We've had a lot of coverage of dynamic sql (including another great one from Robert Marda later this week) but this one is a little different. Done in a question/answer format, Andy tries to explain to junior developers why dynamic sql is to be avoided, how to do so, what to do when you can't.   Read more...

Whether you write TSQL code or front end VB code against your SQL Server, it pays to have some good development practices that make your life easier. Jonathan Stokes has written a good article showing some of the good practices you should use.   Read more...

Andy starts a new series about Worst Practices - come find out why and read about the first one on his list - using Hungarian Notation for column names!   Read more...

The Windows Mobile platform, which includes Microsoft .NET Compact Framework and Microsoft SQL Server CE, encapsulates the complex tasks of communication management and data exchange while your device is in a disconnected state. (16 printed pages)  Read more...

As Chris points out, in most applications these days you end up having to go with optimistic locking, which presents a few challenges. Chris works through the list of options. If you're building web/disconnected apps and need anything besides last update wins, this one is for you.   Read more...

One of our favorite authors is back with a great how-to on log shipping. This isn't the baked in log shipping, this is a code your own solution that gives you a starting point for your situation. Even if you don't need it now, it's worth looking at to gain a better understanding of how shipping works.   Read more...

Andy has been busy lately on a project you'll be hearing more about soon (!), but he did manage to get part four of his managing jobs series done. This article discusses ideas for patterns to follow when building jobs, including writing to the console, setting errorlevels, and how to get them installed on the server. DBA's, if you're not developers, look at this article - this is stuff you can take to your development team and get better/more manageable jobs.   Read more...

David tries his hand at Project Management and what follows is a list of tips and problems from that experience. As David points out, it's interesting to see things from the other (not developer or DBA) point of view.   Read more...

This article on the JoelonSoftware site discusses project management and customer expectations. It has a great discussion of why non-technical users place so much value on what they can see (the GUI) while developers place so much value in what can't be seen (yeah, the code!). It's actually more interesting than that, take a look!  Read more...

This article by Simon Galbraith (from Red Gate software, maker of SQL Compare) discusses migrating changes from development to staging, QA, and on to production. If you've never seen the need for a schema compare tool (Steve Jones!), this is worth reading.  Read more...

We've had a lot of coverage of dynamic sql (including another great one from Robert Marda later this week) but this one is a little different. Done in a question/answer format, Andy tries to explain to junior developers why dynamic sql is to be avoided, how to do so, what to do when you can't.   Read more...

This article looks at change management from the perspective of the DBA, including how to use source control to your advantage and planning for 'self-healing' apps.  Read more...

This week Andy looks at where, when, and how jobs should be run and why you need to think about those items before you build the job. Part of this is deciding what runs on production servers and what doesn't.   Read more...

Jobs are pretty basic aren't they? They are until you get a couple hundred, or a thousand. Andy continues talking about managing jobs by standardizing how you handle notifications and failures, and talks about an interesting idea to monitor jobs separately from SQL Agent. Worth reading!   Read more...

How many jobs do you have? 10? 100? 1000? Andy makes the point that what works to manage for a small number of jobs doesn't work when that number doubles or triples (well, unless you only had 1 job to start with!). In part one of two, this article looks at ideas for using categories and naming conventions to get things under control.   Read more...

This one is pretty interesting, Andy discusses a few things he sees in comments that not only fail to add value, they end up costing extra time. There's room for discussion here, but definitely a discussion worth having - comments can make you or break you, here's a chance to think about what you think is important in commenting and pass that on to your development team.   Read more...

Andy had a semi-disaster similar to the one he wrote about last year. Interesting to see the kinds of problems that happen to other people. This article raises some interesting points that are outside the scope of basic disaster recovery, looking at how/when to move databases to a different server and how to reduce the server load dynamically.   Read more...

In this article, columnist Christopher Duncan shows you how to create your dream development project.   Read more...

In this follow up to one of our most popular articles, Andy responds to comments posted by readers and discusses how to manage SQL logins effectively in your applications.   Read more...

It's not a SQL book and the code examples are in Java, but there is a lot to like about this book. What is refactoring? How would you find it useful? Read the review to find out!   Read more...

Whether you write TSQL code or front end VB code against your SQL Server, it pays to have some good development practices that make your life easier. Jonathan Stokes has written a good article showing some of the good practices you should use.   Read more...

One of our favorite authors is back with a great how-to on log shipping. This isn't the baked in log shipping, this is a code your own solution that gives you a starting point for your situation. Even if you don't need it now, it's worth looking at to gain a better understanding of how shipping works.   Read more...

We've had a lot of coverage of dynamic sql (including another great one from Robert Marda later this week) but this one is a little different. Done in a question/answer format, Andy tries to explain to junior developers why dynamic sql is to be avoided, how to do so, what to do when you can't.   Read more...