Archive for the ‘Code’ Category

Quick and Easy SQL Script

I haven’t been blogging enough lately, so I’m going to try something new to get past this mild case of writer’s block.  Instead of trying to do a long, in-depth post on some esoteric subject, I’m going to just put out a simple SQL script.  This one’s a bit of a hack, but you’ll see [...]

February 2, 2012 · stuart · No Comments
Posted in: SQL, SQLServerPedia Syndication

Presenting tonight…

In a few minutes, I’m packing up to head to Greenville, SC to work from the first WiFi-enabled sandwich shop I can find.  Tonight I’m presenting at the SQL Server Innovators Guild on the subject of Very Large DataBases, but I’ve still got a few hours of work ahead of me.  If you’re in the [...]

November 1, 2011 · stuart · No Comments
Posted in: Conferences, SQL

Stuff in the FROM clause: Virtual Structures

Continuing with my SQL Server basics series, I’m focusing this post on Stuff in the FROM clause: Virtual Structures.  My last post talked about the only Base structure in a relational database, but I’m now moving on to a slightly more complicated concept.  Virtual structures are database objects that don’t hold data in a tabular [...]

October 31, 2011 · stuart · No Comments
Posted in: Something New, SQL, SQLServerPedia Syndication

Stuff in the FROM clause: Base Structures

A few months ago, our user group started thinking about how we could get new members to start coming to our SQL Server user group meetings; we defined new user as one of two categories: 1: new to databases, or 2. new to SQL Server In both cases, we realized that we needed to start [...]

October 17, 2011 · stuart · No Comments
Posted in: Code, SQL, SQLServerPedia Syndication

#TSQL2sDay Roundup

So the launch was early, and the write-up is delayed.  Time has no meaning….  Truthfully, I’m sorry I didn’t manage to squeeze this summary post in a bit sooner; I have the typical DBA excuse: too much to do, and too little time. One nice thing about this topic is that it seemed to resonate [...]

October 10, 2011 · stuart · 2 Comments
Posted in: Blogging is FUN!, SQLServerPedia Syndication, TSQL2sDay

#TSQL2sDay T-SQL Tuesday 23–Early edition

  Time once again for another edition of T-SQL Tuesday!  What’s that, you say?  Early?  Why yes, indeed.  Due to the potential schedule of conflict of PASS’s Summit 2011 occurring on the second Tuesday of October (the normal date for T-SQL Tuesday), I’ve gotten special permission to bump it up a week.  To participate in [...]

September 27, 2011 · stuart · 16 Comments
Posted in: Blogging is FUN!, SQLServerPedia Syndication, The Social Web, TSQL2sDay

Three Myths about Agile Development

I recently attended Microsoft Tech Ed in Atlanta, and while there wasn’t much new being announced about SQL Server (I had heard about many of the features for Denali at PASS Summit 2010), I did find myself drawn to several sessions regarding Agile principles and development.  My shop has been using the Scrum method for [...]

June 9, 2011 · stuart · No Comments
Posted in: Good Habits, Something New, SQLServerPedia Syndication

#msteched Columnstore indexes unveiled–DBI312

Live blogging again; hope you find my notes useful (scattered though they are).  I’ve been waiting on this session because it’s a very specific area of interest.  I work a lot with VLDB’s, and performance is always a concern; claims are that Denali’s columnstore may boost performance of certain queries hundred-fold.  Let’s see how they [...]

May 17, 2011 · stuart · No Comments
Posted in: Code, Conferences, SQL, SQL Server, SQLServerPedia Syndication

#TSQL2sday: Emulating a FIRST aggregation

Jes Borland is hosting this month’s T-SQL Tuesday, and it’s all about aggregations.  Here’s an old coding trick of mine to emulate a FIRST aggregation in T-SQL.  Say we have a table that has three columns: ID, a uniqueidentifier Name, a varchar that represents something, and DateStored, a datetime that is set when the row [...]

March 8, 2011 · stuart · No Comments
Posted in: SQLServerPedia Syndication, TSQL2sDay

A simple codebuilder for parsing in T-SQL

If you’ve ever tried to parse a wide character column in T-SQL, you know two things: It’s a pain to do, and It’s a pain to do. A lot of the data I deal with comes in syslog format, which can come in one of two formats: positional (the location of the data element is [...]

February 22, 2011 · stuart · No Comments
Posted in: SQL, SQLServerPedia Syndication