With all this talk about Windows Azure, SQL Azure, Amazon services and moving to the cloud, I start thinking to myself this all sounds somewhat familiar. Not quite Déjà vu, but it feels a little like that. Back in 1998, That ’70s Show went on the air. It made what was old seem new again….
Month: April 2010
Microsoft Continues to Support PHP
Microsoft continued their support of PHP by releasing a Community Technology Preview for the SQL Server Driver for PHP 2.0. With this release PHP developer can use PHP Data Objects with the SQL Server driver! This will serve to reduce the complexity of targeting multiple databases on the back end. As I’ve noticed before, Business…
Equals Sub Queries Versus Exists Sub Queries
I’d like to introduce you to the idea that you can replace an equal sub query with an exists sub query. Doing this can change a seek operation to a scan operation. This usually results in a faster query, with fewer resources used. Check out this example using the adventureworks database. USE AdventureWorks GO –…
Microsoft SQL Reporting Services for PHP
In an outstanding move on Microsoft’s part, Developers have released an open-source project to help PHP developers integrate SQL Server Reporting Services from their PHP applications! Using this new toolkit programmers can begin doing that today! This project offers a simple programming interface to: list available reports manage rendering of those reports and allow parameter…
Azure Tables or SQL Azure?
I’m beginning to see questions come up over “which should I use, SQL Azure or Azure Table Services?” The answer for now seems to be, “it depends.” Azure Tables seem to have better pricing. The scalability also seems to be a push. SQL Azure will be quicker to learn for most of us, since it…
I’m now answering questions at dbforums.com!
Now there are two ways to ask me your SQL questions! I’ll be reviewing posts on this site Monday through Fridays. I check twice a day, the first is before 0800 (utc-5) and the second is at lunch. Feel free to drop by and ask any questions you’d like! Don’t forget you can ask them…
I’m a Qualified Expert!
After a week of contributing to Experts Exchange, I’ve reached the first level. This is an honor! I’m glad I get to help people with their SQL questions. I look forward to answering many more… after all, the next level is calling! If you have any questions, and you want to post them on Experts…
Sorting Numbers in VarChar field
Over at Experts-Exchange, I saw a question I get every once in a while. It all has to do with how SQL Server orders data in a VARCHAR column. SQL Server tries to sort a VARCHAR column in a dictionary order, 0 comes before 1. The problem is you may have mixed numbers in your…
Migrating Databases to Azure
When converting a database from an older version of Microsoft SQL to Azure, there will be many gotchas along the way. I’d like to help you learn from the troubles I had along the way, hopefully sparing you a bit of time that was lost during my first conversion. Getting Started I’m going to assume…
Stormtroopers 365
Over on flickr there’s a great set of images using Star Wars Action figures. Check them out!