observations I have found over the years applying to those in the IT profession. Always learning: It is a nice bonus when your employer allows you to attend conferences or sends you to training for […]

The Christmas holiday season we are currently celebrating here in the United States reminds me of a common problem many applications need to take into account. What are the days out of a calendar year that are considered a business day? How do you track them? How are they determined when non-business days must be taken into account for the […]

I was recently reminded of differences in performance for different SQL Server persistence techniques. I had a set of data that was generated by my application needing to be merged into an existing relational database consisting of 8 tables. A root table with three dependent tables. Each dependent table had a one or two dependent tables. Level 1-1 Level 2-1 […]

I have been considering why many companies do not consider No-SQL or Document based storage systems for their applications. Instead they continue to churn out object to relational database mappings with lots of custom code in order to get adequate performance. One of my most recent experiences brought the reasoning to the surface. The individuals making the decision were quite […]

And so the world revolves again, the same script is being played over. The new version of the scenario is centered around all the new tools that are going to make software development easier. Last time we had Java, CORBA, Com, Visual Basic, Power Builder, Oracle Tools, Delphi, and many versions of C and 4GL tools all battling it out […]

Currently this is a big holiday season here in the United States. A big Part of this culture is the exchanging of gifts. Sales increase dramatically for a few weeks, and then drop back to normal levels. For Information Systems based on sales and the processing of sales loads also increase dramatically. If you’ve been around IT for long, you […]

Merging data change has been a common practice for a long time. Microsoft even created a full on Merge command allowing you to perform Insert/Update/ Delete data changes in a single command. What is interesting to me as a consultant is how often I come across web applications that have no concept of merging data. Applications are written passing sets […]

Do you want to speed up the performance of your Entity Framework project? Jonathan Magnan has an extention for Entity Framework doing precisely that. Check it out at http://zzzprojects.com/entity-framework-extensions/ What does it do? In short it reduces the number of round trips from your app server to the database server when executing you Create, Update, or Delete operations. The extension […]