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  • SQL Rally Pre-Con: Data Warehouse Modeling – Making the Right Choices

    - by Davide Mauri
    As you may have already learned from my old post or Adam’s or Kalen’s posts, there will be two SQL Rally in North Europe. In the Stockholm SQL Rally, with my friend Thomas Kejser, I’ll be delivering a pre-con on Data Warehouse Modeling: Data warehouses play a central role in any BI solution. It's the back end upon which everything in years to come will be created. For this reason, it must be rock solid and yet flexible at the same time. To develop such a data warehouse, you must have a clear idea of its architecture, a thorough understanding of the concepts of Measures and Dimensions, and a proven engineered way to build it so that quality and stability can go hand-in-hand with cost reduction and scalability. In this workshop, Thomas Kejser and Davide Mauri will share all the information they learned since they started working with data warehouses, giving you the guidance and tips you need to start your BI project in the best way possible?avoiding errors, making implementation effective and efficient, paving the way for a winning Agile approach, and helping you define how your team should work so that your BI solution will stand the test of time. You'll learn: Data warehouse architecture and justification Agile methodology Dimensional modeling, including Kimball vs. Inmon, SCD1/SCD2/SCD3, Junk and Degenerate Dimensions, and Huge Dimensions Best practices, naming conventions, and lessons learned Loading the data warehouse, including loading Dimensions, loading Facts (Full Load, Incremental Load, Partitioned Load) Data warehouses and Big Data (Hadoop) Unit testing Tracking historical changes and managing large sizes With all the Self-Service BI hype, Data Warehouse is become more and more central every day, since if everyone will be able to analyze data using self-service tools, it’s better for him/her to rely on correct, uniform and coherent data. Already 50 people registered from the workshop and seats are limited so don’t miss this unique opportunity to attend to this workshop that is really a unique combination of years and years of experience! http://www.sqlpass.org/sqlrally/2013/nordic/Agenda/PreconferenceSeminars.aspx See you there!

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  • Why do some bad websites rank well?

    - by BradB
    Consider the following scenario: you are pitching SEO/Website Optimisation to a prospective client and you explain to them the importance of great copy and content, how acquiring links (ethically) can increase page rank, why the quality of the HTML build matters (H1, H2 tags, w3c validation etc), why keyword research is beneficial, you may drop in a few Google Webmaster Guideline or Matt Cutts references to back up your claims and rubbish the "back hat" approach as being no longer effective for good measure. Your advice is ethical and in the eyes of best practices, spot on. Then, the client points out to you some of their long established competitors on Google and you see these competitor websites ranking in the top spots (1 to 3) for medium to highly competitive search phrases that your client wants to compete for. These websites totally contradict your ethical approach and pretty much violate every best practice previously noted. They even out perform other "white hat" competitors who are in accordance with the above guidelines. I experienced this today. One of these well ranking websites had: About six microsites with more or less the same copy and a slightly varied layout Little or not textual content I would almost say duplicate content across the sites, but there was so little of it it could barely qualify for being duplicate All the content in Flash (with a music track that kicked in on each page load, not so much of an SEO issue - but it helps paint the picture) Keyword stuffing behind the Flash file with a bunch of black text on black background in the style of keyword 1 keyword 2,keyword1,keyword 2,keyword 2 keyword 3 and so on... The exact keyword stuffed combination present on every page of the website A bunch of clearly self made links from poor quality forums and directories with little or no Page Rank Links exchanged across the microsites How do you explain your way out of this when this hard evidence is sat in front of you undermining your great pitch?

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  • Are very short or abbreviated method/function names that don't use full words bad practice or a matter of style.

    - by Alb
    Is there nowadays any case for brevity over clarity with method names? Tonight I came across the Python method repr() which seems like a bad name for a method to me. It's not an English word. It apparently is an abbreviation of 'representation' and even if you can deduce that, it still doesn't tell you what the method does. A good method name is subjective to a certain degree, but I had assumed that modern best practices agreed that names should be at least full words and descriptive enough to reveal enough about the method that you would easily find one when looking for it. Method names made from words help let your code read like English. repr() seems to have no advantages as a name other than being short and IDE auto-complete makes this a non-issue. An additional reason given in an answer is that python names are brief so that you can do many things on one line. Surely the better way is to just extract the many things to their own function, and repeat until lines are not too long. Are these just a hangover from the unix way of doing things? Commands with names like ls, rm, ps and du (if you could call those names) were hard to find and hard to remember. I know that the everyday usage of commands such as these is different than methods in code so the matter of whether those are bad names is a different matter.

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  • Why are we as an industry not more technically critical of our peers? [closed]

    - by Jarrod Roberson
    For example: I still see people in 2011 writing blog posts and tutorials that promote setting the Java CLASSPATH at the OS environment level. I see people writing C and C++ tutorials dated 2009 and newer and the first lines of code are void main(). These are examples, I am not looking for specific answers to the above questions, but to why the culture of accepting sub-par knowledge in the industry is so rampant. I see people posting these same type of empirically wrong suggestions as answers on www.stackoverflow.com and they get lots of up votes and practically no down votes! The ones that get lots of down votes are usually from answering a question that wasn't asked because of lack of reading for comprehension skills, and not incorrect answers per se. Is our industry that ignorant as a whole, I can understand the internet in general being lazy, apathetic and un-informed but our industry should be more on top of things like this and way more critical of people that are promoting bad habits and out-dated techniques and information. If we are really an engineering discipline, why aren't people held to a higher standard as they are in other engineering disciplines? I want to know why people accept bad advice, poor practices as the norm and are not more critical of their peers in the software industry.?

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  • if/else statements or exceptions

    - by Thaven
    I don't know, that this question fit better on this board, or stackoverflow, but because my question is connected rather to practices, that some specified problem. So, consider an object that does something. And this something can (but should not!) can go wrong. So, this situation can be resolved in two way: first, with exceptions: DoSomethingClass exampleObject = new DoSomethingClass(); try { exampleObject.DoSomething(); } catch (ThisCanGoWrongException ex) { [...] } And second, with if statement: DoSomethingClass exampleObject = new DoSomethingClass(); if(!exampleObject.DoSomething()) { [...] } Second case in more sophisticated way: DoSomethingClass exampleObject = new DoSomethingClass(); ErrorHandler error = exampleObject.DoSomething(); if (error.HasError) { if(error.ErrorType == ErrorType.DivideByPotato) { [...] } } which way is better? In one hand, I heard that exception should be used only for real unexpected situations, and if programist know, that something may happen, he should used if/else. In second hand, Robert C. Martin in his book Clean Code Wrote, that exception are far more object oriented, and more simple to keep clean.

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  • Question about separating game core engine from game graphics engine...

    - by Conrad Clark
    Suppose I have a SquareObject class, which implements IDrawable, an interface which contains the method void Draw(). I want to separate drawing logic itself from the game core engine. My main idea is to create a static class which is responsible to dispatch actions to the graphic engine. public static class DrawDispatcher<T> { private static Action<T> DrawAction = new Action<T>((ObjectToDraw)=>{}); public static void SetDrawAction(Action<T> action) { DrawAction = action; } public static void Dispatch(this T Obj) { DrawAction(Obj); } } public static class Extensions { public static void DispatchDraw<T>(this object Obj) { DrawDispatcher<T>.DispatchDraw((T)Obj); } } Then, on the core side: public class SquareObject: GameObject, IDrawable { #region Interface public void Draw() { this.DispatchDraw<SquareObject>(); } #endregion } And on the graphics side: public static class SquareRender{ //stuff here public static void Initialize(){ DrawDispatcher<SquareObject>.SetDrawAction((Square)=>{//my square rendering logic}); } } Do this "pattern" follow best practices? And a plus, I could easily change the render scheme of each object by changing the DispatchDraw parameter, as in: public class SuperSquareObject: GameObject, IDrawable { #region Interface public void Draw() { this.DispatchDraw<SquareObject>(); } #endregion } public class RedSquareObject: GameObject, IDrawable { #region Interface public void Draw() { this.DispatchDraw<RedSquareObject>(); } #endregion } RedSquareObject would have its own render method, but SuperSquareObject would render as a normal SquareObject I'm just asking because i do not want to reinvent the wheel, and there may be a design pattern similar (and better) to this that I may be not acknowledged of. Thanks in advance!

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  • Should a project start with the client or the server?

    - by MadBurn
    Pretty simple question with a complex answer. Should a project start with the client or the server, and why? Where should a single programmer start a client/server project? What are the best practices and what are the reasons behind them? If you can't think of any, what reasons do you use to justify why you would choose to start one before the other? Personally, I'm asking this question because I'm finishing up specs for a project I will be doing for myself on the side for fun. But now that I'm finishing this phase, I'm wondering "ok, now where do I begin?" Since I've never done a project like this by myself, I'm not sure where I should start. In this project, my server will be doing all the heavy lifting and the client will just be sending updates, getting information from the server, and displaying it. But, I don't want that to sway the answer as I'm looking for more of an in depth and less specific answer that would apply to any project I begin in the future.

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  • When is it better to offload work to the RDBMS rather than to do it in code?

    - by GeminiDomino
    Okay, I'll cop to it: I'm a better coder than I am at databases, and I'm wondering where thoughts on "best practices" lie on the subject of doing "simple" calculations in the SQL query vs. in the code, such as this MySQL example (I didn't write it, I just have to maintain it!) -- This returns the username, and the users age as of the last event. SELECT u.username as user, IF ((DAY(max(e.date)) - DAY(u.DOB)) &lt; 0 , TRUNCATE(((((YEAR(max(e.date))*12)+MONTH(max(e.date))) -((YEAR(u.DOB)*12)+MONTH(u.DOB)))-1)/12, 0), TRUNCATE((((YEAR(max(e.date))*12)+MONTH(max(e.date))) - ((YEAR(u.DOB)*12)+MONTH(u.DOB)))/12, 0)) AS age FROM users as u JOIN events as e ON u.id = e.uid ... Compared to doing the "heavy" lifting in code: Query: SELECT u.username, u.DOB as dob, e.event_date as edate FROM users as u JOIN events as e ON u.id = e.uid code: function ageAsOfDate($birth, $aod) { //expects dates in mysql Y-m-d format... list($by,$bm,$bd) = explode('-',$birth); list($ay,$am,$ad) = explode('-',$aod); //Insert Calculations here ... return $Dy; //Difference in years } echo "Hey! ". $row['user'] ." was ". ageAsOfDate($row['dob'], $row['edate']) . " when we last saw him."; I'm pretty sure in a simple case like this it wouldn't make much difference (other than the creeping feeling of horror when I have to make changes to queries like the first one), but I think it makes it clearer what I'm looking for. Thanks!

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  • How do I parse a header with two different version [ID3] avoiding code duplication?

    - by user66141
    I really hope you can give me some interesting viewpoints for my situation, because I am not satisfied with my current approach. I am writing an MP3 parser, starting with an ID3v2 parser. Right now I`m working on the extended header parsing, my issue is that the optional header is defined differently in version 2.3 and 2.4 of the tag. The 2.3 version optional header is defined as follows: struct ID3_3_EXTENDED_HEADER{ DWORD dwExtHeaderSize; //Extended header size (either 6 or 8 bytes , excluded) WORD wExtFlags; //Extended header flags DWORD dwSizeOfPadding; //Size of padding (size of the tag excluding the frames and headers) }; While the 2.4 version is defined : struct ID3_4_EXTENDED_HEADER{ DWORD dwExtHeaderSize; //Extended header size (synchsafe int) BYTE bNumberOfFlagBytes; //Number of flag bytes BYTE bFlags; //Flags }; How could I parse the header while minimizing code duplication? Using two different functions to parse each version sounds less great, using a single function with a different flow for each occasion is similar, any good practices for this kind of issues ? Any tips for avoiding code duplication? Any help would be appreciated.

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  • General List of Common Programming Errors

    - by javamonkey79
    As one journey's from apprentice to journeyman to master I've noticed that one accumulates a list of best practices for things they've been bitten by. Personally, I write most of my stuff in java & SQL so my list tends to be slated towards them. I've accumulated the following: When doing list removal, always reverse iterate Avoid adding items to a list you are currently iterating on Watch out for NullPointerExceptions Now, I know there are language specific "common errors" links out there like this one. And I'm also aware of the pragmatic programmer tips, Martin Fowler's "code smells". Does anyone know of any good lists out there of things like I've listed above (re: list removal, adding items, etc). My guess is that there are some good QA folks out there that can probably throw me a bone here. I'm not looking for things the compiler can catch - I'm looking for common things that cause bugs. In the event that there isn't a list out there already then I welcome posting your own findings here. Thanks in advance!

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  • Parsing an header with two different version [ID3] avoiding code duplication?

    - by user66141
    I really hope you could give me some interesting viewpoints for my situation, my ways to approach my issue are not to my liking . I am writing an mp3 parser , starting with an ID3v2 parser . Right now I`m working on the extended header parsing , my issue is that the optional header is defined differently in version 2.3 and 2.4 of the tag . The 2.3 version optional header is defined as follows : struct ID3_3_EXTENDED_HEADER{ DWORD dwExtHeaderSize; //Extended header size (either 6 or 8 bytes , excluded) WORD wExtFlags; //Extended header flags DWORD dwSizeOfPadding; //Size of padding (size of the tag excluding the frames and headers) }; While the 2.4 version is defined : struct ID3_4_EXTENDED_HEADER{ DWORD dwExtHeaderSize; //Extended header size (synchsafe int) BYTE bNumberOfFlagBytes; //Number of flag bytes BYTE bFlags; //Flags }; How could I parse the header while minimizing code duplication ? Using two different functions to parse each version sounds less great , using a single function with a different flow for each occasion is similar , any good practices for this kind of issues ? any tips for avoiding code duplication ? anything would be great .

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  • Are short abbreviated method/function names that don't use full words bad practice or a matter of style?

    - by Alb
    Is there nowadays any case for brevity over clarity with method names? Tonight I came across the Python method repr() which seems like a bad name for a method to me. It's not an English word. It apparently is an abbreviation of 'representation' and even if you can deduce that, it still doesn't tell you what the method does. A good method name is subjective to a certain degree, but I had assumed that modern best practices agreed that names should be at least full words and descriptive enough to reveal enough about the method that you would easily find one when looking for it. Method names made from words help let your code read like English. repr() seems to have no advantages as a name other than being short and IDE auto-complete makes this a non-issue. An additional reason given in an answer is that python names are brief so that you can do many things on one line. Surely the better way is to just extract the many things to their own function, and repeat until lines are not too long. Are these just a hangover from the unix way of doing things? Commands with names like ls, rm, ps and du (if you could call those names) were hard to find and hard to remember. I know that the everyday usage of commands such as these is different than methods in code so the matter of whether those are bad names is a different matter.

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  • How to join the World of Programming? [closed]

    - by litebread
    Name's Vlad and I am currently on my third year of Community College, studying Computer Science with emphasis on Programming in C++ and Networking. I have completed a few programming courses with general ease, but have not gained advanced understanding of programming through school. None of my friends are serious programmers working in the industry. Being an active lurker on many programming websites, and in general tech oriented sites I have noticed how little I know about the industry, the lingo and terminology. (I have no clue how Git hub works, but I generally understand what its for). So I am looking for help as to where I should look for information on the programming world and the industry in which I a very interested. By that I mean, what sites I should utilize to gain information on programming practices, introduction to advanced C++ and resources that simply introduce a 20some programming noob. I like programming, but I haven't dug my hands deep into it yet, I want to start to do so before I transfer to a University. All in all, where do I find information on becoming an actual programmer (Information that lays out a path). Thank you for reading. Have a great day!

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  • Which order to define getters and setters in? [closed]

    - by N.N.
    Is there a best practice for the order to define getters and setters in? There seems to be two practices: getter/setter pairs first getters, then setters (or the other way around) To illuminate the difference here is a Java example of getter/setter pairs: public class Foo { private int var1, var2, var3; public int getVar1() { return var1; } public void setVar1(int var1) { this.var1 = var1; } public int getVar2() { return var2; } public void setVar2(int var2) { this.var2 = var2; } public int getVar3() { return var3; } public void setVar3(int var3) { this.var3 = var3; } } And here is a Java example of first getters, then setters: public class Foo { private int var1, var2, var3; public int getVar1() { return var1; } public int getVar2() { return var2; } public int getVar3() { return var3; } public void setVar1(int var1) { this.var1 = var1; } public void setVar2(int var2) { this.var2 = var2; } public void setVar3(int var3) { this.var3 = var3; } } I think the latter type of ordering is clearer both in code and in class diagrams but I do not know if that is enough to rule out the other type of ordering.

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  • Oracle BI Server Modeling, Part 1- Designing a Query Factory

    - by bob.ertl(at)oracle.com
      Welcome to Oracle BI Development's BI Foundation blog, focused on helping you get the most value from your Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (BI EE) platform deployments.  In my first series of posts, I plan to show developers the concepts and best practices for modeling in the Common Enterprise Information Model (CEIM), the semantic layer of Oracle BI EE.  In this segment, I will lay the groundwork for the modeling concepts.  First, I will cover the big picture of how the BI Server fits into the system, and how the CEIM controls the query processing. Oracle BI EE Query Cycle The purpose of the Oracle BI Server is to bridge the gap between the presentation services and the data sources.  There are typically a variety of data sources in a variety of technologies: relational, normalized transaction systems; relational star-schema data warehouses and marts; multidimensional analytic cubes and financial applications; flat files, Excel files, XML files, and so on. Business datasets can reside in a single type of source, or, most of the time, are spread across various types of sources. Presentation services users are generally business people who need to be able to query that set of sources without any knowledge of technologies, schemas, or how sources are organized in their company. They think of business analysis in terms of measures with specific calculations, hierarchical dimensions for breaking those measures down, and detailed reports of the business transactions themselves.  Most of them create queries without knowing it, by picking a dashboard page and some filters.  Others create their own analysis by selecting metrics and dimensional attributes, and possibly creating additional calculations. The BI Server bridges that gap from simple business terms to technical physical queries by exposing just the business focused measures and dimensional attributes that business people can use in their analyses and dashboards.   After they make their selections and start the analysis, the BI Server plans the best way to query the data sources, writes the optimized sequence of physical queries to those sources, post-processes the results, and presents them to the client as a single result set suitable for tables, pivots and charts. The CEIM is a model that controls the processing of the BI Server.  It provides the subject areas that presentation services exposes for business users to select simplified metrics and dimensional attributes for their analysis.  It models the mappings to the physical data access, the calculations and logical transformations, and the data access security rules.  The CEIM consists of metadata stored in the repository, authored by developers using the Administration Tool client.     Presentation services and other query clients create their queries in BI EE's SQL-92 language, called Logical SQL or LSQL.  The API simply uses ODBC or JDBC to pass the query to the BI Server.  Presentation services writes the LSQL query in terms of the simplified objects presented to the users.  The BI Server creates a query plan, and rewrites the LSQL into fully-detailed SQL or other languages suitable for querying the physical sources.  For example, the LSQL on the left below was rewritten into the physical SQL for an Oracle 11g database on the right. Logical SQL   Physical SQL SELECT "D0 Time"."T02 Per Name Month" saw_0, "D4 Product"."P01  Product" saw_1, "F2 Units"."2-01  Billed Qty  (Sum All)" saw_2 FROM "Sample Sales" ORDER BY saw_0, saw_1       WITH SAWITH0 AS ( select T986.Per_Name_Month as c1, T879.Prod_Dsc as c2,      sum(T835.Units) as c3, T879.Prod_Key as c4 from      Product T879 /* A05 Product */ ,      Time_Mth T986 /* A08 Time Mth */ ,      FactsRev T835 /* A11 Revenue (Billed Time Join) */ where ( T835.Prod_Key = T879.Prod_Key and T835.Bill_Mth = T986.Row_Wid) group by T879.Prod_Dsc, T879.Prod_Key, T986.Per_Name_Month ) select SAWITH0.c1 as c1, SAWITH0.c2 as c2, SAWITH0.c3 as c3 from SAWITH0 order by c1, c2   Probably everybody reading this blog can write SQL or MDX.  However, the trick in designing the CEIM is that you are modeling a query-generation factory.  Rather than hand-crafting individual queries, you model behavior and relationships, thus configuring the BI Server machinery to manufacture millions of different queries in response to random user requests.  This mass production requires a different mindset and approach than when you are designing individual SQL statements in tools such as Oracle SQL Developer, Oracle Hyperion Interactive Reporting (formerly Brio), or Oracle BI Publisher.   The Structure of the Common Enterprise Information Model (CEIM) The CEIM has a unique structure specifically for modeling the relationships and behaviors that fill the gap from logical user requests to physical data source queries and back to the result.  The model divides the functionality into three specialized layers, called Presentation, Business Model and Mapping, and Physical, as shown below. Presentation services clients can generally only see the presentation layer, and the objects in the presentation layer are normally the only ones used in the LSQL request.  When a request comes into the BI Server from presentation services or another client, the relationships and objects in the model allow the BI Server to select the appropriate data sources, create a query plan, and generate the physical queries.  That's the left to right flow in the diagram below.  When the results come back from the data source queries, the right to left relationships in the model show how to transform the results and perform any final calculations and functions that could not be pushed down to the databases.   Business Model Think of the business model as the heart of the CEIM you are designing.  This is where you define the analytic behavior seen by the users, and the superset library of metric and dimension objects available to the user community as a whole.  It also provides the baseline business-friendly names and user-readable dictionary.  For these reasons, it is often called the "logical" model--it is a virtual database schema that persists no data, but can be queried as if it is a database. The business model always has a dimensional shape (more on this in future posts), and its simple shape and terminology hides the complexity of the source data models. Besides hiding complexity and normalizing terminology, this layer adds most of the analytic value, as well.  This is where you define the rich, dimensional behavior of the metrics and complex business calculations, as well as the conformed dimensions and hierarchies.  It contributes to the ease of use for business users, since the dimensional metric definitions apply in any context of filters and drill-downs, and the conformed dimensions enable dashboard-wide filters and guided analysis links that bring context along from one page to the next.  The conformed dimensions also provide a key to hiding the complexity of many sources, including federation of different databases, behind the simple business model. Note that the expression language in this layer is LSQL, so that any expression can be rewritten into any data source's query language at run time.  This is important for federation, where a given logical object can map to several different physical objects in different databases.  It is also important to portability of the CEIM to different database brands, which is a key requirement for Oracle's BI Applications products. Your requirements process with your user community will mostly affect the business model.  This is where you will define most of the things they specifically ask for, such as metric definitions.  For this reason, many of the best-practice methodologies of our consulting partners start with the high-level definition of this layer. Physical Model The physical model connects the business model that meets your users' requirements to the reality of the data sources you have available. In the query factory analogy, think of the physical layer as the bill of materials for generating physical queries.  Every schema, table, column, join, cube, hierarchy, etc., that will appear in any physical query manufactured at run time must be modeled here at design time. Each physical data source will have its own physical model, or "database" object in the CEIM.  The shape of each physical model matches the shape of its physical source.  In other words, if the source is normalized relational, the physical model will mimic that normalized shape.  If it is a hypercube, the physical model will have a hypercube shape.  If it is a flat file, it will have a denormalized tabular shape. To aid in query optimization, the physical layer also tracks the specifics of the database brand and release.  This allows the BI Server to make the most of each physical source's distinct capabilities, writing queries in its syntax, and using its specific functions. This allows the BI Server to push processing work as deep as possible into the physical source, which minimizes data movement and takes full advantage of the database's own optimizer.  For most data sources, native APIs are used to further optimize performance and functionality. The value of having a distinct separation between the logical (business) and physical models is encapsulation of the physical characteristics.  This encapsulation is another enabler of packaged BI applications and federation.  It is also key to hiding the complex shapes and relationships in the physical sources from the end users.  Consider a routine drill-down in the business model: physically, it can require a drill-through where the first query is MDX to a multidimensional cube, followed by the drill-down query in SQL to a normalized relational database.  The only difference from the user's point of view is that the 2nd query added a more detailed dimension level column - everything else was the same. Mappings Within the Business Model and Mapping Layer, the mappings provide the binding from each logical column and join in the dimensional business model, to each of the objects that can provide its data in the physical layer.  When there is more than one option for a physical source, rules in the mappings are applied to the query context to determine which of the data sources should be hit, and how to combine their results if more than one is used.  These rules specify aggregate navigation, vertical partitioning (fragmentation), and horizontal partitioning, any of which can be federated across multiple, heterogeneous sources.  These mappings are usually the most sophisticated part of the CEIM. Presentation You might think of the presentation layer as a set of very simple relational-like views into the business model.  Over ODBC/JDBC, they present a relational catalog consisting of databases, tables and columns.  For business users, presentation services interprets these as subject areas, folders and columns, respectively.  (Note that in 10g, subject areas were called presentation catalogs in the CEIM.  In this blog, I will stick to 11g terminology.)  Generally speaking, presentation services and other clients can query only these objects (there are exceptions for certain clients such as BI Publisher and Essbase Studio). The purpose of the presentation layer is to specialize the business model for different categories of users.  Based on a user's role, they will be restricted to specific subject areas, tables and columns for security.  The breakdown of the model into multiple subject areas organizes the content for users, and subjects superfluous to a particular business role can be hidden from that set of users.  Customized names and descriptions can be used to override the business model names for a specific audience.  Variables in the object names can be used for localization. For these reasons, you are better off thinking of the tables in the presentation layer as folders than as strict relational tables.  The real semantics of tables and how they function is in the business model, and any grouping of columns can be included in any table in the presentation layer.  In 11g, an LSQL query can also span multiple presentation subject areas, as long as they map to the same business model. Other Model Objects There are some objects that apply to multiple layers.  These include security-related objects, such as application roles, users, data filters, and query limits (governors).  There are also variables you can use in parameters and expressions, and initialization blocks for loading their initial values on a static or user session basis.  Finally, there are Multi-User Development (MUD) projects for developers to check out units of work, and objects for the marketing feature used by our packaged customer relationship management (CRM) software.   The Query Factory At this point, you should have a grasp on the query factory concept.  When developing the CEIM model, you are configuring the BI Server to automatically manufacture millions of queries in response to random user requests. You do this by defining the analytic behavior in the business model, mapping that to the physical data sources, and exposing it through the presentation layer's role-based subject areas. While configuring mass production requires a different mindset than when you hand-craft individual SQL or MDX statements, it builds on the modeling and query concepts you already understand. The following posts in this series will walk through the CEIM modeling concepts and best practices in detail.  We will initially review dimensional concepts so you can understand the business model, and then present a pattern-based approach to learning the mappings from a variety of physical schema shapes and deployments to the dimensional model.  Along the way, we will also present the dimensional calculation template, and learn how to configure the many additivity patterns.

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  • SQL SERVER – 4 Tips for ETL Software IDE Developers

    - by pinaldave
    In a previous blog, I introduced the notion of Semantic Types. To an end-user, a seamlessly integrated semantic typing engine significantly increases the ease of use of an ETL IDE (integrated development environment, or developer studio). This led me to think about other ease-of-use issues I have encountered while building ETL applications. When I get stumped while programming, I find myself asking the variations on these questions: “How do I…?” “Now what?” “Why isn’t this working?” “Why do I have to redo the work I just did?” It seems to me that a good ETL IDE will anticipate these questions and seek to answer them before they are even asked. So here are my tips to help software vendors build developer IDEs that actually make development easier. How do I…? While developing an ETL application, have you ever asked yourself: “How do I set up the connection to my SQL Server database?”,“How do I import my table definitions from Access?”, etc. An easy answer might be “read the manual” but sometimes product manuals are not robust or easily accessible. So, integrating robust how-to instructions directly into your ETLstudio would help users get the information they need at the time they need it. Now what? IDEs in general know where you last clicked or performed an action using an input device such as a keyboard; so they should be able to reasonably predict the design context you are in and suggest the next steps accordingly. Context-sensitive suggestions based on the state of the user’s work will help users move forward in ETL application development. Why isn’t this working? Or why do I have to wait till I compile to be told about a critical design issue? If an ETL IDE is smart enough to signal to users what in their design structures is left to be completed or has been completed incorrectly, then the developer can spend much less time in the designàcompileàerror-correct loop. Just-in-time validation helps users detect and correct programming errors earlier in the ETL development life cycle. Why do I have to redo the work I just did? In ETL development, schemas, transformation rules, connectivity objects, etc., can be reused in various situations. Using mouse-clicks to build and manage libraries of reusable design objects implies that the application development effort should decrease over time and as the library acquires more objects. I met a great company at SQL Pass that is trying to address many of these usability issues. Check them out at www.expressor-software.com. What other ease-of-use suggestions do you have for ETL software vendors? Please post your valuable comments. ?Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Best Practices, Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology Tagged: ETL

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  • SQL SERVER – What the Business Says Is Not What the Business Wants

    - by pinaldave
    This blog post is written in response to T-SQL Tuesday hosted by Steve Jones. Steve raised a very interesting question; every DBA and Database Developer has already faced this situation. When I read the topic, I felt that I can write several different examples here. Today, I will cover this scenario, which seems quite amusing. Shrinking Database Earlier this year, I was working on SQL Server Performance Tuning consultancy; I had faced very interesting situation. No matter how much I attempt to reduce the fragmentation, I always end up with heavy fragmentation on the server. After careful research, I figured out that one of the jobs was continuously Shrinking the Database – which is a very bad practice. I have blogged about my experience over here SQL SERVER – SHRINKDATABASE For Every Database in the SQL Server. I removed the incorrect shrinking process right away; once it was removed, everything continued working as it should be. After a couple of days, I learned that one of their DBAs had put back the same DBCC process. I requested the Senior DBA to find out what is going on and he came up with the following reason: “Business Requirement.” I cannot believe this! Now, it was time for me to go deep into the subject. Moreover, it had become necessary to understand the need. After talking to the concerned people here, I understood what they needed. Please read the exact business need in their own language. The Shrinking “Business Need” “We shrink the database because if we take backup after shrinking the database, the size of the same is smaller. Once we take backup, we have to send it to our remote location site. Our business requirement is that we need to always make sure that the file is smallest when we transfer it to remote server.” The backup is not affected in any way if you shrink the database or not. The size of backup will be the same. After a couple of the tests, they agreed with me. Shrinking will create performance issues for the same as it will introduce heavy fragmentation in the database. The Real Solution The real business need was that they needed the smallest possible backup file. We finally implemented a quick solution which they are still using to date. The solution was compressed backup. I have written about this subject in detail few years before SQL SERVER – 2008 – Introduction to New Feature of Backup Compression. Compressed backup not only creates a small filesize but also increases the speed of the database as well. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Best Practices, Pinal Dave, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLServer, T SQL, Technology

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  • Oracle Enterprise Manager users present today at Oracle Users Forum

    - by Anand Akela
    Oracle Users Forum starts in a few minutes at Moscone West, Levels 2 & 3. There are more than hundreds of Oracle user sessions during the day. Many Oracle Oracle Enterprise Manager users are presenting today as well.  In addition, we will have a Twitter Chat today from 11:30 AM to 12:30 PM with IOUG leaders, Enterprise Manager SIG contributors and many speakers. You can participate in the chat using hash tag #em12c on Twitter.com or by going to  tweetchat.com/room/em12c      (Needs Twitter credential for participating).  Feel free to join IOUG and Enterprise team members at the User Group Pavilion on 2nd Floor, Moscone West. RSVP by going http://tweetvite.com/event/IOUG  . Don't miss the Oracle Open World welcome keynote by Larry Ellison this evening at 5 PM . Here is the complete list of Oracle Enterprise Manager sessions during the Oracle Users Forum : Time Session Title Speakers Location 8:00AM - 8:45AM UGF4569 - Oracle RAC Migration with Oracle Automatic Storage Management and Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c VINOD Emmanuel -Database Engineering, Dell, Inc. Wendy Chen - Sr. Systems Engineer, Dell, Inc. Moscone West - 2011 8:00AM - 8:45AM UGF10389 -  Monitoring Storage Systems for Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Anand Ranganathan - Product Manager, NetApp Moscone West - 2016 9:00AM - 10:00AM UGF2571 - Make Oracle Enterprise Manager Sing and Dance with the Command-Line Interface Ray Smith - Senior Database Administrator, Portland General Electric Moscone West - 2011 10:30AM - 11:30AM UGF2850 - Optimal Support: Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Cloud Control, My Oracle Support, and More April Sims - DBA, Southern Utah University Moscone West - 2011 12:30PM-2:00PM UGF5131 - Migrating from Oracle Enterprise Manager 10g Grid Control to 12c Cloud Control    Leighton Nelson - Database Administrator, Mercy Moscone West - 2011 2:15PM-3:15PM UGF6511 -  Database Performance Tuning: Get the Best out of Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Cloud Control Mike Ault - Oracle Guru, TEXAS MEMORY SYSTEMS INC Tariq Farooq - CEO/Founder, BrainSurface Moscone West - 2011 3:30PM-4:30PM UGF4556 - Will It Blend? Verifying Capacity in Server and Database Consolidations Jeremiah Wilton - Database Technology, Blue Gecko / DatAvail Moscone West - 2018 3:30PM-4:30PM UGF10400 - Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c: Monitoring, Metric Extensions, and Configuration Best Practices Kellyn Pot'Vin - Sr. Technical Consultant, Enkitec Moscone West - 2011 Stay Connected: Twitter |  Face book |  You Tube |  Linked in |  Newsletter

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  • How do I (tactfully) tell my project manager or lead developer that the project's codebase needs serious work?

    - by Adam Maras
    I just joined a (relatively) small development team that's been working on a project for several months, if not a year. As with most developer joining a project, I spent my first couple of days reviewing the project's codebase. The project (a medium- to large-sized ASP.NET WebForms internal line of business application) is, for lack of a more descriptive term, a disaster. There are three immediately noticeable problems with the coding standards: The standard is very loose. It describes more of what not to do (don't use Hungarian notation, etc..) than what to do. The standard isn't always followed. There are inconsistencies with the code formatting everywhere. The standard doesn't follow Microsoft's style guidelines. In my opinion, there's no value in deviating from the guidelines that were set forth by the developer of the framework and the largest contributor to the language specification. As for point 3, perhaps it bothers me more because I've taken the time to get my MCPD with a focus on web applications (specifically, ASP.NET). I'm also the only Microsoft Certified Professional on the team. Because of what I learned in all of my schooling, self-teaching, and on-the-job learning (including my preparation for the certification exams) I've also spotted several instances in the project's code where things are simply not done in the best way. I've only been on this team for a week, but I see so many issues with their codebase that I imagine I'll be spending more time fighting with what's already written to do things in "their way" than I would if I were working on a project that, for example, followed more widely accepted coding standards, architecture patterns, and best practices. This brings me to my question: Should I (and if so, how do I) propose to my project manager and team lead that the project needs to be majorly renovated? I don't want to walk into their office, waving my MCTS and MCPD certificates around, saying that their project's codebase is crap. But I also don't want to have to stay silent and have to write kludgey code atop their kludgey code, because I actually want to write quality software and I want the end product to be stable and easily maintainable.

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  • SQLAuthority News – New Book Released – SQL Server Interview Questions And Answers

    - by pinaldave
    Two days ago, on birthday of my blog – I asked simple question – Guess! What is in this box? I have received lots of interesting comments on the blog about what is in it. Many of you got it absolutely incorrect and many got it close to the right answer but no one got it 100% correct. Well, no issue at all, I am going to give away the price to whoever has the closest answer first in personal email. Here is the answer to the question about what is in the box? Here it is – the box has my new book. In fact, I should say our new book as I co-authored this book with my very good friend Vinod Kumar. We had real blast writing this book together and had lots of interesting conversation when we were writing this book. This book has one simple goal – “master the basics.” This book is not only for people who are preparing for interview. This book is for every one who wants to revisit the basics and wants to prepare themselves to the technology. One always needs to have practical knowledge to do their duty efficiently. This book talks about more than basics. There are multiple ways to present learning – either we can create simple book or make it interesting. We have decided the learning should be interactive and have opted for Interview Questions and Answer format. Here is quick interview which we have done together. Details of the books are here The core concept of this book will continue to evolve over time. I am sure many of you will come along with us on this journey and submit your suggestions to us to make this book a key reference for anybody who wants to start with SQL server. Today we want to acknowledge the fact that you will help us keep this book alive forever with the latest updates. We want to thank everyone who participates in this journey with us. You can get the books from [Amazon] | [Flipkart]. Read Vinod‘s blog post. Do not forget to wish him happy birthday as today is his birthday and also book release day – two reason to wish him congratulations. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Best Practices, Data Warehousing, Database, Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Interview Questions and Answers, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority Book Review, SQLAuthority News, SQLServer, T SQL, Technology

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  • Testing and Validation – You Really Do Have The Time

    - by BuckWoody
    One of the great advantages in my role as a Technical Specialist here at Microsoft is that I get to work with so many great clients. I get to see their environments and how they use them, and the way they work with SQL Server. I’ve been a data professional myself for many years. Over that time I’ve worked with many database platforms, lots of client applications, and written a lot of code in many industries. For a while I was also a consultant, so I got to see how other shops did things as well. But because I now focus on a “set” base of clients (over 500 professionals in over 150 companies) I get to see them over a longer period of time. Many of them help me understand how they use the product in their projects, and I even attend some DBA regular meetings. I see the way the product succeeds, and I see when it fails. Something that has really impacted my way of thinking is the level of importance any given shop is able to place on testing and validation. I’ve always been a big proponent of setting up a test system and following a very disciplined regimen to make sure it will work in production for any new projects, and then taking the lessons learned into production as standards. I know, I know – there’s never enough time to do things right like this. Yet the shops I see that do it have the same level of work that they output as the shops that don’t. They just make the time to do the testing and validation and create a standard that they will follow in production. And what I’ve found (surprise surprise) is that they have fewer production problems. OK, that might seem obvious – but I’ve actually tracked it and those places that do the testing and best practices really do save stress, time and trouble from that effort. We all think that’s a good idea, but we just “don’t have time”. OK – but from what I’m seeing, you can gain time if you spend a little up front. You may find that you’re actually already spending the same amount of time that you would spend in doing the testing, you’re just doing it later, at night, under the gun. Food for thought.  Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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  • SQLAuthority News – Android Efficiency Tips and Tricks – Personal Technology Tip #003

    - by pinaldave
    I use my phone for lots of things.  I use it mainly to replace my tablet – I can e-mail, take and edit photos, and do almost everything I can do on a laptop with this phone.  And I am sure that there are many of you out there just like me.  I personally have a Galaxy S3, which uses the Android operating system, and I have decided to feature it as the third installment of my Technology Tips and Tricks series. 1) Shortcut to your favorite contacts on home screen Access your most-called contacts easily from your home screen by holding your finger on any empty spot on the home screen.  A menu will pop up that allows you to choose Shortcuts, and Contact.  You can scroll through your contact list and then just tap on the name of the person you want to be able to dial with a single click. 2) Keep track of your data usage Yes, we all should keep a close eye on our data usage, because it is very easy to go over our limits and then end up with a giant bill at the end of the month.  Never get surprised when you open that mobile phone envelope again.  Go to Settings, then Data Usage, and you can find a quick rundown of your usage, how much data each app uses, and you can even set alarms to let you know when you are nearing the limits.   Better yet, you can set the phone to stop using data when it reaches a certain limit. 3) Bring back Good Grammar We often hear proclamations about the downfall of written language, and how texting abbreviations, misspellings, and lack of punctuation are the root of all evil.  Well, we can show all those doomsdayers that all is not lost by bringing punctuation back to texting.  Usually we leave it off when we text because it takes too long to get to the screen with all the punctuation options.  But now you can hold down the period (or “full stop”) button and a list of all the commonly-used punctuation marks will pop right up. 4) Apps, Apps, Apps and Apps And finally, I cannot end an article about smart phones without including a list of my favorite apps.  Here are a list of my Top 10 Applications on my Android (not counting social media apps). Advanced Task Killer – Keeps my phone snappy by closing un-necessary apps WhatsApp - my favorite alternate to Text SMS Flipboard - my ‘timepass’ moments Skype – keeps me close to friends and family GoogleMaps - I am never lost because of this one thing Amazon Kindle – Books my best friends DropBox - My data always safe Pluralsight Player – Learning never stops for me Samsung Kies Air – Connecting Phone to Computer Chrome – Replacing default browser I have not included any social media applications in the above list, but you can be sure that I am linked to Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, and YouTube. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com)   Filed under: Best Practices, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology Tagged: Android, Personal Technology

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  • SQLAuthority News – Android Efficiency Tips and Tricks – Personal Technology Tip

    - by pinaldave
    I use my phone for lots of things.  I use it mainly to replace my tablet – I can e-mail, take and edit photos, and do almost everything I can do on a laptop with this phone.  And I am sure that there are many of you out there just like me.  I personally have a Galaxy S3, which uses the Android operating system, and I have decided to feature it as the third installment of my Technology Tips and Tricks series. 1) Shortcut to your favorite contacts on home screen Access your most-called contacts easily from your home screen by holding your finger on any empty spot on the home screen.  A menu will pop up that allows you to choose Shortcuts, and Contact.  You can scroll through your contact list and then just tap on the name of the person you want to be able to dial with a single click. 2) Keep track of your data usage Yes, we all should keep a close eye on our data usage, because it is very easy to go over our limits and then end up with a giant bill at the end of the month.  Never get surprised when you open that mobile phone envelope again.  Go to Settings, then Data Usage, and you can find a quick rundown of your usage, how much data each app uses, and you can even set alarms to let you know when you are nearing the limits.   Better yet, you can set the phone to stop using data when it reaches a certain limit. 3) Bring back Good Grammar We often hear proclamations about the downfall of written language, and how texting abbreviations, misspellings, and lack of punctuation are the root of all evil.  Well, we can show all those doomsdayers that all is not lost by bringing punctuation back to texting.  Usually we leave it off when we text because it takes too long to get to the screen with all the punctuation options.  But now you can hold down the period (or “full stop”) button and a list of all the commonly-used punctuation marks will pop right up. 4) Apps, Apps, Apps and Apps And finally, I cannot end an article about smart phones without including a list of my favorite apps.  Here are a list of my Top 10 Applications on my Android (not counting social media apps). Advanced Task Killer – Keeps my phone snappy by closing un-necessary apps WhatsApp - my favorite alternate to Text SMS Flipboard - my ‘timepass’ moments Skype – keeps me close to friends and family GoogleMaps - I am never lost because of this one thing Amazon Kindle – Books my best friends DropBox - My data always safe Pluralsight Player – Learning never stops for me Samsung Kies Air – Connecting Phone to Computer Chrome – Replacing default browser I have not included any social media applications in the above list, but you can be sure that I am linked to Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, and YouTube. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com)   Filed under: Best Practices, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology Tagged: Android, Personal Technology

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  • Exception Handling Frequency/Log Detail

    - by Cyborgx37
    I am working on a fairly complex .NET application that interacts with another application. Many single-line statements are possible culprits for throwing an Exception and there is often nothing I can do to check the state before executing them to prevent these Exceptions. The question is, based on best practices and seasoned experience, how frequently should I lace my code with try/catch blocks? I've listed three examples below, but I'm open to any advice. I'm really hoping to get some pros/cons of various approaches. I can certainly come up with some of my own (greater log granularity for the O-C approach, better performance for the Monolithic approach), so I'm looking for experience over opinion. EDIT: I should add that this application is a batch program. The only "recovery" necessary in most cases is to log the error, clean up gracefully, and quit. So this could be seen to be as much a question of log granularity as exception handling. In my mind's eye I can imagine good reasons for both, so I'm looking for some general advice to help me find an appropriate balance. Monolitich Approach class Program{ public static void Main(){ try{ Step1(); Step2(); Step3(); } catch (Exception e) { Log(e); } finally { CleanUp(); } } public static void Step1(){ ExternalApp.Dangerous1(); ExternalApp.Dangerous2(); } public static void Step2(){ ExternalApp.Dangerous3(); ExternalApp.Dangerous4(); } public static void Step3(){ ExternalApp.Dangerous5(); ExternalApp.Dangerous6(); } } Delegated Approach class Program{ public static void Main(){ try{ Step1(); Step2(); Step3(); } finally { CleanUp(); } } public static void Step1(){ try{ ExternalApp.Dangerous1(); ExternalApp.Dangerous2(); } catch (Exception e) { Log(e); throw; } } public static void Step2(){ try{ ExternalApp.Dangerous3(); ExternalApp.Dangerous4(); } catch (Exception e) { Log(e); throw; } } public static void Step3(){ try{ ExternalApp.Dangerous5(); ExternalApp.Dangerous6(); } catch (Exception e) { Log(e); throw; } } } Obsessive-Compulsive Approach class Program{ public static void Main(){ try{ Step1(); Step2(); Step3(); } finally { CleanUp(); } } public static void Step1(){ try{ ExternalApp.Dangerous1(); } catch (Exception e) { Log(e); throw; } try{ ExternalApp.Dangerous2(); } catch (Exception e) { Log(e); throw; } } public static void Step2(){ try{ ExternalApp.Dangerous3(); } catch (Exception e) { Log(e); throw; } try{ ExternalApp.Dangerous4(); } catch (Exception e) { Log(e); throw; } } public static void Step3(){ try{ ExternalApp.Dangerous5(); } catch (Exception e) { Log(e); throw; } try{ ExternalApp.Dangerous6(); } catch (Exception e) { Log(e); throw; } } } Other approaches welcomed and encouraged. Above are examples only.

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  • SQL SERVER – UNION ALL and ORDER BY – How to Order Table Separately While Using UNION ALL

    - by pinaldave
    I often see developers trying following syntax while using ORDER BY. SELECT Columns FROM TABLE1 ORDER BY Columns UNION ALL SELECT Columns FROM TABLE2 ORDER BY Columns However the above query will return following error. Msg 156, Level 15, State 1, Line 5 Incorrect syntax near the keyword ‘ORDER’. It is not possible to use two different ORDER BY in the UNION statement. UNION returns single resultsetand as per the Logical Query Processing Phases. However, if your requirement is such that you want your top and bottom query of the UNION resultset independently sorted but in the same resultset you can add an additional static column and order by that column. Let us re-create the same scenario. First create two tables and populated with sample data. USE tempdb GO -- Create table CREATE TABLE t1 (ID INT, Col1 VARCHAR(100)); CREATE TABLE t2 (ID INT, Col1 VARCHAR(100)); GO -- Sample Data Build INSERT INTO t1 (ID, Col1) SELECT 1, 'Col1-t1' UNION ALL SELECT 2, 'Col2-t1' UNION ALL SELECT 3, 'Col3-t1'; INSERT INTO t2 (ID, Col1) SELECT 3, 'Col1-t2' UNION ALL SELECT 2, 'Col2-t2' UNION ALL SELECT 1, 'Col3-t2'; GO If we SELECT the data from both the table using UNION ALL . -- SELECT without ORDER BY SELECT ID, Col1 FROM t1 UNION ALL SELECT ID, Col1 FROM t2 GO We will get the data in following order. However, our requirement is to get data in following order. If we need data ordered by Column1 we can ORDER the resultset ordered by Column1. -- SELECT with ORDER BY SELECT ID, Col1 FROM t1 UNION ALL SELECT ID, Col1 FROM t2 ORDER BY ID GO Now to get the data in independently sorted in UNION ALL let us add additional column OrderKey and use ORDER BY  on that column. I think the description does not do proper justice let us see the example here. -- SELECT with ORDER BY - with ORDER KEY SELECT ID, Col1, 'id1' OrderKey FROM t1 UNION ALL SELECT ID, Col1, 'id2' OrderKey FROM t2 ORDER BY OrderKey, ID GO The above query will give the desired result. Now do not forget to clean up the database by running the following script. -- Clean up DROP TABLE t1; DROP TABLE t2; GO Here is the complete script used in this example. USE tempdb GO -- Create table CREATE TABLE t1 (ID INT, Col1 VARCHAR(100)); CREATE TABLE t2 (ID INT, Col1 VARCHAR(100)); GO -- Sample Data Build INSERT INTO t1 (ID, Col1) SELECT 1, 'Col1-t1' UNION ALL SELECT 2, 'Col2-t1' UNION ALL SELECT 3, 'Col3-t1'; INSERT INTO t2 (ID, Col1) SELECT 3, 'Col1-t2' UNION ALL SELECT 2, 'Col2-t2' UNION ALL SELECT 1, 'Col3-t2'; GO -- SELECT without ORDER BY SELECT ID, Col1 FROM t1 UNION ALL SELECT ID, Col1 FROM t2 GO -- SELECT with ORDER BY SELECT ID, Col1 FROM t1 UNION ALL SELECT ID, Col1 FROM t2 ORDER BY ID GO -- SELECT with ORDER BY - with ORDER KEY SELECT ID, Col1, 'id1' OrderKey FROM t1 UNION ALL SELECT ID, Col1, 'id2' OrderKey FROM t2 ORDER BY OrderKey, ID GO -- Clean up DROP TABLE t1; DROP TABLE t2; GO I am sure there are many more ways to achieve this, what method would you use if you have to face the similar situation? Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)   Filed under: Best Practices, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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