Yearly Archive: 2009

Connect digest : 2009-12-31

Like Hugo's immensely popular item pushing for SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 3, Steve Jones has created suggestions prompting new service packs for both 2005 and 2008: #522122 : Service Pack 4 for SQL...

Mixing OLTP and reporting using indexed views

I'm not a big fan of denormalizing, nor of repeating redundant redundant information in a database when those facts can already be derived from other information.  A classic example of the latter is when...

On software bloat…

This morning I decided to install Visual Studio 2010 on one of my development VMs. I have several processes in our production environment where, for convenience, I have SQL Server Agent calling batch files...

Connect Digest : 2009-12-12

Sorry I have been quiet recently; been working very hard for the past two weeks on a migration of an old, tried SQL Server 2005 database to a brand new 2008 cluster with faster...

Giving Thanks

My career While I am no Kalen or Paul or Itzik or Erland (or… the list could go on and on), I am very thankful that I have been able to shape a moderately...

Connect Digest : 2009-11-25

Can we improve on CHECKSUM()? Mike C# is not happy with the reliability of CHECKSUM() and asks for a better function that has less (or no) chance of collisions. #513376 : A Better Collision-Free...

Connect Digest : 2009-11-20

SSMS needs to support today's (and tomorrow's) number of cores Apparently when you try to get to the server properties page where CPUs are displayed, the UI is not equipped to handle 96 cores. ...

What is so bad about EAV, anyway?

I see a lot of people trash-talking the EAV (entity-attribute-value) model.  If you want the full story on EAV, I recommend you read the Wikipedia entry.  Basically this is the situation where instead of...

Connect digest : 2009-11-13

Cart before the horse Last week, a fix for SQL Server 2008 SP1 CU #4 was quietly slipped into the CU4 download page.  CU4 was build 10.0.2734, but you could have easily grabbed 10.0.2740...

Connect Digest : 2009-11-06

This week I've been at PASS, so haven't spent a whole lot of time digging into new Connect issues.  There was one raised today where the new += syntax in SQL Server 2008 can...

Blogging from the PASS Keynote : 2009-11-04

Rushabh Mehta, PASS President of Finance What makes PASS run?  He mentioned CA and Microsoft as founding members.  But the overwhelming response from the crowd: we're more interested in free drinks. Stressed financial transparency...

Connect Digest : 2009-10-30

Light helping this week.  I am busy closing out a few projects (or at least chapters within projects) in preparation for PASS next week. ======================================== #506453 : Lock escalation no longer kicks in for...

Connect digest : 2009-10-25

Here is your weekly helping of Connect goodness.  I added two items from the Connect connection, and an item from the Visual Studio connection. ================================================= #500228 : Default Data Location Not Being Written To...

Connect digest : 2009-10-17

I've been fairly distracted this past week with my "Bad habits to kick" series, so apologies for being so late with the Connect digest.  I stumbled upon a few pretty interesting items from the...

Connect Digest : 2009-10-09

This past week I was reviewing a few bugs surrounding the new DATE, TIME, DATETIME2 and DATETIMEOFFSET data types, introduced in SQL Server 2008.  While they are much more like first-class citizens than the...

Connect Digest : 2009-10-02

Welcome to October!  This week I have five SQL Server items to point out to you, and two Connect-specific issues. /*——————————————————*/     SQL Server /*——————————————————*/ #331220 : Backup / Restore without index data Greg...

SQL Server MVP Deep Dives Redux

Manning has now released several chapters of the SQL Server MVP Deep Dives book on its web site.  I blogged about this on the 16th, but they pulled the page for some edits, so...

Connect News

I am skipping the weekly digest this week for two reasons : (1) I had a crazy busy week, and (2) Connect is embarking on a major upgrade this morning. I thought I would...