Datacentric companies like Google and Facebook are essentially data factories; mining the public space for data and then stockpiling it in massive warehouses. Just like the industrial sector, these companies...

I've never worked in an organization that didn't observe the standard six or so holidays. If someone wants to trade Christmas of July 4 for another date more in line...

For most of us in IT, there is no "Golden Parachute" or a $10k / month pension waiting for us when we turn 60. All we have to show for...

Most universities offer technical training courses, and there are Microsoft training centers in every metropolitan city. If your employer is a Microsoft partner, then you'll get plenty of invites for...

What's a "cell" ?

It appears that what we're dealing with here is a "Type 2 slowly changing dimension" table. If so, then the purpose is to retain history. There should be something like...

Yep, data mining a billion email accounts must be one hell of a job.

Assigning useful names to unique keys, foreign keys, and check constraints (rather than simply retaining the GUI assigned default) is important, because these things appear in error messages.

I've found that most dilemmas we face in life are of the false variety. Most of us don't have to choose between either accepting our current situation at work or...

Maybe Microsoft is wanting to following the casino business model where free food and drinks (tools and source code) are used to draw crowds who will end up renting rooms...

First, aggressively pushing table and index changes are something that's typically done during the prototyping and development stage. If you're doing this post-production, then that indicates poor planning.
Secondly, many...

Since we build our software on the data, we need to ensure we are properly capture the data in a way doesn't create too much technical debt. There are...