Posts filed under: development
Rapid product delivery shines the spotlight on issues for SSMS
In an article posted by Phil Factor on SQL Server Central he relates how SQL Server Management Studio had to undergo some pretty significant changes in order to support rapidly delivering improvements. “SSMS got very little love over the years...
Healthcare AI helps diagnose eye disease
I had meant to post a technical article today on a new SQL 2014 feature that could help with troubleshooting performance problems, but I ran into an environmental snag. So look for that in the coming weeks. Instead I thought...
Knightmare – Where were the testing and development practices?
The Dark Knight showed us what a psychopath could do with gasoline, a match, and large piles of other people’s money. It seems insane to most people to burn Certificates of Performance (money) in this way. “This is the story...
Why have a date dimension?
Many of our products utilize a date table (dimension in warehousing speak). They make quite a few things easier when you are doing reporting over denormalized data. For example you no longer have to write case statements in every report...
Avoiding the 2 X 4 to the face
A couple months ago I read a post by Seth Godin entitled “Duck!“. In it he talks about avoiding the 2X4 to the face. “You’re running it at it full speed, and in a moment, you’re going to slam into...
A slow death from Implicit Type Casting
A common code smell that attracts my attention right away is when I see an explicit conversion being done, typically done using CAST or CONVERT. However, implicit type casting can be worse and is typically not readily apparent. During code reviews I found...
The Expert
In one of the discussions this week, I mentioned to the group a video I saw a few years ago that is quite humorous and has some element that will speak to almost anyone who has ever worked on any...
More SQL Learning – Performance, Tuning, and Troubleshooting
I recently came across a new blog by Ramesh Meyyappan on “Seek or Scan – Cost Based Optimizer in SQL Server“. In the youtube video (17 minutes) he covers the topic with some good examples and explanations, assuming you have...
Loading Data into SQL Server From Excel
Oft times trying to use the SQL SSIS Import wizard to load data into SQL server from excel you run into data type conversion errors and have to go through many machinations to alter the offending column data types and...
Changing the batch separator in SSMS
I can see the confused looks. “Joel what are you talking about?” We’re talking about Batches By default, in SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS), your query is submitted and executed in a batch. The batch separates the work you want...