Robert Marda

I have worked for bigdough.com since 18 May 2000 as an SQL Programmer. My duties include backup management for all our SQL Servers, mentoring junior SQL Programmers, and serving as DBA while our DBA is on vacation. I develop, test, and deploy stored procedures and DTS packages as well as manage most major SQL projects. Our offices are located in Bethesda, Maryland. Before working for bigdough, I worked for Telos Corporation in Ashburn, Virginia. I started learning T-SQL and using SQL Server 7.0 on 22 March 1999. In April 1999 I was given the position of Senior Database Analyst/Administrator at Telos Corporation. I have been married to Leoncia Guzman since 23 Jul 1994. We met in the Dominican Republic where I lived for about 2 years as a missionary. We have 4 children, Willem (age 8), Adonis (age 6), Liem (age 4 and a half), and Sharleen (age 3 and a half). My hobbies include spending time with our 4 children (we play chess, dominos, mancala, and video or computer games together), keeping tropical freshwater fish, breeding and training parakeets, coin collecting (US and foreign), and geneology. I have a 55 gallon tank and 20 gallon tank. I have many kinds of fish (such as a pleco, tiger barbs, mollies, cichlids, tetras, and guppies) I also have a small aquatic turtle. I last updated my bio 30 Mar 2004.
  • Interests: Sailing, camping, computers, reading and writing sci-fi and fantasy books.

SQLServerCentral Article

Case Study: Importing New Data Without Emptying Existing Tables

The challenge for Robert Marda was to devise a way to keep the data available at all times while importing the new data, detect if a full or daily update was received and run appropriate data pumps, put in sufficient fail safes to ensure bad data would not get imported, and to make the process automatic including notification to pagers upon failure. Robert shows you how he did it here.

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2003-01-09

8,206 reads

Technical Article

Create And Execute Table Script (SQL Server 2000)

This SP will only work on SQL Server 2000 and can be placed in your master database. sp_CreateAndExecTableScript is designed to script one table and create an identical table. I designed it to use with DTS packages so that I can create an identical table with a different name, pump data into the table and […]

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2002-10-15

2,545 reads

SQLServerCentral Article

Performance Adding Hints

During the process of performance tuning queries and stored procedures there comes a time when you will notice that the execution plan selected by SQL Server is not the best plan. On occasion, everything you try doesnt cause SQL Server to choose the best way to execute your code. These are the times when hints can improve performance.

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2002-09-10

9,440 reads

SQLServerCentral Article

Understanding Execution Plans Part 1

The purpose of this article is to give you a working knowledge of how to view and understand query execution plans for SQL Server. This is part 1 in a series of articles that will walk you through understanding execution plans to help you improve your queries.

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2002-07-26

24,273 reads

Technical Article

Mark DTS Task As Complete

This is a VBScript that can be placed in an ActiveX Script Task.  The purpose of this script is to mark other tasks in the DTS package as complete before they execute.  In this way you can ensure a task does not execute.The Dim and Set lines give you access to the objects in the […]

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2002-07-18

233 reads

SQLServerCentral Article

Multi-Server Administration

Multi server administration allows you to create jobs and maintenance plans once. You can then monitor and change them from one SQL Server. View job histories and statuses for 2, 4, 10, or more SQL Servers from one master SQL Server. See how you can simplify your administration duties with multi server administration.

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2002-05-06

13,401 reads

SQLServerCentral Article

How Dynamic SQL Can Be Static SQL

This article demonstrates the flexibility of static SQL when using the CASE function in a WHERE clause, SELECT clause, ORDER BY clause, GROUP BY clause, HAVING clause, and JOIN. This is done with five examples and includes sample code you can execute on your SQL Server.

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2002-03-14

11,504 reads

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Question of the Day

Adding Defaults

I have a table, called dbo.logger, in SQL Server 2022. I decide to add two new columns to this table with this code.

ALTER TABLE dbo.logger ADD CreateDate DATETIME CONSTRAINT dfGetDate DEFAULT GETDATE()
GO
ALTER TABLE dbo.logger ADD ModifyDate DATETIME DEFAULT dfGetDate
GO
What happens when I run these two batches?

See possible answers