SOA, Multi-Tier Architectures and Logic in the Database

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became a useful phrase for describing compressed development cycles between new product releases and documentation that is obsolete before it arrives from the printer.

2005 IW Salary Survey

Knowing where you stand as a SQL Server 2000 DBA in terms of salary can be great information for your next review or raise discussion. Steve Jones participated in Information Week's 2005 survey and got the results back. Here are a few notes and thoughts from the survey.

How to Asynchronously Execute a DTS package from ASP or ASP.NET

The Data Trasformation Services are a powerful tool, and sometime its features are so useful that you’d like to invoke a DTS package not only from SQL Server but from an external program.

To do this you have several choices: you can use the DTSRun.exe tool or you can do it leveraging the SQL-DMO features.

Unfortunately if you’re developing a web application (ASP, ASP.Net or whatever you use) none of them seems to be the right choice: too much problems, too much effort and a very modest results. In addition none of these solutions can be called asynchronously: if you just need to implement a “fire-and-forget” technique, you just cannot do that!

XML Simplified

Everyone should be aware that XML is supported in SQL Server 2000 and plays an integral part of not only SQL Server 2005, but all of the Windows family. IIS metadata, web services, etc. all involve XML. But do you know what XML is and how to work with it? Author Raj Vasant brings us a basic article on what XML is and how the documents are structured.

DATA STRATEGY INTRODUCTION

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.

TACKLING DATA MODELERS' TOUGHEST CHALLENGE

Recently, I began a Data Modeling “Master Class” by asking participants to nominate the toughest challenges facing them in their professional work. Virtually all the responses were about “soft” or “political” issues: persuading project teams to include a data modeling phase, negotiating territory with database technicians, gaining access to business people, and, of course, staying employed. No mention of normalization, star schemas, time-dependent data, exploiting new DBMS features, choice of language or indeed anything remotely technical

Gambling at the 2005 PASS Summit

The 2005 PASS Summit is coming up in September and this is the best place to learn about SQL Server 2005 in the US. Steve Jones gives you a few reasons and arguments for your boss to let you go.

Indexed Views With Outer Joins

SQL Server 2000 has indexed views, which can greatly improve database performance. However there are a number of restrictions on building the view, including the restriction against outer joins. So how can this work? New author Jean Charles Bulinckx brings us a technique that can help you get around this restriction.

ENTERPRISE METADATA FRAMEWORK

Over the past few years, I’ve had the opportunity to discuss enterprise metadata to a wide variety of audiences and much of this conversation is captured in this “Best Practices” implementation framework. The model has evolved over the past few years as our program continues to do the same. Of course, this summary can only be a few pages long so the depth of the content here will be a tad shallow but you should be able to get the basics from the diagram and the description that follows. Figure 1 provides the new framework and the content follows to describe each section.

Agile Development with Scrum

We've all been there: the project that never ends and no light at the end of the tunnel. Nothing is more disheartening to a developer, DBA or anyone else that may be on a project than a finish line that has no end in sight or worse yet, one that keeps moving. Agile and Scrum development methodologies aim to fix this problem and others by applying what will appear to be common sense after you engage in the methodology for a few projects. This article will get you acquainted with my now-favorite d