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Tuning Red Gate: #2 of Many

Grant Fritchey — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 06:40:00 GMT

In the last installment, I used the SQL Monitor tool to get a snapshot view of the current state of the servers at Red Gate that are giving us trouble. That snapshot suggested some areas where I should focus some time, primarily in which queries were being called most frequently or were running the longest.

Normalisation and 'Anima notitia copia' (Soul of the Database)

Phil Factor — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 06:23:00 GMT

Phil, in a guest editorial for Simple-Talk, puzzles over the possibility that a SQL Server System table commits sins against relational theory. Maybe the answer isn't that simple....

TortoiseSVN and Subversion Cookbook Part 4: Sharing Common Code

Michael Sorens — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Michael Sorens continues his series on Source Control with Subversion and TortoiseSVN by describing several ways one can use to share code among several projects.

A Testing Perspective of Controllers and Orchestrators

Dino Esposito — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 00:00:00 GMT

The neat separation between processing and rendering in ASP.NET MVC guarantees you an application design that is inherently teastable. It doesn't guarantee that your application will be well-designed and quick to test. For that, attention to use-cases and the structure of your code is essential.

Geek of the Week: Don Syme

Richard Morris — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 00:00:00 GMT

With the arrival of F# 3.0 Microsoft announced a wide range of improvements such as type providers that made F# a viable alternative to their other .NET languages as a general purpose workhorse. So what exactly are type providers, and why are they a killer reason for using F#? Why should we be considering F# for data-rich applications? To find out, we caught up with Don Syme, F#'s creator, to ask him about the latest developments in F# 3.0 and canvas his views on functional programming in general.

Using SQL Test Database Unit Testing with TeamCity Continuous Integration

Dave Green — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 00:00:00 GMT

With database applications, the process of test and integration can be frustratingly slow because so much of it is based on manual processes. Everyone seems to agree that automation of the process provides the answer to accomodating shorter development cycles, but how, exactly? Dave Green describes a successful process that integrates third-party tools.

How to Kill a Company in One Step or Save it in Three

Wesley David — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 00:00:00 GMT

The majority of companies that suffer a major data loss subsequently go out of business. Wesley David remembers vividly the day when the organisation he worked for found that they couldn't restore their data, and the subsequent struggles that ensued. Shoulda-woulda-coulda.

Automated Script-generation with Powershell and SMO

Phil Factor — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 00:00:00 GMT

In the first of a series of articles on automating the process of building, modifying and copying SQL Server databases, Phil Factor demonstrates how one can generate TSQL scripts for databases, selected database objects, or table contents from PowerShell and SMO.

What's the Point of Using VARCHAR(n) Anymore?

Rob Garrison — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 00:00:00 GMT

The arrival of the (MAX) data types in SQL Server 2005 were one of the most popular feature for the database developer. At the time, there was a lot of discussion as to whether this freedom from having to specify string length came at a cost. Rob attempts to give a final answer as to any down-side.

Scott Shaw: DBA of the Day

Richard Morris — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Scott Shaw was one of the finalists to the 2011 Exceptional DBA Award (XDBA). The award was founded in 2008 to recognize the essential but often overlooked contributions of DBAs, the unsung heroes of the IT community. In this interview, Scott describes the challenges of being a DBA in a busy Healthcare company, and his work for the DBA community.