Tracking changes to your development environments is important to ensure that your deployments to production go smoothly. Jacob Sebastion brings us a look at how well the Visual Studio Team System Edition for Database Professionals can help you with this task.   Read more...

Testing is an important part of any software development process, but it's a part that many of us skimp on or ignore because of the tedious nature of testing. Longtime author Grant Fritchey has been working with Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Professionals and has written us an article on how you can make your unit testing easier.   Read more...

Some managers love to look solely at numbers when assessing performance, and key performance indicators (KPIs) are right up their street. But how useful are they in the context of software development  Read more...

In the latest in their popular series on 'Unit Testing' database development work , Alex K and Alex S give some examples of unit testing Database Modifications  Read more...

Alex and Alex continue their series of three articles on 'Unit Testing' database development work with some examples of unit testing stored procedures.   Read more...

Scott examines strategies for dealing with constraints that business stakeholders may put on software development teams.   Read more...

A thought provoking article from SQL Server expert and trainer Andy Warren. As a DBA you should think about the rules and decrees you have developed over the years and revisit them for application in your current situation.   Read more...

Tracking changes to your development environments is important to ensure that your deployments to production go smoothly. Jacob Sebastion brings us a look at how well the Visual Studio Team System Edition for Database Professionals can help you with this task.   Read more...

This article looks at logging your database changes from a developer's perspective.   Read more...

Testing is an important part of any software development process, but it's a part that many of us skimp on or ignore because of the tedious nature of testing. Longtime author Grant Fritchey has been working with Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Professionals and has written us an article on how you can make your unit testing easier.   Read more...

Learn how to keep track of previous versions of code in case your next upgrade doesn't go well from SQL Server guru Tim Chapman.  Read more...

The same ANSI Standard SQL query can run against identical data on SQL Server and Oracle and return different results. So just because your application issues ANSI standard SQL, don't assume it's portable.   Read more...

Every SQL Server developer has a preferred method of doing things; mine is what I call molecular queries. These are queries assembled from atomic queries; by which, I mean that they address exactly one table. By combing atoms, I can create molecules.   Read more...

No developer or DBA wants to be told how to write their code. Everyone has their own style, but this can cause problems in a team environment where different people need to work on the same section of code. New author Pam Abdulla brings us a few simple techniques that can help you write more maintainable code.   Read more...

This article adds some handy reporting capabilities to the new load testing tool in Visual Studio 2005 Team System.  Read more...

Although the challenges of designing and developing an embedded software package are obvious, the effort of providing remote support for the deployed application is often underestimated.  Read more...

One of the fundamental skills a developer needs is the ability to test their code. Most people don't really do a good job, partly because they don't have a good process and leave testing until the end. Grant Fritchey brings us a new method of unit testing T-SQL stored procedures that can help you build automated tests for your code.   Read more...

This (new) design bothered me. It violated one of the fundamentals that I'd learned and read about for years; namely keeping the primary key small and narrow. It also looked like it would be difficult to maintain. Finally, after arguing back and forth about the merits and drawbacks of each of the designs, we decided that testing them was the only way to be sure  Read more...

If you deliver applications to a customer, then you have struggled with the challenges of updating schemas as they change. New author Serhiy Snisarenko brings us his comprehensive process and code to make this task easier.   Read more...

Most software projects fail. Only about a quarter are completely successful. About half are late and over budget and the remaining quarter just fade into oblivion. What if there was a simple way to ensure your project’s success? There is, and it’s all about starting out in the right way  Read more...