Software patents: stupid or insane?

Lest the headline mislead you as to my biases, I consider software patents to be both stupid and insane. I raise this issue because it is currently rearing its ugly mug in the world of open source software, but it has affected much development in the proprietary worlds of Windows as well.

First of all, patent laws were created long ago, which is not to say the thinking was correct then either, but we have to recognize the intellectual and technological climate back then.

SQL Server Spotlight on Shyam Pather

We have a few interviews of the SQL Server team and this time we talk with the lead for Notification Services. Get some insight into Shyam Pather and and this add on for the SQL Server 2005 platform.

Living the "Least Privilege" Lifestyle: Don't Run Every Day Logged In

Don Kiely contends that exercising administrative rights over our computers is a major cause of insecure systems. In the first of five articles, he explains the concept of "least privilege" and shows why software developers should be happy to operate as "mere users."

Employee Retention From the Managers Perspective

Part 3 of Steve Jones' series on employee retention, this one focused on the manager's point of view in keeping employees around. Gain some insight into how the manager may view your situation and understand why he or she may act as they do.

So you want to be a DBA...

Written by an Oracle guy, but it's still some good advice for people that want to be DBAs. If you're experienced, pass it along to others that are looking to move into this role.

SSIS - Code Reuse and Complex Control Flows

SQL Server 2005 Integration Services is an incredibly powerful, but complex environment for creating ETL packages. Kristian Wedberg brings us a new article on reusing some of your code and some complex looping structures that you might want to use in your applications.

SQL database control and deployment

If you develop SQL databases, you know how difficult it can be to promote from the development environment to production with any level of confidence that the databases are the same.

When you have upgrades, it’s difficult to identify changes as well, especially when there are multiple developers making changes to multiple databases. The problem is compounded if your target environment is a client’s system over which you have no control. It’s staggering to think about what can happen if there are 600-plus client systems that have various versions of your database.

Reporting Services 2005

Reporting Services has been enhanced in SQL Server 2005 and new author Anubhav Bansal brings us a how-to guide for editing your reports.

Finding Duplicate Indexes in Large SQL Server Databases

One important component of tuning a large, heavily used database, is to ensure that the tables are indexed optimally: enough indexing, but not too much indexing for the application you are running. There are rules of thumb about index tuning, but the entire issue is so complex that there's no "silver bullet" solution that will work for every case. However, in tuning indexes we can generally say that it's not a good idea to maintain duplicate indexes on the same data. SQL Server does not provide checks to prevent duplicate indexes from being created, as long as the names are different

Calling All Editing Buffs

Author Sean McCown would like to see some improvements in the editing tools that are available. He's proposed some changes and ideas to make a better tool. Join the discussion and see if you can get the SQL Server vendors to build something to make every DBA's job easier.