If you're that concerned, perhaps you should use NUMERIC(38, 0) ... how many billions of years will that give you ?

Vic,

Using max(colval) + 1 is probably not a good idea. If two sessions hit it simultaneously, you're going to get a collision unless you serialize access. So you...

Thanks, Troy -- I was using a faulty example when working through the question

Can you show why B isn't equivalent?

The Oracle behavior you're describing is implemented in SQL Server 2005 as the "Snapshot Isolation Level"... It's not available in SQL Server 2000 (which is why so many shops use...

Peter,

You've just described optimistic concurrency with the call center example -- that's pretty much how you do it! Rather than put the onus on the app not to try...

Steve,

The problem with the administrative app is, you're not going to need it until midnight the night before a major client is going to be coming in to see their...

Steve,

I respectfully disagree with you -- Pessimistic locking schemes, in my opinion, have far too many caveats -- for instance, what do you do when the user locks a row...

I'll whine a bit.

What is the "next thing"? Next after what? We don't know what the FIRST THING was! That said, I'm a great guesser and did...

Any of these answers could be considered correct -- more or less. Performance is an odd beast, since it depends upon what kind of application is being created! ...

No one else is jumping for this, so I will be the first to volunteer to help out...

Thanks, Troy, but I read that site at least once a week already ... and if everyone else here did, we wouldn't be having this talk

Foundations are useless?

The answer is 1 query.

A UNION ALL does not constitute two queries -- it is ONE query, composed of TWO SELECTs.

Plus, there is a required THIRD SELECT -- the actual...

Good job, Steve. Very enjoyable article. Interviewing with a 'dud' is definitely difficult.

One of my favorite questions, by the way, when I'm on the other side...