Joe, I should have remembered that. I think one of your books mentioned storing a calendar table rather than trying to workout calendar maths on the fly.

It is so...

Yes, and apparently each space shuttle launch expected at least 6000 components to fail but was still designed to work.

On my list of things not to think about is precisely...

Well October 14th 1962 was the start of he Cuban missile crisis so has Red-Gate been bought by the Russians?

Went to an astonishing presentation by Thomas Kejser at SQL Bits where he demonstrated that IDENTITY and in fact NEWSEQUENTIALID() is far slower that GUIDs on SSDs and this is...

The problem with policies and procedures is summed up by the Winston Churchill quote above.

I...

There are open-source datasets out there but by their nature they can harbour crap data.

I know of an occassion where someone didn't like the way that the Balleric Islands were...

When I started off the most junior position was analyst/programmer. This meant we had to sit infront of people who would eventually use our product. that was nearly...

Well the size is half the size of the GUID.

I'm not sure how GUIDs are generated but I'm willing to be there is substantially more calculation involved albeit highly efficient...

To answer a few points raised in this discussion thread: -

Good spot on the 84,400. It is a typo but the figure for 4 and 40 years respectively are...

Pascal Declercq (9/15/2011)

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Quote: "What happens after 40 years (well actually nearer 60 years)? Well, it will be job security for my great-grandchildren so I'm not going to worry about...

I used to work for a company supporting other peoples software. I remember one of my colleagues looking at the original implementation of .NET and viciously asserting that "this...

Gail,

I believe that it isn't simply a case of truncating on checkpoint for simple mode. I could be wrong but I thought it was a case of the truncation occuring...

I'm only half joking. Of course it isn't all bank employees, it appears to be mainly the investment bankers.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12131092

It's a tired old rant but I object to paying extra...

Grant Fritchey (8/10/2011)

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That's a huge topic. I'd like to suggest you take a look at a book, SQL Server Team-Based Development. It's free (unless you want to get a printed...

If you want to get benefits, work for a bank. Screw up the entire economy, bank post a multi-billion loss? Have a 7 figure bonus because we don't...