A Domain for Data
A SQL DDL statement that Steve never knew about is the subject of today's editorial.
2025-04-04
211 reads
Database Design and Implementation
Scales & Measurements
If you’re going to work with databases, you probably ought to know something about data. In particular, we don’t put data directly into a database; we have to encode it and represent it in a format which a machine can handle.
2025-04-02
A Poor Data Model
Steve has a few thoughts on natural keys, which often turn out not to be as unique as we expect.
2025-03-03
180 reads
Database Sharding: Strategies for Seamless Scaling and Performance Optimization
Companies of all sizes and across industries are struggling to cope with an explosion of data never before seen in the short history of computing. As applications reach new levels of sophistication and become deeply interconnected, these companies find themselves increasingly overworked, overheated, and at their wits’ end, desperately trying to squeeze just a bit more performance and availability out of their aging database architectures.
2024-10-11
Uniqueness, Keys, and Identity
If you’ve ever had a traditional logic course, you’ll have run into “The Law of Identity” as the founding principle of all Western thought. It says that: “To be is to be something in particular; to be nothing in particular or anything in general, is to be nothing at all.”
2024-10-07
Storing and Retrieving the Initialization and Configuration Data for Applications
All developers hit the problem of how and where to store and set their configuration, profile, or initial data. A long time ago, it was generally decided that simple text files containing key/values were best, stored with the application. After all, you are relying on being able to entice busy people to get the permanent settings right for their requirements, folks who are generally not interested in your elegant computer science constructs. Not only that, but the settings must be parsed very quickly and efficiently, otherwise a process that uses the tool will slow to a crawl.
2024-10-04
Bad Data and Dirty Databases
Many years ago, my wife and I wrote an article for Datamation, a major trade publication at the time, under the title, “Don’t Warehouse Dirty Data!” It’s been referenced quite a few times over the decades but is nowhere to be found using Google these days. The point is, if you have written a report using data, you have no doubt felt the pain of dirty data and it is nothing new.
2024-09-27
What does SQL NULL mean and how to handle NULL values
This tip will help you understand what NULL means and different ways to handle NULL values when working with SQL Server data.
2024-07-08
Poor Database Design Realities
Steve sees that poor database design is the reality of the world and we have to work around that.
2024-06-07
326 reads
Department of Redundancy Department
Ever wonder all the reasons that we use databases instead of file systems? While we don’t think of it too much anymore, the first reason that databases came into existence was to remove redundancies.
2024-04-12
Blogs
A Pursuit of Lifelong Learning
By Brian Kelley
The following came across my YouTube feed today. It’s an interview with General James...
Advice I Like: Time and Focus
By Steve Jones
“You don’t need more time because you already have all the time that you...
Book Review: Microsoft 365 Copilot and Agent Administration Fundamentals
I don’t currently manage Microsoft 365 Copilot in an enterprise environment, but it is...
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Question of the Day
DML Trigger Types
How many types of DML triggers are there?
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