Agile: Planning Poker and Scrum

Who said you can’t gamble at work and what is Scrum anyway? Scrum is an agile process for developing software. With Scrum, projects progress via a series of iterations called sprints. A sprint can be 2 weeks, 3 weeks or a month. The sprint is a deliverable, after the completion of the sprint you are supposed to have delivered working piece of code. This might be a subset of a product. The reason to deliver frequently is so that the client can comment on the product. Instead of waiting 3 months before the client sees the product only to say that this is not what the envisioned they will see it earlier and give you feedback. This will save you a lot of time, trust me on this one! If you want to learn more about scrum then download this excellent 90 page book in pdf format by Henrik Kniberg (Scrum and XP from the Trenches)

Planning Poker
Have you ever been in a meeting where the question was asked how long it would take to do a certain task? What usually happens is this: the first person will say 16 hours and the next 3 people will pick something close or even the same value. With planning poker you don’t know what the other people said until every person decided. This is how it works: everyone has a bunch of cards which are numbered between 0.5 and 48 (with gaps), a need more info card and a need coffee break card. These cards can be used for days or hours, it depends how big the task is. So it the same question is asked then everyone puts a card down with the number facing down. Then all the people turn the cards and the group looks at the numbers. At this point you will see strange things every now and then, some people have 2 hours some people have 32 hours for the same task. The reason for this is because some of the people didn’t completely understand what is involved and might need more information. You go around the room and everyone explains how they picked their number. This is where you will find out that some people didn’t understand the task and need more info. Sometimes you will find out that a task needs to be split up, a task should not take longer than 1 ideal day to complete. After you have completed the whole process a couple of times you will find out that your team is much better at estimating the time it will take to complete a task.

There is a website where you can do planning poker online, the URL is http://www.planningpoker.com/

We made our own, we all picked a different picture for the back of the cards and everyone has the same numbers for the front.


To learn more about Scrum visit these URLs
http://agilemanifesto.org/
http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/scrum
http://www.xprogramming.com/xpmag/whatisxp.htm

If you want to read books about scrum then I recommend these two
Agile Project Management with Scrum (Microsoft Professional)
Agile Software Development with SCRUM

And never ever call a certified Scrum Master Scrumbag ;-)

Showtime You Tricked Me, Shame On You

A couple of days ago I was flipping channels (like any man ought to do without interference from the wife/girlfriend). I noticed The Hills Have Eyes 2 just started, it had 2007 as the year made. I found that a little bit strange but for all you know it was one of those straight to video releases. I checked it out on IMDB and it only got 5 stars. This is the plot outline according to IMDB: “A team of trainees of the National Guard brings supply to the New Mexico Desert for a group of soldiers and scientists that are installing a monitoring system in Sector 16. They do not find anybody in the camp, and they receive a blurred distress signal from the hills. Their sergeant gathers a rescue team, and they are attacked and trapped by deformed cannibals, having to fight to survive.”

I am thinking to myself “Okay I’ll bite and watch for 30 minutes, if it sucks I will turn it off”. I am watching this movie and the first thing I noticed is that it looks like it is taking place in the late 70s. One of these deformed freaks shows up and he looks like a puppet. How is the makeup in this movie so much worse than in the first movie? I watch for another 10 minutes and I turned it off. Next day I check IMDB again and what do I find? Yes there is a sequel of the original: The Hills Have Eyes Part II (1985). It has a 3.2 star rating. This movie doesn’t deserve more than 1 star. If you hate someone then buy this movie for that person because the person WILL suffer watching this garbage.

Becoming A Better Programmer In 6 Months: The First 20 days

Here is an update of what I accomplished in the first 20 days

Read the book lifehacker
Read the book Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Integration Services
Read the book Extending SSIS 2005 with Script
Read 1 chapter of Learning Python, Second Edition
Played around with the July CTP of SQL Server 2008

So in the first 20 days I have read 3 books however two books are very thin. I will need that time later when I start on much thicker books like Code Complete and Inside Microsoft SQL Server 2005: T-SQL Querying

I will also make a small change to the list instead of Expert SQL Server 2005 Integration Services I will read Core Python Programming

I also started tinkering with Python, those guys are a bunch of jokers. if you type "import this" in a Python command line window you get this output

win32
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import this
The Zen of Python, by Tim Peters

Beautiful is better than ugly.
Explicit is better than implicit.
Simple is better than complex.
Complex is better than complicated.
Flat is better than nested.
Sparse is better than dense.
Readability counts.
Special cases aren't special enough to break the rules.
Although practicality beats purity.
Errors should never pass silently.
Unless explicitly silenced.
In the face of ambiguity, refuse the temptation to guess.
There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it.
Although that way may not be obvious at first unless you're Dutch.
Now is better than never.
Although never is often better than *right* now.
If the implementation is hard to explain, it's a bad idea.
If the implementation is easy to explain, it may be a good idea.
Namespaces are one honking great idea -- let's do more of those!
>>>

So that is one of the easter eggs hidden in Python.

In the past week I also played around with the new date data types in SQl server 2008, I have filed a bug/typo which I found in Books On Line.This week I will concentrate on the book Learning Python, Second Edition during weekends and lunch hours, in the evening I will read Practices of an Agile Developer

This is it for the update. The original post can be found here: http://sqlservercode.blogspot.com/2007/07/become-better-developer-in-6-months.html

A more detailed post about the first 10 days can be found here: http://sqlservercode.blogspot.com/2007/07/becoming-better-programmer-in-6-months.html

I am also glad to say that most of the people I tagged in the original post have responded

Summer SQL Teaser #11 NULLIF

Here is a fun teaser. NULLIF will return a null value if the two specified expressions are equivalent.
So to give an example

DECLARE @v varchar
SET @v = ' '

SELECT NULLIF(@v,' ')

That returned NULL because @v and ' ' are the same


Now run this first

CREATE TABLE #j (n varchar(15))


DECLARE @a int
SET @a = 1
WHILE @a <= 1000 BEGIN
INSERT #j
SELECT NULLIF(REPLICATE('1', RAND()*2) , ' ')
SET @a = @a + 1
END


Then without running try to guess if the following query will return any rows

SELECT * FROM #j WHERE n = ' '

SQL Server 2008 Has Nanosecond Precision?

It looks like SQL Server 2008 has nanosecond + microseconds precision for the time datatype
If you run the following

[edit]I just looked at BOL and yes nanoseconds = ns, microsecond = mcs when used in dateadd[/edit]

DECLARE @t time
SELECT @t ='0:0'
SELECT @t AS Time1,DATEADD(ms,1,@t) AS TimeMilli,
DATEADD(ns,10000,@t) AS TimeNano1,DATEADD(ns,100,@t) AS TimeNano2


Time1 00:00:00.0000000
TimeMilli 00:00:00.0010000
TimeNano1 00:00:00.0000100
TimeNano2 00:00:00.0000001

Another interesting thing is that you can not use 0,'0' or ' ' to assign a value

These 3 will all fail

DECLARE @t time
SELECT @t =' '

DECLARE @t time
SELECT @t ='0'


DECLARE @t time
SELECT @t =0

But this will succeed

DECLARE @t time
SELECT @ =''

SQL Server Notification Services Removed from SQL Server 2008

From the last section (5.0 Deprecated Features) in the read me file

5.0 Deprecated Features
This section covers SQL Server 2005 features that are no longer included with SQL Server 2008.

5.1 SQL Server Notification Services Removed from SQL Server 2008
SQL Server Notification Services will not be included as a component of SQL Server 2008, but will continue to be supported as part of the SQL Server 2005 product support life-cycle. Moving forward, support for key notification scenarios will be incorporated into SQL Server Reporting Services. Existing Reporting Services functionality, such as data driven subscriptions, addresses some of the notification requirements. Features to support additional notification scenarios may be expected in future releases.

There you have it, no more Notification Services

SQL Server 2008 July CTP Has Been Released, The 10 New Features

Download it here: https://connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer/content/content.aspx?ContentID=5395

What is new?

Enterprise Reporting Engine
Improvements represent the two major infrastructure changes for Reporting Services. Reporting Services enhances the processing engine and rendering extensions to enable new functionality, such as Tablix support, and scalability as well as remove the dependency on IIS. Additionally, new report designer and configuration tool are provided that improve usability and workflow for RS customers.

Analysis Services Time Series
This improvement adds a new time series forecasting algorithm (ARIMA: Auto Regressive Integrated Moving Average) to the data mining algorithm suite that provides more stable long term predictions.

T-SQL Improvements
Object Dependencies: The object dependencies improvement provides reliable discovery of dependencies between objects through newly introduced catalog view and dynamic management functions. Dependency information is always up-to-date for both schema-bound and non-schema-bound objects. Dependencies are tracked for stored procedures, tables, views, functions, triggers, user-defined types, XML schema-collections, and more.


Performance Data Collection
Collect data from various sources in SQL Server and OS to help with performance troubleshooting and server maintenance. With this improvement, organizations improve their analysis of common performance issues:
· Define what data is collected and organize the collection into collection sets
· Start/stop/manipulate collection sets programmatically (T-SQL and .NET API)
· Define where data is stored (relational database)
· View data through reports in SQL Server Management Studio.
· Provide platform to plug in more data collectors in the future.


Extended Events
SQL Server Extended Events is a general event-handling system for server systems. The Extended Events infrastructure supports the correlation of data from SQL Server, and under certain conditions, the correlation of data from the operating system and database applications. In the latter case, Extended Events output must be directed to Event Tracing for Windows (ETW) in order to correlate the event data with operating system or application event data.


Database Mirroring Enhancements
SQL Server 2008 builds upon the momentum of SQL Server 2005 by providing a more reliable platform with enhanced database mirroring:

Automatic bad page repair – allows the principal and mirror machines to transparently recover from 823/824 types of data page errors by requesting a fresh copy of the corrupted page from the mirroring partner.

Log stream compression – compression of the outgoing log stream in order to minimize the network bandwidth used by database mirroring.

Miscellaneous performance enhancements:
using asynchronous log write requests on the mirror in order to shorten the log write time and thus speed-up the commit acknowledgement.

better utilization of the mirroring log send buffers in order to pack multiple smaller log blocks into a single network send.

Supportability and diagnosability improvements:
additional performance counters to allow for more granular accounting of the time spent across the different stages of the DBM log processing.

new DMVs and extensions of existing views in order to expose additional information about the mirroring sessions.


ORDPATH Improvement
ORDPATH improvement provides an important new functionality to our customers who use hierarchical data. It provides a superior way of modeling hierarchies in SQL Server by introducing the HierarchyID system data type and corresponding built-in methods which are designed to make it easier to store, query and operate hierarchical data. HierarchyID is also optimized for representing trees, the most common type of hierarchical data.


Large User-Defined Types Improvement
Large user-defined types allows users to expand the size of defined data types by eliminating the 8‑KB limit.

DATE/TIME Data Types
SQL Server 2008 introduces new date and time data types. The new data types enable applications to have separate date and time types, larger year ranges for date value, larger fractional seconds precision for time value, time-zone offset aware datetime type that containing date, time and time zone offset portion, user defined option on fractional seconds precision of time related types and datetime2 and datetimeoffset provide standards conformant semantics. Along with the T-SQL support on the new types, both native (ODBC, OLEDB) and managed (SqlClient) providers also provide the full support through the client driver APIs.


Improved XML Support
To leverages the new date and time types, SQL Server’s XML Schema collection now provides full support for the xs:date, xs:time and xs:dateTime data types. Support for union types is also enhanced by returning correct results for “instance of” queries when union types are involved, and adding support for lists of unions and unions of lists constructs in XML Schemas.

Say Hello To My New Boss

Yes it looks like it is a done deal: News Corp. Appears to Have
Enough Votes to Clinch Deal Bancroft family members owning 32% of Dow Jones & Co.'s overall votes have agreed to support News Corp.'s $5 billion bid for Dow Jones, the publisher of The Wall Street Journal, according to people familiar with the matter.

That level of support is likely more than enough to guarantee News Corp. enough votes to clinch the deal.

Let's see what happens next, maybe I will get some new toys (64 CPU SQL boxes) to play with. I'll happily take the outdated MySpace equipment also ;-)

Cannot resolve collation conflict for equal to operation.

You set up your linked server, you write a query which joins two tables, you execute the query and the error message is this
Cannot resolve collation conflict for equal to operation


What does this mean? This mean that the collation on the two tables is different

Let's look at an example. Le's create two tables, onme with Traditional_Spanish_CI_AI collation and one with the default. The default collation for me is SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS.


CREATE TABLE #Foo (SomeCol varchar(50) COLLATE Traditional_Spanish_CI_AI)
CREATE TABLE #Foo2 (SomeCol varchar(50))


INSERT #Foo VALUES ('AAA')
INSERT #Foo VALUES ('BBB')
INSERT #Foo VALUES ('CCC')
INSERT #Foo VALUES ('DDD')

INSERT #Foo2 VALUES ('AAA')
INSERT #Foo2 VALUES ('BBB')
INSERT #Foo2 VALUES ('CCC')
INSERT #Foo2 VALUES ('DDD')

Now run this query and you will get the error message

SELECT * FROM #Foo F1
JOIN #Foo2 f2 ON f1.SomeCol = f2.SomeCol


Server: Msg 446, Level 16, State 9, Line 1
Cannot resolve collation conflict for equal to operation.

Now add COLLATE Traditional_Spanish_CI_AI to #Foo2 SomeCol

SELECT * FROM #Foo F1
JOIN #Foo2 f2 ON f1.SomeCol = f2.SomeCol COLLATE Traditional_Spanish_CI_AI

That works, if you add COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS to #Foo SomeCol that will work also


SELECT * FROM #Foo F1
JOIN #Foo2 f2 ON f1.SomeCol COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS = f2.SomeCol


If you want to know what these collations mean then run the following query (yes that is not a typo it is indeed ::).

SELECT *
FROM ::fn_helpcollations()
WHERE name in('SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS','Traditional_Spanish_CI_AI')

Traditional_Spanish_CI_AI
Traditional-Spanish,
case-insensitive,
accent-insensitive,
kanatype-insensitive,
width-insensitive

SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS
Latin1-General,
case-insensitive,
accent-sensitive,
kanatype-insensitive,
width-insensitive for Unicode Data,
SQL Server Sort Order 52 on Code Page 1252 for non-Unicode Data

Have You Seen 300?

Tomorrow 300 is coming out on DVD. Have you seen 300? Are you going to buy it or rent it? I did not see it but I ordered the
Widescreen Two-Disc Special Edition. I heard from several people I have talked to that they loved it when they saw in the movie theater and they can’t wait to watch it again.
I do have the special edition of Sin City which is Frank Miller’s first movie. I watched that several times. If you have that once make sure you watch the green screen fast forward version.
So what is 300 about? Spartan King Leonidas and 300 Spartans fight to the last man against Persian King Xerxes and his army of over one million soldiers, while in Sparta, Queen Gorgo attempts to rally support for her husband. The story is framed by a voice-over narrative by the Spartan soldier Dilios. Through this narrative technique, various fantastical creatures are introduced, placing 300 within the genre of historical fantasy.

So what are you going to do?
A) Buy the regular version
B) Buy the Widescreen Two-Disc Special Edition
C) Buy the HD-DVD version
D) Buy the Blu-Ray version
E) Rent it
F) Wait for Cable
G) Wait for Network TV
H) Not watch it at all

Obviously my pick is B

Summer SQL Teaser #10 ROLLBACK

This one is not so much a teaser but it will show you what you can do in case you want to insert data in a logging table after a rollback occurs
Without running this try to guess what the counts of the three tables will be after the rollback


CREATE TABLE Test (id int)
CREATE TABLE #Test (id int)
DECLARE @Test table (id int)



BEGIN TRAN
INSERT INTO @Test VALUES(1)
INSERT INTO Test VALUES(1)
INSERT INTO #Test VALUES(1)
ROLLBACK TRAN


SELECT '@test',COUNT(*) FROM @Test
SELECT ' test',COUNT(*) FROM Test
SELECT '#test',COUNT(*) FROM #Test


DROP TABLE Test,#Test

Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 Released!

Visual Studio Team System 2008 Beta 2 Team Suite (VPC)
Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 is the next-generation development tool for Windows Vista, the 2007 Office System, and the Web.

Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 Standard Edition
Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 is the next-generation development tool for Windows Vista, the 2007 Office System, and the Web.

Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 Team Foundation Server (VPC)
Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 is the next-generation development tool for Windows Vista, the 2007 Office System, and the Web.

MSDN Library for Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2
MSDN Library provides access to essential programming information, including technical reference documentations, white papers, software development kits and code samples necessary to develop web services and applications. This is an updated version of the MSDN Library for Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2.

Visual Studio Team System 2008 Beta 2 Team Suite
Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 is the next-generation development tool for Windows Vista, the 2007 Office System, and the Web.

Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 Professional Edition
Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 is the next-generation development tool for Windows Vista, the 2007 Office System, and the Web.

Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 Team Foundation Server
Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 is the next-generation development tool for Windows Vista, the 2007 Office System, and the Web.

Visual Studio Code Name "Orcas" Beta 1 Professional (self-extracting install)
Microsoft Visual Studio Code Name "Orcas" is the next generation development tool for Windows Vista, the 2007 Office System, and the Web.

Visual Studio Code Name "Orcas" Beta 1 Team Foundation Server (VPC)
Microsoft Visual Studio Code Name "Orcas" is the next generation development tool for Windows Vista, the 2007 Office System, and the Web.

Becoming A Better Programmer In 6 Months: The First 10 days

Here is an update of what I accomplished in the first 10 days

Read the book lifehacker
Read the book Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Integration Services
Read 126 pages of Extending SSIS 2005 with Script
Installed PostgreSQL, Python, Eclipse and Django.

Now you may ask yourself how I could have read all these things in 10 days. This is because I have to convert a whole bunch of packages from DTS to SSIS. So I did read a lot at work about SSIS. As you can see I sneaked the Extending SSIS 2005 with Script book in there which was not on my original list. I actually did all the example in that book. SSIS is pretty cool, the only thing which was frustrating (at first) was that you cannot modify a connection string with script like in DTS. However you can use Package Configurations to do that. This is important if you have to import a daily Excel file with a different filename every day. So as your first step in your package you just update the configuration table. Here is a small example

DECLARE @i char(8)
SELECT @i = CONVERT(CHAR(8),GETDATE()-1,112)

UPDATE dbo.[SSIS_Configurations]
SET ConfiguredValue = 'E:\SSISExcel\ida' + @i + '.csv'
WHERE ConfigurationFilter ='CSV'
AND PackagePath ='\Package.Connections[FlatFileCSV].Properties[ConnectionString]'

I will write a blogpost with more details and screenshots within the next couple of days.

I though the Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Integration Services book was pretty good. I saw some mixed reviews on Amazon but I do not agree with that at all. The book is well organized, easy to read and the examples are easy to follow. I recommend this book to anyone who has to learn SSIS.

Another book I read is lifehacker, this books shows hacks that you can use to improve your technical life. One of the hacks that I have implemented is the JunkDraw hack. You create a folder called JunkDraw, this is where you save all your downloaded content. Then there is the VB Script which is scheduled to run once a day and deletes all the files which are older than 2 weeks from this folder. So if you downloaded something and you did not move it from the folder it will be gone. How many files/apps/trial/beta apps have you downloaded, moved to a folder and never looked at again? Exactly this will prevent that kind of clutter.

I mentioned that I would like to learn a new language, so I went a little overboard because in addition to a new language I have also chosen a new database and a framework. The language is Python which was created by Guido van Rossum. Python is a scripting language and pretty popular among the FLOSS guys/girls. This of course will prepare me to play around with IronPython and the DLR once that is finalized. The DB I picked is PostgreSQL, I have chosen PostgreSQL instead of MySQL because I just can’t install a DB where you can enter invalid days. Another reason is that PostgreSQL is recommended with the framework that I picked. I picked Django over TurboGears and Ruby on Rails because I have heard some good things about it, one of them being performance. So last Sunday 5AM I installed PostgreSQL, Django, Python, Eclipse and the Eclipse Python plugin Pydev on a windows box and got the initial setup to work.

I will keep you posted on my progress once every 10 days but so far it is going good ;-)

Here is the link to the original Become a Better Developer... in 6 months article

This has to be one of the worst planned projects in recent Database history

http://www.tek-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=1391668&page=1

here is the question
I have a situation where a person can have more then one item ordered. I need to layout the information as follows:

Person      Item Ordered      Item Description
----------------------------------------------
1            1 of 2           Item1
1            2 of 2           Item2
2            1 of 1           Item1
3            1 of 3           Item3
3            2 of 3           Item2
3            3 of 3           Item1
.
.

The information is in the same table and Item Ordered is in relationship to Person instead of Item Description.

I posted this same question on the Oracle forum, because the project is being done using two databases. Sql Server for development and Oracle for Production. I would like to get the SQL Server version of how to implement the select statement.

It gets better
Yes, it is crazy that two database are being used to develop the system, but the people who make the decisions claimed that in the preliminary stages Oracle was causing problems.
So, they switched to SQL Server as the development database. Of course the end result it that the customer expects to implement Oracle. I suspect that someone was just too lazy to learn Oracle.

And better
I asked my manager why Oracle and SQL Server and she stated that they were having load balancing issues (whatever that means). And when errors occured they were not sure how to fix them and it took too much time. At the beginning of the project there may not have been enough Oracle talent to tackle the problems. The Oracle talent available has been here for about 4 years before the project started. So, I wonder how much knowlege they DO have. I feel that an consultant should have been invested in. So, right now when stuff is put into testing for production we have to flip-flop between SQL Server and Oracle.


What? Who came up with that reason? This is just incredible. What do you think?

Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Professionals Service Release 1 Is Here

Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Professionals Service Release 1 has been Released

Overview
This service release addresses the top issues that were found through feedback from customers and partners. This release includes the following features:

• Cross-database references

Support is improved to enable you to reference objects in different databases by using database project references or referencing a database metafile (.dbmeta). This support will reduce or eliminate the cross database reference warnings within a database project.

• Improved file support within SQL Server file groups

You may define files within file groups as database project properties instead of having to create files and file groups within the pre-deployment storage script.

• Variables

A Variables page is added to the database properties. This new page enables you to define setvar variables for use in the deployment scripts. Additionally, SR1 supports the latest service pack release from Microsoft SQL Server 2005 (SP2). The SR1 also supports the Windows Vista operating system.



The knowledge base (KB) article describing this service release is here http://support.microsoft.com/kb/936612/

The actual download is here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=9810808c-9248-41a5-bdc1-d8210a06ed87&displaylang=en

Summer SQL Teaser #9 @@TRANCOUNT

Here is another quick teaser. What will be the values of the print statements? Try to guess it before running this code

SET ANSI_DEFAULTS ON

PRINT '#1 == ' + LTRIM(STR(@@TRANCOUNT))

BEGIN TRANSACTION

PRINT '#2 == ' + LTRIM(STR(@@TRANCOUNT))

ROLLBACK

Summer SQL Teaser #8 Comments And Go

Without running the following two blocks of code what do you think will the output be?


/* code 1

SELECT GETDATE()

GO */

SELECT GETDATE()



/* code 2

SELECT GETDATE()

GO

*/

SELECT GETDATE()

Some Pics

I have uploaded some pics on Flickr that I took a while back.

There is Paris, Amsterdam, Hawaii, Croatia and New York. Two of them you can see below. To see the NYC and Amsterdam night shots visit this URL: http://www.flickr.com/photos/denisgobo/tags/nightshot/

Amsterdam


New York city

The Internet has Crashed

Don't worry they got it back to work, watch the video here: http://www.scaryideas.com/video/3017/

Non-Technical: Happy Birthday Twins

HTML Source EditorWord wrap

Today my twins are one year old. It is supposed to be a little easier from now on (until they hit 2 that is). Here is one picture.

If you want to see more you can go here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/denisgobo/

This is the last non technical post I will make for a while, My next post will be about Scrum and planning poker.

I see that Hugo Kornelis and Adam Machanic responded to my tagging. Good, three slackers people left.

Become a Better Developer... in 6 months

I just listened to the latest Hanselminutes podcast: Be a Better Developer in Six Months
Scott Hanselman asks “what are you going to do in the next 6 months to become a better developer”?
He suggest reading books, nerd dinners, having lunches together with other non competitive companies, watch webcasts together during lunch and code reading.

Here is what I am going to do for the next 6 months

I am going to read a technical book every 10 days and review every single book

That should be possible now that my twins are one year old (tomorrow). I have a bit more free time at night to read. Here is the list of books, some of them I have read, some I have partially read.

Code Complete (reread)
I think this is one of those books that you should read once a year.

Practices of an Agile Developer
Some good stuff in here, in ordered it a couple of months ago but did not read it yet.

Inside Microsoft SQL Server 2005: T-SQL Querying (partial reread)
I read several chapters but did not read the whole book.

Inside Microsoft SQL Server 2005: The Storage Engine (reread)
I have read parts of this one; I have read the 2000 edition several times.

Refactoring (reread)
I was thinking Design Patterns (GOF) or this one. As you can see I have chosen Refactoring.

Prefactoring
Why refactor when you can prefactor? I just skimmed through it in the book store and it looks promising.

Open Sources 2.0
Open Sources 2.0 is a collection of insightful and thought-provoking essays from today's technology leaders that continues painting the evolutionary picture that developed in the 1999 book Open Sources: Voices from the Revolution.

Pragmatic Unit Testing in C# with NUnit
New edition.

Building the Data Warehouse (reread)
Read this one several years ago, will read it again

Expert SQL Server 2005 Integration Services
Will read this together with the one below at work; have to convert about 60 DTS packages to SSIS.

Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Integration Services

Beautiful Code
In this unique and insightful book, leading computer scientists offer case studies that reveal how they found unusual, carefully designed solutions to high-profile projects. You will be able to look over the shoulder of major coding and design experts to see problems through their eyes.

Pro SQL Server 2005 Database Design and Optimization (reread)
Read this will read it again

The Art of SQL
Heard some good stuff about this book.

Getting Things Done
We all need some help with organizing our lives.

Lifehacker (reread)
Getting ThingsDone for the computer person, very useful stuff inside.

Framework Design Guidelines (reread)
Very nice book, you will learn why something was done a certain way. Good tips on what to avoid and what should be done.


New language Book probably Python or Ruby( you decide)

Here is a pic of the books I have at home, the others I have at work or I still have to purchase them.





I will watch 2 web casts a week during lunch time and review those also.

I will look at high quality source code from open source projects and also from the book Beautiful Code. I will go to CodePlex to download a couple of open source projects and will study the source code

I will learn a new language (I actually got this from Ken Henderson who suggests to learn a new language every year) and rewrite one of the current applications in that language. This way I don’t have to worry about logic problems and design, I just have to translate the code.

I will learn a new technology. I am thinking either WCF or WPF


I will keep updates on Pownce (sorry folks no invites left) everyday The reason I am doing this is so that someone can call me out in case I don’t keep my promise. This is similar to stopping smoking but not telling anyone, if you do that then who knows you stopped so that they can confront you?

I know this is cheesy but I will do it anyway, I will tag 5 people I (kind of) know and I want them to tell us their plans.
Adam Machanic
Louis Davisdson
Peter DeBetta
Mladen Prajdic
Hugo Kornelis

And I will tag 5 people whose blogs I read but I don’t know them
Jeff Smith
Jason Gaylord
Jeff Altwood
Matija Lah
Ward Pond


And you the reader, what will you do in the next 6 months to become a better developer?


Cross posted from here: http://sqlblog.com/blogs/denis_gobo/archive/2007/07/16/1746.aspx

Best Practice: Backups

What if I told you to take your latest production backup, restore it on a different machine and try using the database? Are you comfortable with that task? Do you think it will work? When was the last time you tested your backups?

Do you even have a backup?
Why am I asking all these things? Because your data is as good as your last good backup. Is your data backed up regularly? You will say “Of course it is we use [Insert expensive backup solution here] for all our enterprise backups”. Prove it, go to work on Monday and ask them to give you the latest backup. I bet out of a 100 people who ask this question to their backup team there will be several people without a backup file.
Here is another problem: three years ago the backups were taking about 1 hour. The backup started at 12 it would be done at 1, at 1:30 a job from another machine would ftp the file down. Two years later the backup takes 2 hours to complete, you didn’t realize this. Can you guess what will happen if you try to restore once of those backup that were moved by FTP? I will tell you it won’t work. What if there is no backup and you do a FTP? Oh yes the 0kb file will be created.

Where do you keep your backups?
Are you backups in the same building? If you would say yes then you have a big problem. Let me tell you a little story. I worked for a company in New York City between 2001 and 2005. This company had their office in WTC tower one. To be safe they kept their backups in WTC tower two. Well I don’t have to tell you what happened with the backup. If you do store your backup offsite (and why wouldn’t you?) make sure it is at least 100 miles away. If you don’t want to go that far from your current location then pick a location which is safe from floods, fires and not worthy to attack.

Where is your Source Code?
Do you backup your source code? Most people will say they keep it in Subversion or Visual Source Safe. But does that get backed up? What happens if your building goes up in flames? What we do is we have a full source code backup every day. In addition to that we also have differential backups every n revisions. We have jobs that create these backups and then FTP them to 3 different locations. If you have 20 developers and you lose 6 hours of work then you have lost 120 * $$ (you do the math). This is the best case scenarios. If the backup was in the building together with all the workstations then you got a lot bigger problem to deal with.
SQL developers are notorious for not using source control. They will tell you that the database backup is their source control. A source control system does not have to be expensive; we use Subversion (which is free and better than VSS). You can either use Tortoise or the plugin for Visual Studio to do your check ins.

DMVStats (A SQL Server 2005 Dynamic Management View Performance Data Warehouse ) Released

Over the last year, Tom Davidson has been working on a tool called DMVstats with some of his CAT colleagues. DMVstats collects performance oriented DMVs into a data warehouse, and provides a methodology called 'Waits' and 'Queues' to identify and track down performance issues. Drill-through analysis is provided by reporting services reports.

DMVStats 1.01
A SQL Server 2005 Dynamic Management View Performance Data Warehouse

Introduction
Microsoft SQL Server 2005 provides Dynamic Management Views (DMVs) to expose valuable information that you can use for performance analysis. DMVstats 1.0 is an application that can collect, analyze and report on SQL Server 2005 DMV performance data. DMVstats does not support Microsoft SQL Server 2000 and earlier versions.

Main Components
The three main components of DMVstats are:
• DMV data collection
• DMV data warehouse repository
• Analysis and reporting.
Data collection is managed by SQL Agent jobs. The DMVstats data warehouse is called DMVstatsDB. Analysis and reporting is provided by means of Reporting Services reports.

Download it here: http://www.codeplex.com/sqldmvstats/

Summer SQL Teaser Datetime Yet Again

Okay one more quick teaser

You have this date '2007-01-01 00:00:00.001'

When adding 1 or 2 milliseconds to that date what will be the result?

SELECT DATEADD(ms,1,CONVERT(datetime, '2007-01-01 00:00:00.001'))

SELECT DATEADD(ms,2,CONVERT(datetime, '2007-01-01 00:00:00.001'))

Summer SQL Teaser: Datetime

First create this table

CREATE TABLE #DateMess (SomeDate datetime)
INSERT #DateMess VALUES('20070710')
INSERT #DateMess VALUES('20070711')
INSERT #DateMess VALUES('20070712')
INSERT #DateMess VALUES('20070713')


This should be easy for most people, but not everyone knows this.
Without running the query do you know how many rows you will get back from the query

SELECT *
FROM #DateMess
WHERE SomeDate <= '2007-07-12 23:59:59.999'


I created this teaser because of a response that Celko made here:
http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.public.sqlserver.programming/browse_thread/thread/345a73f93cf6a684/

Oracle Unveils Oracle Database 11g

I know a lot of us don't just work with SQL Server so I decided to share this one


Oracle today introduced Oracle(r) Database 11g, the latest release of the world's most popular database. With more than 400 features, 15 million test hours, and 36,000 person-months of development, Oracle Database 11g is the most innovative and highest quality software product Oracle have ever announced.
"Oracle Database 11g, built on 30 years of design experience, delivers the next generation of enterprise information management," said Andy Mendelsohn, senior vice president of Database Server Technologies, Oracle. "More than ever, our customers are facing the challenges of, rapid data growth, increased data integration, and data connectivity IT cost pressures. Oracle Database 10g pioneered grid computing, and more than half of Oracle customers have moved to that release. Oracle Database 11g delivers the key features our customers have asked for to accelerate broad adoption and growth of Oracle grids; representing real innovation, that addresses real challenges, as told to us by real customers."

Oracle Database 11g can help organizations take control of their enterprise information, gain better business insight, and quickly and confidently adapt to an increasingly changing competitive environment. To do this, the new release extends Oracle's unique database clustering, data center automation, and workload management capabilities. With secure, highly available and scalable grids of low-cost servers and storage, Oracle customers can tackle the most demanding transaction processing, data warehousing, and content management applications.

Real Application Testing Helps Reduce Time, Risk and Cost of Change
Oracle Database 11g features advanced self-management and automation features to help organizations meet service level agreements. For example, with organizations facing regular database and operating system software upgrades, and hardware and system changes, Oracle Database 11g introduces Oracle Real Application Testing, making it the first database to help customers test and manage changes to their IT environment quickly, in a controlled, cost effective manner.

Increase Return On Investment for Disaster Recovery Solutions
In Oracle Database 11g, Oracle Data Guard enables customers to use their standby database to improve performance in their production environments as well as provide protection from system failures and site-wide disasters. Oracle Data Guard uniquely enables simultaneous read and recovery of a single standby database making it available for reporting, backup, testing and 'rolling' upgrades to production databases. By offloading workloads from production to a standby system, Oracle Data Guard helps enhance the performance of production systems and provides a more cost-effective disaster recovery solution.

Enhanced Information Lifecycle Management and Storage Management
Oracle Database 11g has significant new data partitioning and compression capabilities, for more cost-effective Information Lifecycle Management and storage management. Oracle Database 11g automates many manual data partitioning operations and extends existing range, hash and list partitioning to include interval, reference and virtual column partitioning. In addition, Oracle Database 11g provides a complete set of composite partitioning options, allowing storage management that is driven by business rules.

Building on its long-standing data compression capabilities, Oracle Database 11g offers advanced data compression for both structured and unstructured (LOB) data managed in transaction processing, data warehousing, and content management environments. Compression ratios of 2x to 3x or more for all data can be achieved with the new advanced compression capabilities in Oracle Database 11g.

Total Recall of Data Changes
The new release also features "Oracle Total Recall," enabling administrators to query data in designated tables "as of" earlier times in the past. This offers an easy, practical way to add a time dimension to data for change tracking, auditing, and compliance.

Maximum Availability of Information
Oracle has consistently led the industry in protecting database applications from planned and unplanned downtime. Oracle Database 11g continues this lead by making it easier for administrators to meet their users' availability expectations. New availability features include Oracle Flashback Transaction which makes it easy to back out a transaction made in error, as well as any dependent transactions; Parallel Backup and Restore which helps improve the backup and restore performance of very large databases; and 'hot patching,' which improves system availability by allowing database patches to be applied without the need to shut databases down. In addition, a new advisor - Data Recovery Advisor - helps administrators significantly reduce recovery downtime by automating problem investigation, intelligently determining recovery plan and handling multiple failure situations.

Oracle Fast Files
The next-generation capability for storing large objects (LOBs) such as images, large text objects, or advanced data types � including XML, medical imaging, and three-dimensional objects - within the database. Oracle Fast Files offers database applications performance fully comparable to file systems. By storing a wider range of enterprise information and retrieving it quickly and easily, enterprises can know more about their business and adapt more rapidly.

Faster XML
Oracle Database 11g includes significant performance enhancements to XML DB, a feature of Oracle database that enables customers to natively store, and manipulate XML data. Support for binary XML has been added offering customers a choice of XML storage options to match their specific application and performance requirements. XML DB also enables manipulation of XML data using industry standard interfaces with support for XQuery, Java Specification Requests (JSR)-170 and SQL/XML standards.

Transparent Encryption
Oracle Database 11g continues to build on its unmatched security capabilities through the addition of significant enhancements. The new release features improved Oracle Transparent Data Encryption capabilities beyond column level encryption. Oracle Database 11g offers tablespace encryption that can be utilized to encrypt entire tables, indexes, and other data storage. Encryption is also provided for LOBs stored in the database.

Embedded OLAP Cubes
Oracle Database 11g also provides data warehousing innovations. OLAP cubes are enhanced to behave as materialized views in the database. This allows developers to use industry standard SQL for data query, but still benefit from the high performance delivered by an OLAP cube. New Continuous Query Notification features allow applications to be immediately notified when important changes are made to database data without burdening the database with constant polling.

Connection Pooling and Query Result Caches
The performance and scalability features in Oracle Database 11g are designed to help organizations maintain a highly performant, scalable infrastructure to provide users' with the best quality of service. Oracle Database 11g further enhances Oracle's position as the industry's performance and scalability leader with new features such as Query Result Caches which improves application performance and scalability by caching and reusing the results of often called database queries and functions in database and application tiers, and Database Resident Connection Pooling which improves the scalability of web-based systems by providing connection pooling for non-multi-threaded applications.

Enhanced Application Development
Oracle Database 11g offers developers a choice of development tools, and a streamlined application development process that takes full advantage of key Oracle Database 11g features. These include new features such as Client Side Caching, Binary XML for faster application performance, XML processing, and the storing and retrieving of files. In addition, Oracle Database 11g also includes a new Java just-in-time Compiler to execute database Java procedures faster without the need for a third party compiler; native integration with Visual Studio 2005 for developing .NET applications on Oracle; Access migration tools with Oracle Application Express; and SQL Developer easy query building feature for fast coding of SQL and PL/SQL routines.

Enhanced Self-Management and Automation
The manageability features in Oracle Database 11g are designed to help organizations easily manage enterprise grids and deliver on their users' service level expectations. Oracle Database 11g introduces more self-management and automation that will help customers reduce their system management costs, while increasing performance, scalability, availability and security of their database applications. New manageability capabilities in Oracle Database 11g include Automatic SQL and memory tuning, a new Partitioning Advisor which automatically advises administrators on how to partition tables and indexes in order to improve performance, and enhanced performance diagnostics for database clusters. In addition, Oracle Database 11g includes a new Support Workbench which provides an easy-to-use interface that presents database health-related incidents to administrators along with information on how to quickly manage the resolution of incidents.

Oracle is the #1 Database: Gartner 2006 Worldwide RDBMS Market Share Reports 47.1 Percent Share for Oracle
Gartner recently published their market share numbers by operating system for 2006 based on total software revenues. According to Gartner, Oracle:

* Has 47.1 percent share (up from 46.8 percent in 2005);

* Has revenue growth of 14.9 percent, faster than the market average of 14.2 percent with US$7.2 Billions in revenues; and,

* Continues to hold more market share than its two closest competitors combined.

About Oracle Database 11g
Oracle Database is the only database designed for grid computing. With the release of Oracle Database 11g, Oracle is making the management of enterprise information easier than ever; enabling customers to know more about their business and innovate more quickly. Oracle Database 11g delivers superior performance, scalability, availability, security and ease of management on a low-cost grid of industry standard storage and servers. Oracle Database 11g is designed to be effectively deployed on everything from small blade servers to the biggest SMP servers and clusters of all sizes. It features automated management capabilities for easy, cost-effective operation. Oracle Database 11g's unique ability to manage all data from traditional business information to XML and 3D spatial information makes it the ideal choice to power transaction processing, data warehousing, and content management applications.

SQL Server 2008 will launch on Feb. 27, 2008

Turner announced that Windows Server® 2008, Visual Studio® 2008 and Microsoft SQL Server™ 2008 will launch together at an event in Los Angeles on Feb. 27, 2008, kicking off hundreds of launch events around the world. As the next wave of innovation from Microsoft’s Server and Tools Business, these three products will provide a reliable and security-enhanced enterprise platform, serve as the foundation for the next generation of Web-based service applications, and broadly support virtualization and business intelligence. Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008 represent tremendous opportunities for partners and customers, and as part of the launch wave throughout 2008, Microsoft is planning extensive and far-reaching IT pro, developer and partner outreach, including worldwide training, online and virtual events, as well as myriad resources that will be made available in the coming months to help ensure partners and customers are ready to capitalize on the new benefits offered by these products.

Read the rest here: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2007/jul07/07-10WPCDay1PartnersPR.mspx

Giving Away 2 Invites For Pownce

I have 2 invites left for Pownce.

Leave me a comment here (explaining why you want/need that invite, also leave your home page URL) and send an email to sqlservercode AT gmail.com (include the home page you left in the comment) if you want one.

Best 2 comments will get the invite.

I will announce the winners tomorrow (July 11 2007) at 6AM EST

SQL Controversy: Capitalizing Keywords

Do you write code like this?

set ROWCOUNT 10
select Products.ProductName as TenMostExpensiveProducts, Products.UnitPrice
from Products
order by Products.UnitPrice desc

Or like this?

SET ROWCOUNT 10
SELECT Products.ProductName AS TenMostExpensiveProducts, Products.UnitPrice
FROM Products
ORDER BY Products.UnitPrice DESC


Do we need to capitalize the keywords, functions and statements when we have syntax coloring built into the product?
Look if you use SPUFI with DB2 I understand (see image below)






Here is another example this time without color.


set ROWCOUNT 10
select Products.ProductName as TenMostExpensiveProducts, Products.UnitPrice
from Products
order by Products.UnitPrice desc


SET ROWCOUNT 10
SELECT Products.ProductName AS TenMostExpensiveProducts, Products.UnitPrice
FROM Products
ORDER BY Products.UnitPrice DESC

And yes I agree the bottom query is much easier to read

But with syntax coloring do you still need this? It is a big pain in the neck to use that CapsLock/Shift key every time you type a keyword. There are tools of course like SQL Formatter which will make it much easier.
Remember Hungarian notation, In VB you would write sLastName(string), iCounter(integer)? Well that is gone also, who needs it when you have IntelliSense?
I think the lowercase sql code is easier on the eyes. So what do you think?

Summer SQL Teaser Non Existing Database

Here is a simple teaser, BTW I assume you don't have a database named WasabiDb or do you?


USE WasabiDb
IF @@Error <> 0
PRINT 'db doesn''t exist'


USE WasabiDb
GO
IF @@Error <> 0
PRINT 'db doesn''t exist'

If you would run this in one shot (hit F5) how many of the error messages below will you see

Server: Msg 911, Level 16, State 1, Line 1
Could not locate entry in sysdatabases for database 'WasabiDb'. No entry found with that name. Make sure that the name is entered correctly.


And how many 'db doesn't exist' messages will you see

SQL Server 2005 Best Practices Analyzer Released, End Of Support For SQL Server 2000 SP3a In 6 Days

End of Support for SQL Server 2000 Service Pack 3a
Support for SQL Server 2000 Service Pack 3a (SP3a) will end on July 10, 2007.
Microsoft will end technical support on this date, which also includes security updates for this Service Pack. Microsoft is ending support for this product as part of our Service Pack support policy, found http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle.

Customers running SQL Server 2000 Service Pack 3a are encouraged to migrate to SQL Server 2000 Service Pack 4 or SQL Server 2005. Remaining current on your service pack installation ensures that your products remain supported per the Support Lifecycle policy. Additionally, your software benefits from the many enhancements, fixes, and security updates provided through the latest service pack.

Read more here: http://blogs.msdn.com/sqlreleaseservices/archive/2007/07/02/end-of-support-for-sql-server-2000-service-pack-3a.aspx



SQL Server 2005 Best Practices Analyzer (July 2007) Realeased
It does not say CTP anywhere on this page so I assume that this is a 'production' version.
Get it here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=da0531e4-e94c-4991-82fa-f0e3fbd05e63&DisplayLang=en

SSIS Script Task In SQL Server 2008 Can Use VB Or C#

Where do I send a thank you letter? Finally we are allowed to use C# in the SQL Server Integration Services Script Task. I always wondered why SQL Server 2005 only uses VB and not C#, you can use C# in the SQLCLR but not in a Script Task. It turns out that SSIS in SQL Server 2005 uses VSA (Visual Studio for Applications) but SQL Server 2008 will use VSTA (Visual Studio Tools for Applications). Lets put these 2 right under each other.

Visual Studio for Applications
Visual Studio Tools for Applications

See the only (confusing) difference is the word Tools. So VSTA does support C#. I guess that if you come from a heavy DTS ActiveX usage background VB would be natural to you. I never felt at home with VB.NET, I switched to C# because I was also using Java and it was easier to make the switch to C#.

Enough whining from me, here are 2 screenshots that I took from the latest SQL Server 2008 June CTP. Have a nice holiday, don't overeat

Guess What I Will Be Doing Tomorrow (June 29th 2007) At 6PM

Did you think I would be waiting in line like a dummy to purchase the iPhone? Wrong my friend, I will pick up a birthday cake for my wife. As a matter of fact my home is Apple free. That is right not even Quicktime is installed ;-)

Anyway why would I buy the iPhone? I checked my bill last month and I have used a whopping 6 minutes. I don’t really use my phone except for emergencies. It is good that my wife and I share the minutes, if not she would go over every month.

So are you buying an iPhone? And if yes then please tell me why?

The next post will be technical again; it will be about Scrum and Poker.

Summer SQL Teaser #4 Nulls and Counts

First create this table

CREATE TABLE Teaser (ID int)
INSERT Teaser VALUES(1)
INSERT Teaser VALUES(2)
INSERT Teaser VALUES(1)
INSERT Teaser VALUES(2)
INSERT Teaser VALUES(NULL)


Without running this try to figure out what the result will be

SELECT COUNT(*),
COUNT(ID),
COUNT(DISTINCT ID)
FROM Teaser


For some more NULL fun you can read NULL Trouble In SQL Server Land

Good Distributed Partitioned Views / Federated Databases Article

The Microsoft SQL Server Development Customer Advisory Team has a nice blog post about Distributed Partitioned Views / Federated Databases

They cover the following definitions

Definition 1: Local Partitioned View – A single table is horizontally split into multiple tables, usually all have the same structure.

Definition 2: Cross Database Partitioned View – tables are split among different databases on the same server instance

Definition 3: Distributed (across server or instance) Partitioned View. Tables participating in the view reside in different databases which reside on different servers or different instances.

Make sure you read the list of 13 items under Lessons Learned on Distributed Partitioned Views: (multiple servers involved)


Link to the article: http://blogs.msdn.com/sqlcat/archive/2007/06/20/distributed-partitioned-views-federated-databases-lessons-learned.aspx

Which SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services Book Should I Get?

Who can recommend a good SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services book?

I know SQL Server 2000 Analysis Services but did not work with SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services yet. As a matter of fact I haven’t touched Analysis Services in 2 years. I don’t need a book which explains what a start or join schema is, I know what a slowly changing dimension is, I also know the difference between a fact table, a dimension table and MOLAP/ROLAP/HOLAP.

The 2 books that I used previously are the WROX book (Professional SQL Server 2000 Data Warehousing with Analysis Services) and the MS Press Step by Step book. I remember liking both of them, are their successors as good?
The problem with the reviews on Amazon is that it doesn’t match my expectations; the WROX 2000 book only got 2.5 stars which I think is way too low. While the book is not perfect it deserves more than 2.5 stars.


Here are the 5 books I am considering

Microsoft SQL Server(TM) 2005 Analysis Services Step by Step

Delivering Business Intelligence with Microsoft SQL Server 2005

Professional SQL Server Analysis Services 2005 with MDX

Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services

The Microsoft Data Warehouse Toolkit: With SQL Server 2005 and the Microsoft Business Intelligence Toolset



BTW I don’t need the book right now, I won’t actually start working with this until next year. If you know of a book that is coming out between now and January please let me know also.

Book Review: Expert SQL Server 2005 Development By Adam Machanic

If you are an advanced or intermediate SQL Server developer then this is the book for you. Adam understands real world scenarios and understands that databases are part of a bigger group in the business world. The database is usually the most important asset in an organization. All your data is in the database, you need to secure it, this is where encryption, privilege and authorization comes in. The ratio of web servers to database servers is usually many to one, it is easy to scale out with web servers however with database servers this is not so easy. This is a reason why your code needs to be optimized and designed for application concurrency.

I recommend this book to any intermediate or advanced SQL Server developer. This book is not a book that is like the other book you have but 2 chapters are different. NO, this book contains a lot of good info which is not available in other books. I learned a lot from reading this book and you will too. Here is the breakdown of what is covered in the chapters.

Chapter 1 Software Development Methodologies for the Database World
Adam explains what Cohesion, Coupling and Encapsulation is, where the business logic should live and the balance between maintainability, performance, security and more.

Chapter 2 Testing Database Routines
This chapter is worth the price of the book by itself. You will learn how to unit test your procedures, evaluate performance counters and this chapter introduces the SQLQueryStress Performance Tool (see picture below) which will be used in other chapters. This is a very useful tool if you have to tune a query. How many times do you set statistics time and statistics IO on and off to see the reads and CPU time? This tool does it all for you, paste in your query or proc call, specify how many times you want to run it that is it. This tool will save you many stressful (pun intended) hours





Chapter 3 Errors and Exceptions
This chapter explains the different type of exceptions and how to do error handling. You will also find out what a ‘doomed transaction’ is, this is the one where you get this user friendly message: “The current transaction cannot be commited and cannot support operations that write to the log file. Roll back the transaction.”

Chapter 4 Privilege and Authorization
This chapter explains what impersonation and ownership chaining is. Also covered is how to use EXECUTE AS and how to sign procedures.

Chapter 5 Encryption
This chapter will explain encryption to you in a clear and concise matter. You will learn how to improve performance by using Message Authentication Code. The difference between symmetric and asymmetric key encryption is covered as well as all the terminology that is needed to really understand encryption.

Chapter 6 SQLCLR: Architecture and Design Considerations
What this chapter covers is SQLCLR security, why to use SQLCLR and how to enhance Service Broker Scale-Out with SQLCLR

Chapter 7 Dynamic T-SQL
You want to protect your data? Then this is something you have to read. You will learn how to deal with sql injection, why sp_executesql is much better than exec and the performance implications of parameterization and caching.

Chapter 8 Designing Systems for Application Concurrency
If you are running an OLTP system and you are suffering from blocking/locking then this is the chapter for you. Isolation levels and how they affect concurrency is explained. This chapter uses the SQLQueryStress Performance Tool to show you the difference it makes in performance when you slightly change your proc.

Chapter 9 Working with Spatial Data
Spatial data, this is what a lot of people are storing these dates, unfortunately calculating the distance between 2 points is not as easy as it seems (the earth is not flat you know ;-( ) This chapter covers a couple of ways to represent Geospatial Data.


Chapter 10 Working with Temporal Data
Dates are everywhere in the database but unfortunately a lot of people do not know how dates are stored internally and how to write efficient queries which will cause an index seek instead of a scan. Calendar tables, time zones and intervals are all covered in this chapter

Chapter 11 Trees, Hierarchies, and Graphs
The difference between Nested Set Model, Persisting Materialized Paths and Adjacency list Hierarchies are explained. There is code included that shows you how to traverse up or down the hierarchy, insert new nodes and much more.



Amazon Link: Expert SQL Server 2005 Development

I have also interviewed Adam Machanic a while back, you can find that here: Interview with Adam Machanic Author Of Expert SQL Server 2005 Development

C# IsNullOrEmpty Function In SQL Server

Mladen Prajdic has created a SQL equivalent of the C# IsNotNullOrEmpty
I looked at it and thought that there was way too much code

Here is my version which I have modified, you pass an additional parameter in to indicate whether you want blanks only to count or not


CREATE FUNCTION dbo.IsNotNullOrEmpty(@text NVARCHAR(4000),@BlanksIsEmpty bit)
RETURNS BIT
AS

BEGIN
DECLARE @ReturnValue bit

IF @BlanksIsEmpty = 0
BEGIN
SELECT @ReturnValue= SIGN(COALESCE(DATALENGTH(@text),0))
END
ELSE
BEGIN
SELECT @ReturnValue= SIGN(COALESCE(DATALENGTH(RTRIM(@text)),0))
END

RETURN @ReturnValue
END
Go


Here are some calls where we want blanks to return as empty or null
The function returns = if it is empty and 1 if it is not empty

SELECT dbo.IsNotNullOrEmpty(null,1),dbo.IsNotNullOrEmpty('azas',1),
dbo.IsNotNullOrEmpty(' ',1),dbo.IsNotNullOrEmpty('',1)


Here are some calls where we don't want blanks to return as empty or null

SELECT dbo.IsNotNullOrEmpty(null,0),dbo.IsNotNullOrEmpty('azas',0),
dbo.IsNotNullOrEmpty(' ',0),dbo.IsNotNullOrEmpty('',0)

My function is the opposite of Mladen's I check for is NOT null or empty instead of IS null or empty (easier to code it with the SIGN function)