In which Phil ruminates on the ridiculous idea that we in the West suffer from an IT skills shortage. In truth we have a very blinkered idea of the sort of person who would succeed in an IT Development role
2014-03-31
218 reads
Schemas may be largely irrelevant to small databases, where it is no trouble to assign permissions to individual objects, but they are vital for a hard working corporate database that is being actively developed and used by several applications, with thousands of objects that must be assigned the correct permission.
2014-03-24
215 reads
Phil factor warns against taking SQL Coding 'best-practices' too much at face value. They can, at best, assist in reviewing code, and at the worst they can prevent the developer from finding the best solution.
2014-01-27
492 reads
Phil factor points out that Marketing people who appeal directly to enterprise CIOs are generally wasting their time, and are better off convincing IT people in general.
2013-12-02 (first published: 2013-11-02)
150 reads
In which Phil Factor wonders why all the different cloud storage offerings are so different, sparse in their features, crude and incompatible
2013-11-11
97 reads
2013-10-14
1,032 reads
The software industry is, just occasionally, more absurd than one would dare to imagine. Having spent most of his working life in its clutches, Phil Factor has pretty much "seen it all" and what's more he's prepared to tell what he knows. The second edition of Phil's "Confessions of an IT Manager" contains Phil's full repertoire of tales of institutional mayhem and software projects gone awry.
2013-10-01
2,632 reads
Phil Factor reflects on how the people who made the industry great, in the past, were often eccentric, rebellious, odd, truculent, but all blessed with the gift of creating wonderful software. Today, such people would struggle to get pass the first interview.
2013-09-30
216 reads
Can SQL Server scale? Phil Factor has a few thoughts on the capacities that SQL Server can scale to.
2013-09-20
300 reads
Your copier could change data when creating an image. Phil Factor has some words of caution.
2013-08-14
194 reads
By Steve Jones
I had a customer ask about analyzing their Test Data Manager (TDM) usage to...
By Steve Jones
I had an idea for an animated view of a sales tool, and started...
Next Monday, February 9, 2026, my one-day live online training SQL Server Query Tuning...
Comments posted to this topic are about the item When SQL Server Central Went...
Comments posted to this topic are about the item The String Distance I
Comments posted to this topic are about the item How Database Professionals Sent a...
In SQL Server 2025, what is returned by this code:
SELECT EDIT_DISTANCE('tim', 'tom')
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