Dave does Data

Frequently I see production code, created by professional development teams, peppered with NOLOCK & other TSQL Hints. While totally understandable, as it is a common recommendation by many internet posts & often found in their sample code, this...

Even though its been available for more than 6 months, many people have overlooked this little gem. Those that are using it get terribly excited when they discover how easy it is to use the features & capability it offers. So if you need very powerful...

This post is a pointer to a lot of in-depth training on SQL 2008. It includes Virtual PC’s with Demo Scripts, Lab Exercises & a lot of PowerPoint's with notes. To get access to it all click here SQL Server 2008 Training . It is free but you do need...

I was asked why my previous post suggested to “not use an Identity Column as a Key for Many to Many Join Tables”. This post outlines some of the pitfalls I’ve seen. UPDATED: 17 May 09: To clarify a question about how to do this with higher normal forms...

It is common to hear students & small start-up businesses state “I use Open Source because it is free” or they download pirate Microsoft from really dodgy, spyware prone sites to get it free. The irony is that many of these people qualify to get the...

If you are a Student, Teacher or anyone on a budget, don’t feel pushed to use Open Source databases like MySQL just because they have an entry level offering for free. You may be one of many who expressed concern for its quality & design which suffered...

If you develop high scale, scale out/distributed apps, check out Microsoft Project Code Named “Velocity” Community Technology Preview 3 (CTP3) Released to Web on 7 April 09. "Velocity" is a distributed in-memory application cache platform for...

Scanning the Microsoft sites it might not be obvious that April 09 was a huge month for new releases from the SQL Team. Given that it is sometimes difficult to find everything in one place I thought I’d make it easier for you by creating this index. Beyond...

It is extremely common to use computer generated Primary Keys in a table. eg: OrderID INT PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED IDENTITY ( 1 , 1 ) NOT NULL Most people set the seed to 1. I don’t know why. Perhaps because it is the default value, maybe they...

April 09: Service Pack 1 for SQL 2008 can now be downloaded Download SQL 2008 Service Pack 1 from here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=66ab3dbb-bf3e-4f46-9559-ccc6a4f9dc19 See the SQL Server New Blog for more...

If you know Primary, High School aged kids OR know a teacher who struggles to keep up with Technology. Point them at Kid's Corner . This site is full of videos, articles, tips & tricks. Many of the videos are have young teens being actors & doing...