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• Free training at Northwest Cadence

  - by Martin Hinshelwood

  Even though I have only been at Northwest Cadence for a short time I have already done so much. What I really wanted to do was let you guys know about a bunch of FREE training that NWC offers. These sessions are at a fantastic time for the UK as 9am PST (Seattle time) is around 5pm GMT. Its a fantastic way to finish off your Fridays and with the lack of love for developers in the UK set to continue I would love some of you guys to get some from the US instead. There are really two offerings. The first is something called Coffee talks that take you through an hours worth of detail in a specific category. Coffee Talks These coffee talks have some superb topics and you can get excellent interaction with the presenter as they are kind of informal. Date Day Time Topic Register Here 01/04/11 Tuesday 8:30AM – 9:30AM PST Real World Business and Technical Benefits of ALM with TFS 2010 150656 01/28/11 Friday 9:00AM - 10:00AM PST The Full Testing Experience Professional Quality Assurance with Visual Studio 2010 152810 02/11/11 Friday 9:00AM - 10:00AM PST Visual Source Safe to Team Foundation Server 152844 02/25/11 Friday 2:00PM - 3:00PM PST The Full Testing Experience Professional Quality Assurance with Visual Studio 2010 152816 03/11/11 Friday 9:00AM - 10:00AM PST Lab Manager The Ultimate “No More No Repro” Tool 152809 03/25/11 Friday 9:00AM - 10:00AM PST The Full Testing Experience Professional Quality Assurance with Visual Studio 2010 152838 04/08/11 Friday 9:00AM - 10:00AM PST Visual Source Safe to Team Foundation Server 152846 04/22/11 Friday 9:00AM - 10:00AM PST The Full Testing Experience Professional Quality Assurance with Visual Studio 2010 152839 05/06/11 Friday 2:00PM - 3:00PM PST Real World Business and Technical Benefits of ALM with TFS 2010 150657 05/20/11 Friday 9:00AM - 10:00AM PST The Full Testing Experience Professional Quality Assurance with Visual Studio 2010 152842 06/03/11 Friday 9:00AM - 10:00AM PST Visual Source Safe to Team Foundation Server 152847 06/17/11 Friday 9:00AM - 10:00AM PST The Full Testing Experience Professional Quality Assurance with Visual Studio 2010 152843   ALM Training Engagement Program Microsoft has released a new program to bring free Visual Studio 2010 Training Sessions to select customers on Microsoft Visual Studio products and how Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) solutions can help drive greater business impact. For more details on this program, please see the process chart below.  To get started send an email to us; This training is paid for by Microsoft and you would need to commit to 4 sessions in order to get accepted into the program. So these have more hoops to jump through to get them, but the content is much more formal and centres around adoption.

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• Mythbusters &ndash; SQL Edition

  - by AjarnMark

  I love the Mythbusters television show.  That has to be one of the coolest jobs in the world…it involves investigation, problem solving, science, trial & error, searching for the truth, robotics and remote controls, and in the end, you usually get to blow stuff up.  How great is that?!  I know I’ll never forget the episode where they blew up a cement truck.  That was truly awesome. Well, perhaps not quite made for TV, but pretty cool nonetheless, Paul Randal (@PaulRandal) has been doing some SQL Server myth busting here in the month of April with his DBA Myth a Day series.  It starts with In-Flight Transactions Continue After a Failover.  Check it out!

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• Whoosh: PASS Board Year 1, Q4

  - by Denise McInerney

  "Whoosh". That's the sound the last quarter of 2012 made as it rushed by. My first year on the PASS Board is complete, and the last three months of it were probably the busiest. PASS Summit 2012 Much of October was devoted to preparing for Summit. Every Board  member, HQ staffer and dozens of volunteers were busy in the run-up to our flagship event. It takes a lot of work to put on the Summit. The community meetings,  first-timers program, keynotes, sessions and that fabulous Community Appreciation party are the result of many hours of preparation. Virtual Chapters at the Summit With a lot of help from Karla Landrum, Michelle Nalliah, Lana Montgomery and others at HQ the VCs had a good presence at Summit. We started the week with a VC leaders meeting. I shared some information about the activities and growth during the first part of the year.   From January - September 2012: The number of VCs increased from 14 to 20 VC membership  grew from 55,200 to 80,100 Total attendance at VC meetings increased from 1,480 to 2,198 Been part of PASS Global Growth with language-based VC- including Chinese, Spanish and Portuguese. We also heard from some VC leaders and volunteers. Ryan Adams (Performance VC) shared his tips for successful marketing of VC events. Amy Lewis (Business Intelligence VC) described how the BI chapter has expanded to support PASS' global growth by finding volunteers to organize events at times that are convenient for people in Europe and Australia. Felipe Ferreira (Portuguese language VC) described the experience of building a user group first in Brazil, then expanding to work with Portuguese-speaking data professionals around the world. Virtual Chapter leaders and volunteers were in evidence throughout Summit, beginning with the Welcome Reception. For the past several years VCs have had an organized presence at this event, signing up new members and advertising their meetings. Many VC leaders also spent time at the Community Zone. This new addition to the Summit proved to be a vibrant spot were new members and volunteers could network with others and find out how to start a chapter or host a SQL Saturday. Women In Technology 2012 was the 10th WIT Luncheon to be held at Summit. I was honored to be asked to be on the panel to discuss the topic "Where Have We Been and Where are We Going?" The PASS community has come a long way in our understanding of issues facing women in tech and our support of women in the organization. It was great to hear from panelists Stefanie Higgins and Kevin Kline who were there at the beginning as well as Kendra Little and Jen Stirrup who are part of the progress being made by women in our community today. Bylaw Changes The Board spent a good deal of time in 2012 discussing how to move our global growth initiatives forward. An important component of this is a proposed change to how the Board is elected with some seats representing geographic regions. At the end of December we voted on these proposed bylaw changes which have been published for review. The member review and feedback is open until February 8. I encourage all members to review these changes and send any feedback to [email protected]  In addition to reading the bylaws, I recommend reading Bill Graziano's blog post on the subject. Business Analytics Conference At Summit we announced a new event: the PASS Business Analytics Conference. The inaugural event will be April 10-12, 2013 in Chicago. The world of data is changing rapidly. More and more businesses want to extract value and insight from their data. Data professionals who provide these insights or enable others to do so are in demand. The BA Conference offers expert content on predictive analytics, data exploration and visualization, content delivery strategies and more. By holding this new event PASS is participating in important discussions happening in our industry, offering our members more educational value and reaching out to data professionals who are not currently part of our organization. New Year, New Portfolio In addition to my work with the Virtual Chapters I am also now responsible for the 24 Hours of PASS portfolio. Since the first 24HOP of 2013 is scheduled for January 30 we started the transition of the portfolio work from Rob Farley to me right after Summit. Work immediately started to secure speakers for the January event. We have also been evaluating webinar platforms that can be used for 24HOP as well as the Virtual Chapters. Next Up 24 Hours of PASS: Business Analytics Edition will be held on January 30. I'll be there and will moderate one or two sessions. The 24HOP topics are a sneak peek into the type of content that will be offered at the Business Analytics Conference. I hope to see some of you there. The Virtual Chapters have hit the ground running in 2013; many of them have events scheduled. The Application Development VC is getting restarted  and a new Business Analytics VC will be starting soon. Check out the lineup and join the VCs that interest you. And watch the Events page and Connector for announcements of upcoming meetings. At the end of January I will be attending a Board meeting in Seattle, and February 23 I will be at SQL Saturday #177 in Silicon Valley.

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• Microsoft releases Bing iPhone app

  As its officials have been hinting and promising for a while now, Microsoft announced it has developed a version of its Bing search app for the iPhone. The new Bing app is available on the iPhone app store as of tonight (December 15). Microsoft already offers Bing on a number of mobile phones, and has a five-year deal with Verizon to provide Bing on a number of phones available to Verizon Wireless customers. A mobile version of Bing already is available for Windows Mobile, Blackberry, BREW and Sidekick devices on Verizon. In other Bing news, Microsoft has finally hit the 10 percent market share mark with Bing, according to the November U.S. search share data from comScore. Bing’s growth is continuing to come at the expense of Yahoo, not Google. Update: To those wondering why Microsoft would deliver a version of Continue... span.fullpost {display:none;}

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• How to Handle Managing a Coding Project With 8 Friends?

  - by Raul

  I usually code by myself but currently I need to do a java web-based project with 8 of my friends. I would like to ask the following questions: 1) How to document the development properly? Like how to keep a daily log? Any software or format suggested? What things do you think are important to be included in the log? 2) How to code together? Is there any software/IDE that allows a team to code together? Something ike google docs? 3) How to do a proper backup for a team project? Any software or tips to share?

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• Using SET NULL and SET DEFAULT with Foreign Key Constraints

  Cascading Updates and Deletes, introduced with SQL Server 2000, were such an important, crucial feature that it is hard to imagine providing referential integrity without them. One of the new features in SQL Server 2005 that hasn't gotten a lot of press from what I've read is the new options for the ON DELETE and ON UPDATE clauses: SET NULL and SET DEFAULT. Let's take a look!

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• New Extended Events Blog on MSDN

  - by Jonathan Kehayias

  The SQL Server Team at Microsoft created a new blog last week on the MSDN site for Extended Events.  If you are interested in learning about Extended Events from the group on the SQL Server Team that built it, you might be interested in adding this blog to your RSS Reader: http://blogs.msdn.com/extended_events/default.aspx There are plenty of references available on Extended Events by clicking the tag in my tag cloud as well. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick...(read more)

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• Handy SQL Server Functions Series (HSSFS) Part 2.0 - Prelude to Parsing Patterns Properly

  - by Most Valuable Yak (Rob Volk)

  In Part 1 of the series I wrote about 2 lesser-known and somewhat undocumented functions. In this part, I'm going to cover some familiar string functions like Substring(), Parsename(), Patindex(), and Charindex() and delve into their strengths and weaknesses. I'm also splitting this part up into sub-parts to help focus on a particular technique and/or problem with the technique, hence the Part 2.0. Consider this a composite post, or com-post, if you will. (It may just turn out to be a pile of sh_t after all) I'll be using a contrived example, perhaps the most frustratingly useful, or usefully frustrating, function in SQL Server: @@VERSION. Contrived, because there are better ways to get the information (which I'll cover later); frustrating, because of the way Microsoft formatted the value; and useful because it does have 1 or 2 bits of information not found elsewhere. First let's take a look at the output of @@VERSION: Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 (RTM) - 10.50.1600.1 (Intel X86) Apr 2 2010 15:53:02 Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation Developer Edition on Windows NT 5.1 <X86> (Build 2600: Service Pack 3) There are 4 lines, with lines 2-4 indented with a tab character.  In case your browser (or this blog software) doesn't show it correctly, I gave each line a different color.  While this PRINTs nicely, if you SELECT @@VERSION in grid mode it all runs together because it ignores carriage return/line feed (CR/LF) characters.  Not fatal, but annoying. Note that @@VERSION's output will vary depending on edition and version of SQL Server, and also the OS it's installed on.  Despite the differences, the output is laid out the same way and the relevant pieces are in the same order. I'll be using the following view for Parts 2.1 onward, so we have a nice collection of @@VERSION information: create view version(SQLVersion,VersionString) AS ( select 2000, 'Microsoft SQL Server 2000 - 8.00.2055 (Intel X86) Dec 16 2008 19:46:53 Copyright (c) 1988-2003 Microsoft Corporation Developer Edition on Windows NT 5.1 (Build 2600: Service Pack 3)' union all select 2005, 'Microsoft SQL Server 2005 - 9.00.4053.00 (Intel X86) May 26 2009 14:24:20 Copyright (c) 1988-2005 Microsoft Corporation Developer Edition on Windows NT 5.1 (Build 2600: Service Pack 3)' union all select 2008, 'Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 (RTM) - 10.50.1600.1 (Intel X86) Apr 2 2010 15:53:02 Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation Developer Edition on Windows NT 5.1 <X86> (Build 2600: Service Pack 3)' union all select 2005, 'Microsoft SQL Server 2005 - 9.00.3080.00 (Intel X86) Sep 6 2009 01:43:32 Copyright (c) 1988-2005 Microsoft Corporation Standard Edition on Windows NT 5.2 (Build 3790: Service Pack 2)' union all select 2008, 'Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 (RTM) - 10.50.1600.1 (X64) Apr 2 2010 15:48:46 Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation Developer Edition (64-bit) on Windows NT 6.1 <X64> (Build 7600: ) (Hypervisor)' union all select 2008, 'Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 (RTM) - 10.50.1600.1 (X64) Apr 2 2010 15:48:46 Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation Express Edition with Advanced Services (64-bit) on Windows NT 6.1 <X64> (Build 7600: ) (Hypervisor)' ) Feel free to add your own @@VERSION info if it's not already there. In Part 2.1 I'll focus on extracting the SQL Server version number (10.50.1600.1 in first example) and the Edition (Developer), but will have a solution that works with all versions.  Stay tuned!

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• SQL Sentry Truth-Telling and Disk Configuration

  - by AjarnMark

  Recently, SQL Sentry told me something about my SQL Server disk configurations that I just didn’t want to believe, but alas, it was true. Several days ago I posted my First Impressions of the SQL Sentry Power Suite.  Today’s post could fall into the category of, “Hey, as long as you have that fancy tool…”  Unfortunately, it also falls into the category of an overloaded worker taking someone else’s word for the truth, not verifying it with independent fact-checking, and then making decisions based on that.  Here’s my story… I’m not exactly an Accidental DBA (or Involuntary DBA as Paul Randal calls it).  I came to this company five years ago as a lead application developer with extensive experience in database design and development.  I worked my way into management, and along the way, took over the DBA responsibilities.  Fortunately, our systems run pretty smoothly most of the time, but I’m always looking for ways to make them better and to fit into my understanding of best practices.  When I took over as DBA, I inherited a SQL 2000 server with about 30 databases on it supporting our main systems, and a SQL 2005 server with multiple instances.  Both of these servers were configured with the Operating System and Application files on the C drive, data files on a different drive letter, and log files on a third drive letter.  Even before I took over as DBA, I verified that this was true with a previous server administrator, and that these represented actual separate disks.  He stated that they did, and I thought that all was well. Then one day, I’m poking around inside the SQL Sentry Performance Advisor, checking out features as I am evaluating whether to purchase the product, and I come across a Disk Configuration section.  The first thing I notice is that the drives do not have the proper partition offset, which was not at all surprising to me given the age of the installation and the relative newness of that topic.  But what threw me for a loop was that the graphic display appeared to be telling me that I did not in fact have three separate drives (or arrays) but rather had two, and that the log files were merely on a separate volume on the same physical array as the OS.  I figured that I must be reading it wrong so I scanned the Help file, but that just seemed to confirm my interpretation.  Then I thought, “there must be something wrong with the demo version of the software!  This can’t be right!”  But just to double-check, I went to our current server admin to talk it over with him, and sure enough, SQL Sentry was telling the truth! I was stunned!  I quickly went through the grieving process…denial…anger…reconciliation.  Here was something that I thought was such a basic truth that was turned upside down.  OK, granted, this wasn’t disastrous.  Our databases didn’t suddenly grind to a halt.  I didn’t get calls late at night inquiring about the sudden downturn in performance.  But it was a bit of a shock to the system, in a good way, to jolt me out of taking what I had believed as the truth for granted, and instead to Trust, but Verify! Yes, before someone else points it out, I know that there are”free” disk management tools built-in to Windows that would have told me the same thing if I had only looked at them; I did not have to buy a fancy tool to tell me that, but the fact is, until I was evaluating the tool, I had just gone with what I was told, and never bothered to check what was actually there. So, what things do you believe to be true but you actually never verified?

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• SQL Server MVP Deep Dives 2. The Awesome Returns.

  - by Mladen Prajdic

  Two years ago 59 SQL Server MVP's came together and helped make one of the best book on SQL Server out there. Each chapter was written by an MVP about a part of SQL Server they loved working with. This resulted in superb quality content and excellent ratings from the readers. To top it off all earnings went to a good cause, the War Child International organization. That book was SQL Server MVP Deep Dives. This year 63 SQL Server MVPs, me included, decided it was time do repeat the success of the first book. Let me introduce you the: SQL Server MVP Deep Dives 2 The topics in 60 chapters are grouped in 5 groups: Architecture, Database Administration, Database Development, Performance Tuning and Optimization, Business Intelligence. They represent over 1000 years of daily experience in various areas of SQL Server. I have contributed chapter 28 in Database Development group titled Getting asynchronous with Service Broker. In it I show you the Service Broker template you can use for secure communication between two or more SQL server instances for whatever purpose you may have. If you haven't heard of Service Broker it's a part of the database engine that enables you to do completely async operations in the database itself or between databases and instances. The official release of the book will be next week at PASS where there will be 2 slots where most of the authors will be there signing the books you bring. This is also a great opportunity to meet everyone and ask about any problems you may have. So definitely come say hi. Again we decided on a charity that will be supported by this book. It's called Operation Smile. They provide free surgeries to repair cleft lip, cleft palate and other facial deformities for children around the globe. You can also help them by donating. You can preorder it on at Manning Publications website or on Amazon. By having it you not only get to learn a lot, improve your skills and have fun but you also help a child have a normal life. If that's not a good cause then I don't know what it is.

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• SSMS Tools Pack 2.0 is out! With huge productivity booster features that will blow your mind and ease your job even more.

  - by Mladen Prajdic

  What better way to end the summer and start those productive autumn days ahead than with a fresh new version of the SSMS Tools Pack. This is a big release with two new features that are huge productivity boosters. First new feature are Tab Sessions. Every SQL tab you open is saved every N (default 2) minutes and is stored in a session. This works similar to internet browser sessions. Once you reopen SSMS you can restores your last session with a click of a button. You even get every window connected to the server it was previously connected to. The Tab History Window looks like this:   The second feature is Execution Plan Analyzer. It is designed to quickly help you find costliest operators by a number of properties. If that's not enough you can easily search through the whole execution plan for whatever you like. And to top it off you can auto analyze the execution plan. The analysis reports various problems the execution plan has and suggests a most common solution. The ultimate purpose of the Execution Plan Analyzer is to make your troubleshooting quicker and easier. It uses a simple user interface that is easy to navigate and is built directly into the execution plan itself. The execution plan analyzer looks like this:   Smaller fixes include a completely redesigned SQL History Search window and various other bug fixes. You can download the new version 2.0 at the Download page. For more detailed feature descriptions go to the main Features Page. Enjoy it!

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• Dealing with a developer continuously ignoring edge cases in his work

  - by Alex N.

  I have an interesting, fairly common I guess, issue with one of the developers in my team. The guy is a great developer, work fast and productive, produces fairly good quality code and all. Good engineer. But there is a problem with him - very often he fails to address edge cases in his code. We spoke with him about it many times and he is trying but I guess he just doesn't think this way. So what ends up happening is that QA would find plenty issues with his code and return it back for development again and again, ultimately resulting in missed deadlines and everyone in the team unhappy. I don't know what to do with him and how to help him overcome this problem. Perhaps someone with more experience could advise? Thank you!

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• A story from SQLvdb and Idera

  - by Peter Larsson

  A year or so back, I struggled with some consistency problems so I figured out I needed a way to "mount" backup files as a virtual database. At the time (SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server 2008) my choice fell on Idera's SQLvdb because it felt easy enough to use. I used it a few times and it worked great. Some time later we upgraded to SQL Server 2008R2 and I didn't use SQLvbd for a long time. Until yesterday... I was upset that suddenly SQLvbd took more than 2 hours to mount the backup file (if it succeeded at all). I uninstalled the application and went for lunch. After lunch, I decided to give SQLvbd another chance so I emailed their tech support and got a response within 30 minutes or so. Now, since I am a SQL Server MVP, they gave me another serial number than my first and I downloaded and installed a newer version. But also this version was really slow. I emailed back to them with the additional information they requested and to my surprise I had got an email this morning when I came back to work, where Idera explained some of the issues (bugs) and asked my to test a newer version. I did, and now a fresh mount of a 100GB database (compressed to 20GB with native compression) located on our SAN takes less than 6 minutes! Thank you. //Peter

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• The Excel Column Name assigment problem

  - by Peter Larsson

  Here is a generic algorithm to get the Excel column name according to it's position. By changing the @Base parameter, you can do this for any sequence according to same style as Excel. DECLARE @Value INT = 8839,         @Base TINYINT = 26   ;WITH cteSequence(Value, Delta, Quote, Base, Chr) AS (     SELECT  CAST(@Value AS INT) AS Value,             CAST(1 AS INT) AS Delta,             CAST(@Base AS INT) AS Quote,             CAST(@Base AS INT) AS Base,             CHAR(65 +(@Value - 1) % @Base) AS Chr       UNION ALL       SELECT  Value AS Value,             Quote AS Delta,             26 * Quote AS Quote,             Base AS Base,             CHAR(65 +((Value - Delta)/ Quote - 1) % Base) AS Chr     FROM    cteSequence     WHERE   CHAR(65 +((Value - Delta)/ Quote - 1) % Base) <> '@' ) SELECT  CAST(Msg AS VARCHAR(MAX)) FROM    (             SELECT        '' + Chr             FROM        cteSequence             ORDER BY    Delta DESC             FOR XML        PATH('')         ) AS x(Msg)

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• SQL University: What and why of database refactoring

  - by Mladen Prajdic

  This is a post for a great idea called SQL University started by Jorge Segarra also famously known as SqlChicken on Twitter. It’s a collection of blog posts on different database related topics contributed by several smart people all over the world. So this week is mine and we’ll be talking about database testing and refactoring. In 3 posts we’ll cover: SQLU part 1 - What and why of database testing SQLU part 2 - What and why of database refactoring SQLU part 3 - Tools of the trade This is a second part of the series and in it we’ll take a look at what database refactoring is and why do it. Why refactor a database To know why refactor we first have to know what refactoring actually is. Code refactoring is a process where we change module internals in a way that does not change that module’s input/output behavior. For successful refactoring there is one crucial thing we absolutely must have: Tests. Automated unit tests are the only guarantee we have that we haven’t broken the input/output behavior before refactoring. If you haven’t go back ad read my post on the matter. Then start writing them. Next thing you need is a code module. Those are views, UDFs and stored procedures. By having direct table access we can kiss fast and sweet refactoring good bye. One more point to have a database abstraction layer. And no, ORM’s don’t fall into that category. But also know that refactoring is NOT adding new functionality to your code. Many have fallen into this trap. Don’t be one of them and resist the lure of the dark side. And it’s a strong lure. We developers in general love to add new stuff to our code, but hate fixing our own mistakes or changing existing code for no apparent reason. To be a good refactorer one needs discipline and focus. Now we know that refactoring is all about changing inner workings of existing code. This can be due to performance optimizations, changing internal code workflows or some other reason. This is a typical black box scenario to the outside world. If we upgrade the car engine it still has to drive on the road (preferably faster) and not fly (no matter how cool that would be). Also be aware that white box tests will break when we refactor. What to refactor in a database Refactoring databases doesn’t happen that often but when it does it can include a lot of stuff. Let us look at a few common cases. Adding or removing database schema objects Adding, removing or changing table columns in any way, adding constraints, keys, etc… All of these can be counted as internal changes not visible to the data consumer. But each of these carries a potential input/output behavior change. Dropping a column can result in views not working anymore or stored procedure logic crashing. Adding a unique constraint shows duplicated data that shouldn’t exist. Foreign keys break a truncate table command executed from an application that runs once a month. All these scenarios are very real and can happen. With the proper database abstraction layer fully covered with black box tests we can make sure something like that does not happen (hopefully at all). Changing physical structures Physical structures include heaps, indexes and partitions. We can pretty much add or remove those without changing the data returned by the database. But the performance can be affected. So here we use our performance tests. We do have them, right? Just by adding a single index we can achieve orders of magnitude performance improvement. Won’t that make users happy? But what if that index causes our write operations to crawl to a stop. again we have to test this. There are a lot of things to think about and have tests for. Without tests we can’t do successful refactoring! Fixing bad code We all have some bad code in our systems. We usually refer to that code as code smell as they violate good coding practices. Examples of such code smells are SQL injection, use of SELECT *, scalar UDFs or cursors, etc… Each of those is huge code smell and can result in major code changes. Take SELECT * from example. If we remove a column from a table the client using that SELECT * statement won’t have a clue about that until it runs. Then it will gracefully crash and burn. Not to mention the widely unknown SELECT * view refresh problem that Tomas LaRock (@SQLRockstar on Twitter) and Colin Stasiuk (@BenchmarkIT on Twitter) talk about in detail. Go read about it, it’s informative. Refactoring this includes replacing the * with column names and most likely change to application using the database. Breaking apart huge stored procedures Have you ever seen seen a stored procedure that was 2000 lines long? I have. It’s not pretty. It hurts the eyes and sucks the will to live the next 10 minutes. They are a maintenance nightmare and turn into things no one dares to touch. I’m willing to bet that 100% of time they don’t have a single test on them. Large stored procedures (and functions) are a clear sign that they contain business logic. General opinion on good database coding practices says that business logic has no business in the database. That’s the applications part. Refactoring such behemoths requires writing lots of edge case tests for the stored procedure input/output behavior and then start to refactor it. First we split the logic inside into smaller parts like new stored procedures and UDFs. Those then get called from the master stored procedure. Once we’ve successfully modularized the database code it’s best to transfer that logic into the applications consuming it. This only leaves the stored procedure with common data manipulation logic. Of course this isn’t always possible so having a plethora of performance and behavior unit tests is absolutely necessary to confirm we’ve actually improved the codebase in some way.   Refactoring is not a popular chore amongst developers or managers. The former don’t like fixing old code, the latter can’t see the financial benefit. Remember how we talked about being lousy at estimating future costs in the previous post? But there comes a time when it must be done. Hopefully I’ve given you some ideas how to get started. In the last post of the series we’ll take a look at the tools to use and an example of testing and refactoring.

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• The Basics of Project Management / Software Development

  - by Sam

  It suddenly struck me today that I have never developed any large application or worked with a team of programmers, and so am missing out a lot - both in terms of technical knowledge and the social-fun part of it. And I would like to rectify that - an idea is to start an open source group by training college students (for no charge) and developing some open source application with them. Please give me some basic advice on the whole process of how to (1) plan and (2) manage projects in a team. What new skill sets would you recommend? (I have read joel on software and 37 Signals, and got many insightful tips from them. But I'd like a little more technical knowledge ...) Background (freelancer, past 4+ years) - Computer engineer graphic / web designer online marketing moved on to programming in PHP, Perl, Python did Oracle DBA OCP training to understand DB's current self-assigned title - web application developer.

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• Unrated Easy iOS 6.1.4/6.1.3 Unlock/Jailbreak iPhone 5/4S/4/3GS Untehtered System

  - by user171772

  Popular jailbreak tool Unlock-Jailbreak.net – compiled by the iPhone Team – has just been updated with full support for Unlock/Jailbreak iPhone 5/4S/4/3GS iOS 6.1.4 and 6.1.3/6.0.1 Untethered. You may have caught our tutorial, which detailed how one could jailbreak their device tethered using Redsn0w, although since it was a pre-iOS 6.1.1 release, users needed to "point" the tool to the older firmware. Team Unlock-Jailbreak was established few years ago, combines some of the jailbreak and unlock community’s most talented developers all known for producing reliable jailbreaks in the past. This team was assembled in order to develop a reliable untethered jailbreak and unlock iphone 5,4S,4 iOS 6.1 for post-A5 devices, including the iPhone 5, the iPad mini and the latest-generation iPad. This has now been achieved with the just-released userland jailbreak tool, known as Unlock-Jailbreak.net. To Jailbreak and Unlock your iPhone 5/4/4S/3GS iOS 6.1.4 and 6.1.3 visit the official website http://www.Unlock-Jailbreak.net http://www.Unlock-Jailbreak.net was formed in mid 2008 and have successfully jailbroken over 250,000 iPhones worldwide. This is unparalleled by any other service in the industry. They have achieved this by combining a very simple solution with a fantastic customer service department that is available 24/7 through many forms of contact, including telephone. Unlock-Jailbreak from Unlock-Jailbreak.nethas been downloaded by over 250,000 customers located in over 145 countries. To further ensure customers of its products usability, Unlock-Jailbreak offers a 100% full money back guarantee on all orders. Customers dissatisfied with the company’s product will be given a full refund, no questions asked. One good advantage of the software is that the jailbreaking and unlocking process is coampletely reversible and there will be no evidence that the iPhone has been jailbroken and unlocked . iOS 6.1/6.1.4 and 6.1.3 comes with many new features and updates for multitasking and storage. By unlocking and jailbreaking the iPhone,Unlock/Jailbreak iPhone 5/4S/4/3GS iOS 6.1/6.1.4 and 6.1.3/6.0.1 Untethered unleash unlimited possibilities to improve this already fantastic experience and the iPhone FULL potential. Before going through any jailbreak process with Unlock-Jailbreak it is always good housekeeping to perform a full backup of all information on the device. It is unlikely that anything will go wrong during the process but when undertaking any process that modifies the internals of a file system it is always prudent to err on the side of caution.

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• SQL Saturday #220 - Atlanta - Pre-Con Scholarship Winners!

  - by Most Valuable Yak (Rob Volk)

  A few weeks ago, AtlantaMDF offered scholarships for each of our upcoming Pre-conference sessions at SQL Saturday #220. We would like to congratulate the winners! David Thomas SQL Server Security http://sqlsecurity.eventbrite.com/ Vince Bible Surfing the Multicore Wave: Processors, Parallelism, and Performance http://surfmulticore.eventbrite.com/ Mostafa Maged Languages of BI http://languagesofbi.eventbrite.com/ Daphne Adams Practical Self-Service BI with PowerPivot for Excel http://selfservicebi.eventbrite.com/ Tim Lawrence The DBA Skills Upgrade Toolkit http://dbatoolkit.eventbrite.com/ Thanks to everyone who applied! And once again we must thank Idera's generous sponsorship, and the time and effort made by Bobby Dimmick (w|t) and Brian Kelley (w|t) of Midlands PASS for judging all the applicants. Don't forget, there's still time to attend the Pre-Cons on May 17, 2013! Click on the EventBrite links for more details and to register!

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• Bzr Eclipse Plugin not configurable

  - by Ubuntourist

  I'm relatively new to Eclipse. I'm currently running bzr 2.2.1 and Eclipse 3.5.2 (Galileo). Following the directions at: http://wiki.bazaar.canonical.com/BzrEclipse/Installation I get to the point where it tells me the plugin has been successfully installed, but when I attempt to configure it at Window -- Preferences -- Team -- Bazaar, there's no "Bazaar" there. Team shows CVS, File Contents, Ignored Resources and Models. (Nothing useful under CVS.) Nothing in ~/workspace/.metadata/.log about bzr either. I've uninstalled and reinstalled the plugin a few times, to no avail. Is there a more thorough way to uninstall that plugin without removing everything else that's been installed? Is there somewhere else I should be looking for the source of trouble? I didn't see anything promising on Launchpad, but may not have looked deep enough.

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• T-SQL Tuesday #025 &ndash; CHECK Constraint Tricks

  - by Most Valuable Yak (Rob Volk)

  Allen White (blog | twitter), marathoner, SQL Server MVP and presenter, and all-around awesome author is hosting this month's T-SQL Tuesday on sharing SQL Server Tips and Tricks.  And for those of you who have attended my Revenge: The SQL presentation, you know that I have 1 or 2 of them.  You'll also know that I don't recommend using anything I talk about in a production system, and will continue that advice here…although you might be sorely tempted.  Suffice it to say I'm not using these examples myself, but I think they're worth sharing anyway. Some of you have seen or read about SQL Server constraints and have applied them to your table designs…unless you're a vendor ;)…and may even use CHECK constraints to limit numeric values, or length of strings, allowable characters and such.  CHECK constraints can, however, do more than that, and can even provide enhanced security and other restrictions. One tip or trick that I didn't cover very well in the presentation is using constraints to do unusual things; specifically, limiting or preventing inserts into tables.  The idea was to use a CHECK constraint in a way that didn't depend on the actual data: -- create a table that cannot accept data CREATE TABLE dbo.JustTryIt(a BIT NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY, CONSTRAINT chk_no_insert CHECK (GETDATE()=GETDATE()+1)) INSERT dbo.JustTryIt VALUES(1)   I'll let you run that yourself, but I'm sure you'll see that this is a pretty stupid table to have, since the CHECK condition will always be false, and therefore will prevent any data from ever being inserted.  I can't remember why I used this example but it was for some vague and esoteric purpose that applies to about, maybe, zero people.  I come up with a lot of examples like that. However, if you realize that these CHECKs are not limited to column references, and if you explore the SQL Server function list, you could come up with a few that might be useful.  I'll let the names describe what they do instead of explaining them all: CREATE TABLE NoSA(a int not null, CONSTRAINT CHK_No_sa CHECK (SUSER_SNAME()<>'sa')) CREATE TABLE NoSysAdmin(a int not null, CONSTRAINT CHK_No_sysadmin CHECK (IS_SRVROLEMEMBER('sysadmin')=0)) CREATE TABLE NoAdHoc(a int not null, CONSTRAINT CHK_No_AdHoc CHECK (OBJECT_NAME(@@PROCID) IS NOT NULL)) CREATE TABLE NoAdHoc2(a int not null, CONSTRAINT CHK_No_AdHoc2 CHECK (@@NESTLEVEL>0)) CREATE TABLE NoCursors(a int not null, CONSTRAINT CHK_No_Cursors CHECK (@@CURSOR_ROWS=0)) CREATE TABLE ANSI_PADDING_ON(a int not null, CONSTRAINT CHK_ANSI_PADDING_ON CHECK (@@OPTIONS & 16=16)) CREATE TABLE TimeOfDay(a int not null, CONSTRAINT CHK_TimeOfDay CHECK (DATEPART(hour,GETDATE()) BETWEEN 0 AND 1)) GO -- log in as sa or a sysadmin server role member, and try this: INSERT NoSA VALUES(1) INSERT NoSysAdmin VALUES(1) -- note the difference when using sa vs. non-sa -- then try it again with a non-sysadmin login -- see if this works: INSERT NoAdHoc VALUES(1) INSERT NoAdHoc2 VALUES(1) GO -- then try this: CREATE PROCEDURE NotAdHoc @val1 int, @val2 int AS SET NOCOUNT ON; INSERT NoAdHoc VALUES(@val1) INSERT NoAdHoc2 VALUES(@val2) GO EXEC NotAdHoc 2,2 -- which values got inserted? SELECT * FROM NoAdHoc SELECT * FROM NoAdHoc2   -- and this one just makes me happy :) INSERT NoCursors VALUES(1) DECLARE curs CURSOR FOR SELECT 1 OPEN curs INSERT NoCursors VALUES(2) CLOSE curs DEALLOCATE curs INSERT NoCursors VALUES(3) SELECT * FROM NoCursors   I'll leave the ANSI_PADDING_ON and TimeOfDay tables for you to test on your own, I think you get the idea.  (Also take a look at the NoCursors example, notice anything interesting?)  The real eye-opener, for me anyway, is the ability to limit bad coding practices like cursors, ad-hoc SQL, and sa use/abuse by using declarative SQL objects.  I'm sure you can see how and why this would come up when discussing Revenge: The SQL.;) And the best part IMHO is that these work on pretty much any version of SQL Server, without needing Policy Based Management, DDL/login triggers, or similar tools to enforce best practices. All seriousness aside, I highly recommend that you spend some time letting your mind go wild with the possibilities and see how far you can take things.  There are no rules! (Hmmmm, what can I do with rules?) #TSQL2sDay

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• Back to Basics: Structuring a Web Page with CSS and ASP.NET

  Nick Harrison explains why such habits as using nested HTML Tables to position content in the right place on the browser page is bad practice and, nowadays, avoidable. This is just one 'Markup smell' that he discusses on the way to demonstrating the benefits of CSS Style-sheets and ASP.NET Master Pages. span.fullpost {display:none;}

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• Is it possible to have multiple sets of key columns in a table?

  - by Peter Larsson

  Filtered indexes is one of my new favorite things with SQL Server 2008. I am currently working on designing a new datawarehouse. There are two restrictions doing this It has to be fed from the old legacy system with both historical data and new data It has to be fed from the new business system with new data When we incorporate the new business system, we are going to do that for one market only. It means the old legacy business system still will produce new data for other markets (together with historical data for all markets) and the new business system produce new data to that one market only. Sounds interesting this far? To accomplish this I did a thorough research about the business requirements about the business intelligence needs. Then I went on to design the sucker. How does this relate to filtered indexes you ask? I'll give one example, the Stock transaction table. Well, the key columns for the old legacy system are different from the key columns from the new business system. The old legacy system has a key of 5 columns Movement date Movement time Product code Order number Sequence number within shipment And to all thing, I found out that the Movement Time column is not really a time. It starts out like a time HH:MM:SS but seconds are added for each delivery within the shipment, so a Movement Time can look like "12:11:68". The sequence number is ordered over the distributors for shipment. As I said, it is a legacy system. The new business system has one key column, the Movement DateTime (accuracy down to 100th of nanosecond). So how to deal with this? On thing would be to have two stock transaction tables, one for legacy system and one for the new business system. But that would lead to a maintenance overhead and using partitioned views for getting data out of the warehouse. Filtered index will be of a great use here. MovementDate DATETIME2(7) MovementTime CHAR(8) NULL ProductCode VARCHAR(15) NOT NULL OrderNumber VARCHAR(30) NULL SequenceNumber INT NULL The sequence number is not even used in the new system, so I created a clustered index for a new IDENTITY column to make a new identity column which can be shared by both systems. Then I created one unique filtered index for old system like this CREATE UNIQUE NONCLUSTERED INDEX IX_Legacy (MovementDate, MovementTime, ProductCode, SequenceNumber) INCLUDE (OrderNumber, Col5, Col6, ... ) WHERE SequenceNumber IS NOT NULL And then I created a new unique filtered index for the new business system like this CREATE UNIQUE NONCLUSTERED INDEX IX_Business (MovementDate) INCLUDE (ProductCode, OrderNumber, Col12, ... ) WHERE SequenceNumber IS NULL This way I can have multiple sets of key columns on same base table which is shared by both systems.

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• REGISTER NOW: FY13 LIVE Oracle PartnerNetwork Kickoff is June 26th/27th

  - by mseika

  REGISTER NOW: FY13 LIVE Oracle PartnerNetwork Kickoff is June 26th/27th Join us for a live online event hosted by the Oracle PartnerNetwork team as we kickoff FY13. Hear messages from Judson Althoff, Oracle's SVP of Worldwide Alliances & Channels, as well as other Oracle executives, thought leaders, and partners. During Partner Kickoff you will see: Judson Althoff on FY12 recap and FY13 call to action Executive Addresses from Mark Hurd, Thomas Kurian, John Fowler, and Regional Sales Executives Embed, Sell and Implement the Full Portfolio Business Opportunities for ISV / OEM’s, System Integrators, and Channel Partners Q&A with Regional Alliances & Channels Executives Please register for your regions Partner Kickoff at the appropriate link below: Region Date / Time NAS Tuesday, June 26 @ 8:30 am PT EMEA Tuesday, June 26 @ 2:00 pm BST LAD Tuesday, June 26 @ 2:00pm EDT (Miami) / 3:00pm BRT (Sao Paulo) JAPAN Wednesday, June 27 @ 10:00 am JST APAC Wednesday, June 27 @ 8:30 am IST (Bangalore) / 11:00 am SGT (Singapore)Wednesday, June 27 @ 1:00 pm AEST (Sydney) Be sure to follow us around the web to get the latest on OPN! We look forward to seeing you online,The Oracle PartnerNetwork Team

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• REGISTER NOW: FY13 LIVE Oracle PartnerNetwork Kickoff is June 26th/27th

  - by mseika

    REGISTER NOW: FY13 LIVE Oracle PartnerNetwork Kickoff is June 26th/27th Join us for a live online event hosted by the Oracle PartnerNetwork team as we kickoff FY13. Hear messages from Judson Althoff, Oracle's SVP of Worldwide Alliances & Channels, as well as other Oracle executives, thought leaders, and partners. During Partner Kickoff you will see: Judson Althoff on FY12 recap and FY13 call to action Executive Addresses from Mark Hurd, Thomas Kurian, John Fowler, and Regional Sales Executives Embed, Sell and Implement the Full Portfolio Business Opportunities for ISV / OEM’s, System Integrators, and Channel Partners Q&A with Regional Alliances & Channels Executives Please register for your regions Partner Kickoff at the appropriate link below: Region Date / Time NAS Tuesday, June 26 @ 8:30 am PT EMEA Tuesday, June 26 @ 2:00 pm BST LAD Tuesday, June 26 @ 2:00pm EDT (Miami) / 3:00pm BRT (Sao Paulo) JAPAN Wednesday, June 27 @ 10:00 am JST APAC Wednesday, June 27 @ 8:30 am IST (Bangalore) / 11:00 am SGT (Singapore)Wednesday, June 27 @ 1:00 pm AEST (Sydney) Be sure to follow us around the web to get the latest on OPN! We look forward to seeing you online,The Oracle PartnerNetwork Team

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• REGISTER NOW: FY13 LIVE Oracle PartnerNetwork Kickoff is June 26th/27th

  - by mseika

  REGISTER NOW: FY13 LIVE Oracle PartnerNetwork Kickoff is June 26th/27th Join us for a live online event hosted by the Oracle PartnerNetwork team as we kickoff FY13. Hear messages from Judson Althoff, Oracle's SVP of Worldwide Alliances & Channels, as well as other Oracle executives, thought leaders, and partners. During Partner Kickoff you will see: Judson Althoff on FY12 recap and FY13 call to action Executive Addresses from Mark Hurd, Thomas Kurian, John Fowler, and Regional Sales Executives Embed, Sell and Implement the Full Portfolio Business Opportunities for ISV / OEM’s, System Integrators, and Channel Partners Q&A with Regional Alliances & Channels Executives Please register for your regions Partner Kickoff at the appropriate link below: Region Date / Time NAS Tuesday, June 26 @ 8:30 am PT EMEA Tuesday, June 26 @ 2:00 pm BST LAD Tuesday, June 26 @ 2:00pm EDT (Miami) / 3:00pm BRT (Sao Paulo) JAPAN Wednesday, June 27 @ 10:00 am JST APAC Wednesday, June 27 @ 8:30 am IST (Bangalore) / 11:00 am SGT (Singapore)Wednesday, June 27 @ 1:00 pm AEST (Sydney) Be sure to follow us around the web to get the latest on OPN! We look forward to seeing you online,The Oracle PartnerNetwork Team

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