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!   Read more...

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.   Read more...

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.   Read more...

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.   Read more...

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.  Read more...

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.   Read more...

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.   Read more...

In this month’s installment, we will add security to the existing code and add new unit tests to prove that security.  Read more...

In this month’s installment, we will discuss updates based on feedback from part 2 as well as introduce automated unit testing.  Read more...

Continuing with this series on building a database system  Read more...

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.  Read more...

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.  Read more...

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.   Read more...

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.   Read more...

This article provides a guide for physical storage design and gives recommendations and trade-offs for physical hardware design and file architecture.  Read more...

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.  Read more...

Long anticipated, the arrival of radically restructured database architectures is now finally at hand.   Read more...

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.   Read more...

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.  Read more...

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!   Read more...

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.   Read more...

Continuing with this series on building a database system  Read more...

In this month’s installment, we will add security to the existing code and add new unit tests to prove that security.  Read more...