http://www.sqlservercentral.com/Articles tagged Miscellaneous, Database Design posted on SQLServerCentral.comen-us360sjones@sqlservercentral.com (Steve Jones)Two weeks ago Andy started his wildly successful series on Worst Practices. This week he continues that series discussing why failing to use primary keys and clustered indexes are worst practices. Agree or disagree, read the article and join the discussion. One thing you'll have to admit, reading an article by Andy is a lot more interesting than reading Books Online! http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Miscellaneous/worstpracticesnotusingprimarykeysandclusteredindex/488/2008/05/09http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Miscellaneous/worstpracticesnotusingprimarykeysandclusteredindex/488/New Author! Don Peterson writes his first article for us and explores why he considers XML to be...bad! There are some interesting points made here and if you've haven't thought about what XML means to you as a DBA, it's a subject worth spending some time on. http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Miscellaneous/isxmltheanswer/1147/2008/05/02http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Miscellaneous/isxmltheanswer/1147/Importing data files is always a challenge for a DBA, especially when the files might vary in format. Having one codebase is important and new author Mark Balasundram brings us the template for a high performance application to do just that. http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Miscellaneous/2925/2008/03/13http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Miscellaneous/2925/Computer professionals are constantly complaining about the documentation for the software they use. And are notorious for not documenting their own code very well. Longtime author Raj Vasant brings us a short article with some suggestions on how to go about documenting your databases. http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Miscellaneous/2784/2008/01/02http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Miscellaneous/2784/This article is an excerpt from the forthcoming book, Business Metadata, to be published on or about September, 2007, co-authored by Bill Inmon, Bonnie O’Neil and Lowell Fryman, published by Morgan Kaufman.http://www.sqlservercentral.com/redirect/articles/3245/2007/09/25http://www.sqlservercentral.com/redirect/articles/3245/SQL Server MVP Simon Sabin brings us a very interesting article on a possibilltyfor using enumerated values instead of integer or other coded foreign keys. It is an interesting idea that could go a long way towards making code easier to read. http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Miscellaneous/3174/2007/08/28http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Miscellaneous/3174/As I built out the last pieces of the original table set (Card, Vendor, and Purchase), I found a number of pieces that needed to be fixed in the design. http://www.sqlservercentral.com/redirect/articles/3034/2007/06/19http://www.sqlservercentral.com/redirect/articles/3034/In this month’s installment, we will add security to the existing code and add new unit tests to prove that security.http://www.sqlservercentral.com/redirect/articles/3033/2007/06/15http://www.sqlservercentral.com/redirect/articles/3033/In this month’s installment, we will discuss updates based on feedback from part 2 as well as introduce automated unit testing.http://www.sqlservercentral.com/redirect/articles/3032/2007/06/14http://www.sqlservercentral.com/redirect/articles/3032/Continuing with this series on building a database systemhttp://www.sqlservercentral.com/redirect/articles/3031/2007/06/13http://www.sqlservercentral.com/redirect/articles/3031/The purpose of the SqlCredit series is to demonstrate the database design and development portion of a development project. We will build a complete, functioning, tested credit card database to illustrate the complete software development lifecycle.http://www.sqlservercentral.com/redirect/articles/3030/2007/06/12http://www.sqlservercentral.com/redirect/articles/3030/Having been at the sharp end of many successful SQL Server solutions, I believe there are some fundamental principles that all successful SQL Server installations have in common. Whilst the challenges in delivering an enterprise-scale database-intensive application can be wide and varied, there are a few basic practises that will give you the best possible chance of success.http://www.sqlservercentral.com/redirect/articles/2946/2007/04/05http://www.sqlservercentral.com/redirect/articles/2946/Importing data files is always a challenge for a DBA, especially when the files might vary in format. Having one codebase is important and new author Mark Balasundram brings us the template for a high performance application to do just that. http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Miscellaneous/2925/2008/03/13http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Miscellaneous/2925/Computer professionals are constantly complaining about the documentation for the software they use. And are notorious for not documenting their own code very well. Longtime author Raj Vasant brings us a short article with some suggestions on how to go about documenting your databases. http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Miscellaneous/2784/2008/01/02http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Miscellaneous/2784/This article provides a guide for physical storage design and gives recommendations and trade-offs for physical hardware design and file architecture.http://www.sqlservercentral.com/redirect/articles/2470/2006/06/29http://www.sqlservercentral.com/redirect/articles/2470/Will multiple processors or a dual core processor be beneficial to you, and what are the differences between them? These are the questions this article will attempt to lay to rest.http://www.sqlservercentral.com/redirect/articles/2347/2006/04/04http://www.sqlservercentral.com/redirect/articles/2347/Long anticipated, the arrival of radically restructured database architectures is now finally at hand. http://www.sqlservercentral.com/redirect/articles/2089/2005/09/26http://www.sqlservercentral.com/redirect/articles/2089/Programmers, webmasters, Web services developers and database administrators (DBAs) are not strangers to the "Can we have it tomorrow?" request. That's why software and web developers have embraced a continuous stream of silver bullet technologies that promised to accelerate development. The developer community has experienced "web time", object-oriented programming (OOP), rapid application development (RAD), "extreme programming" and "agile development". Accelerated development schedules put a premium on understanding architecture and knowing how to match the tools to the job. That means understanding today's model of applications as services and what role a database can play. If you understand SQL technology, for example, you can adapt databases to application and service requirements by embedding logic in a database. http://www.sqlservercentral.com/redirect/articles/1992/2005/07/27http://www.sqlservercentral.com/redirect/articles/1992/How many of you have asked yourself what SQL is all about anyway? Join me as I begin a venture down the road of understanding SQL and how to take advantage of this language.http://www.sqlservercentral.com/redirect/articles/1982/2005/07/22http://www.sqlservercentral.com/redirect/articles/1982/Two weeks ago Andy started his wildly successful series on Worst Practices. This week he continues that series discussing why failing to use primary keys and clustered indexes are worst practices. Agree or disagree, read the article and join the discussion. One thing you'll have to admit, reading an article by Andy is a lot more interesting than reading Books Online! http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Miscellaneous/worstpracticesnotusingprimarykeysandclusteredindex/488/2008/05/09http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Miscellaneous/worstpracticesnotusingprimarykeysandclusteredindex/488/SQL Server can support many different languages through Unicode. Author Dinesh Asanka brings us a basic article on how the server supports different languages. http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Miscellaneous/globilizationinsqlserver/1946/2005/07/04http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Miscellaneous/globilizationinsqlserver/1946/If you are a developer creating Web services, a webmaster creating database-enabled pages or a database administrator (DBA) tuning SQL queries for a 24x7 web site, you've probably experienced the phenomenon known as "web time." The computer industry has never been quiet, but recent years have been particularly frenetic. The popularity of the web produced a flurry of software-development activity. New versions, new technologies, and new products appeared seemingly overnight. Web time became a useful phrase for describing compressed development cycles between new product releases and documentation that is obsolete before it arrives from the printer. http://www.sqlservercentral.com/redirect/articles/1875/2005/05/25http://www.sqlservercentral.com/redirect/articles/1875/A Chief Financial Officer (CFO) was approached by the CEO and asked for an accounting of the company’s financial assets. The CFO gave a vague response indicating a lack of knowledge of the corporate bank accounts, had little idea what was in each account, and had no idea about the status of accounts receivable. The Board of Directors asked the CEO about the intended use of the corporate assets and were told “there is no plan for their use.” The CFO and the CEO were soon pursuing new personal interests. http://www.sqlservercentral.com/redirect/articles/1873/2005/05/23http://www.sqlservercentral.com/redirect/articles/1873/New Author! Don Peterson writes his first article for us and explores why he considers XML to be...bad! There are some interesting points made here and if you've haven't thought about what XML means to you as a DBA, it's a subject worth spending some time on. http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Miscellaneous/isxmltheanswer/1147/2008/05/02http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Miscellaneous/isxmltheanswer/1147/Most SQL Server developers and DBAs are familiar with the concept of using a database as a back end to a web site or other application. However the database can be used to store more than just the data that users will edit. An interesting approach to application design begins with some knowledge of the metadata about the underlying data structures and using this to drive the application's behavior. New author Jim Craddock has utilized just such a concept in one if his applications and he brings us a look at how this works. http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Miscellaneous/datadrivenarchitecture/1733/2005/02/17http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Miscellaneous/datadrivenarchitecture/1733/Mindy explores the metadata stored in SQL 2000 to show you how to produce a simple and useful data dictionary! http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Installation/datadictionaryfromwithinsqlserver2000/607/2005/02/04http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Installation/datadictionaryfromwithinsqlserver2000/607/Over the last few years, corporations have invested billions of dollars to integrate the automations of core business systems in large ERP applications. This paper looks at the risk of downtime and solutions for building an around-the-clock database. http://www.sqlservercentral.com/redirect/articles/1588/2004/11/24http://www.sqlservercentral.com/redirect/articles/1588/Ralph Kimball, founder of The Kimbaal Group, shares some thoughts on data with PASS. http://www.sqlservercentral.com/redirect/articles/1580/2004/11/08http://www.sqlservercentral.com/redirect/articles/1580/Frank returns this week with a good non academic overview of the different types of database models and some of the features/problems that are native to each. http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Miscellaneous/anintroductiontodatabasemodels/1281/2004/02/12http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Miscellaneous/anintroductiontodatabasemodels/1281/David recently worked on a project where it turned out storing the answers to a survey using bitmapping was a good approach. He was good enough to write some of it down and share. As he notes bitmapping isn't used as often as it used to be, but it can still be a useful technique to have around. http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Miscellaneous/usingbitstostoredata/1251/2004/01/06http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Miscellaneous/usingbitstostoredata/1251/