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Tuesday, November 17, 2009 7:03 AM

Channeling Bruce Lee: Tuning without Tuning

I’m leading a Performance Tuning workshop here in Portland, Oregon today, and I normally start this kind of workshop with a segment on “pre-tuning” – or, the steps you take so that you don’t have to tune as much later. When we set up a system is the greatest
Posted by Buck Woody | 0 Comments
Wednesday, November 11, 2009 7:49 AM

How Microsoft Does IT - Updated

I’ve pointed out this link before, and I’ll definitely bring it up again. Microsoft is one of the few companies I know, especially the big ones, that explains how they run their IT. We have a fantastic, I mean really fantastic site that you should definitely
Posted by Buck Woody | 0 Comments
Tuesday, November 10, 2009 7:18 AM

Visio Video (killed the radio star)

I teach a class at the University of Washington, and in that class I have the students create a few Entity Relationship Diagrams (ERDs). I’m still looking for a decent tool to do that, since the only ones I know that do a good job are WAY too expensive.
Posted by Buck Woody | 0 Comments
Monday, November 02, 2009 6:28 AM

Win7 – Install SQL Server Native or go Virtual PC?

I have Windows 7 on my laptop, and I also teach, demo and use SQL Server 2005 and SQL server 2008. Should I install this “native” on my outside operating system or use the Virtual PC (VPC) software that comes with Windows 7? Well, there are arguments
Posted by Buck Woody | 0 Comments
Wednesday, October 28, 2009 8:13 AM

Templates for New Query Window

When I’m in SQL Server Management Studio and I click the “New Query” button, my Query Window comes up like this: /* <ScriptFileName, SYSNAME, ScriptFileName>.sql Purpose: <Purpose, SYSNAME, Purpose> Author: <Author, SYSNAME, Buck Woody>
Posted by Buck Woody | 0 Comments
Monday, October 26, 2009 6:50 AM

How Normal(ized) Should You Be?

Normalization is the process of removing repeating values from your data design, and ensuring that the values depend on the Primary Key in the table. OK, it’s a bit more complicated than that, but this definition will do for this post. So how far DO you
Posted by Buck Woody | 2 Comments
Wednesday, October 21, 2009 7:14 AM

The 20 Queries

In the book “The Fourth Paradigm” , Jim Gray describes the modeling process he came up with modeling large databases. He was working with scientists, researchers and others, and the data sets they were generating were huge – terabytes of data at a time.
Posted by Buck Woody | 0 Comments
Monday, October 12, 2009 3:55 AM

DBAs and Metallurgy

Most of the time the business side of the house isn’t that technology-savvy. Sure, they know how to use their systems and even have a computer at home, but it’s not like they could calculate a TCP/IP subnet, nor should they. I was helping with a project
Posted by Buck Woody | 0 Comments
Tuesday, October 06, 2009 9:18 AM

The Much-Maligned Database Designer

There’s a feature in SQL Server Management Studio called the “Database Designer”, and it’s a strange beast indeed. It’s a mix between a graphical database design tool and an Entity Relationship Diagram (ERD). Unfortunately, I don’t think it does either
Posted by Buck Woody | 0 Comments
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Wednesday, September 30, 2009 5:55 PM

The ERD as a Communication Tool

I teach a college course at the University of Washington, and as part of the class I include a series on creating a using an Entity Relationship Diagram, or ERD. An ERD, as I’m sure most of you know, is a series of box and connector shapes that explain
Posted by Buck Woody | 0 Comments
Tuesday, September 29, 2009 6:45 AM

Great new Whitepaper on High Availability

Paul Randal, he of SQLskills.com fame, has published a new whitepaper on High Availability with SQL Server. If you follow any SQL Server news or blog sites, you’ve probably already see the announcement for it, but I wanted to mention it here in case you
Posted by Buck Woody | 0 Comments
Thursday, September 17, 2009 8:26 AM

How Microsoft Does IT

One of my favorite ways to learn is through examples. If you’ll explain what something does and a little of how it works,and then give me an example to decompose, I usually come up to speed pretty quickly. I’ve been carrying a DVD (and CD’s before that)
Posted by Buck Woody | 0 Comments
Wednesday, August 12, 2009 7:45 AM

Table Partitioning isn't the only way to Partition Data

When you have very large data sets that reside in a single table, you can use SQL Server's Table Partitioning to "break" the table on logical boundaries like time, and the system handles "putting the data back together" when you query it. It's a great
Posted by Buck Woody | 2 Comments
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Thursday, August 06, 2009 7:59 AM

The Mythical Silver Bullet

Have you ever sat in a meeting where you either got the distinct impression, or were told directly that you should just use product X or Feature Y to solve a problem?  Sure, we have a lot of features in SQL Server, but I don't think any of them is
Posted by Buck Woody | 3 Comments
Wednesday, July 29, 2009 8:06 AM

Commenting your Code

You should always add descriptive comments to any code that will live longer than a single event. It's useful not only for the other unfortunate souls blessed with your code, but for yourself, years later, when you say "what was I thinking here?"
Posted by Buck Woody | 7 Comments
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