I’ve been at my new job for two weeks. In that time I’ve diagrammed all the databases as they are today. I’ve suggested recommendations on adding keys to some tables that had none. I’ve also started diagramming the object data that’s being collected in the system, I’m hoping to find duplication within the system and…
Category: Microsoft SQL
Foreign Keys and Witchcraft
I’ve worked with hundreds databases in my career. I could probably design a handful of them from memory if asked. I have notes to remind me of lessons learned from most of them. When I start looking through that list one of the things I most often reference is the importance of Foreign keys. Why…
Hitting the Ground Running
I’ve been on the job a couple days now, and I feel like I’m well on my way to contributing to my new company. On the first day I started pulling the latest backups to my local machine, and setting up a development environment where I can start diagramming the databases, and looking into the…
SQL 101 — the 11/24 presentation
Wednesday night I had the opportunity to give my SQL 101, the basics presentation. I hadn’t given this one since just before leaving IntegrationPoint earlier this year. I spent a little time updating the presentation based on past evaluations and some changes in SQL. My new version includes some newer data types that have been…
SQL 101 Training
Wednesday November 24th, from 5 – 7pm I’ll be offering my SQL 101 course. I was thinking about adding a remote option for those of you who can’t make it up to Concord. I’d like to know how many of you there will be so I can arrange GoToMeeting, or something similar so you can…
The Query Your Query Could Run Like
If you don’t know about the Old Spice Guy, seriously…go hit youtube.com now. The past few weeks we’ve been preparing for a conversion of data from two systems into two different systems. I built a part of that process. Tonight was the first run. Everything went smoothly once we worked out a few details that…
70-433:Dynamic Management Views
I just laid hands on a great little guide to the Dynamic Management Views in SQL Server 2008. It’s a great introduction / quick reference guide sort of book. With it, as long as you know what information you’re looking for, you can jump right to the view that can help you find the data…
Modifying Data in Partitioned Views
Yesterday I covered the basics of partitioned views. I also mentioned there were some gotchas when it comes to modifying the data in those partitioned views. I’d like to go into more detail about that today. The first big gotcha on updating data in a partitioned view is making sure you can update the data…
Partitioned Views
Last week I covered partitioning. I explained how you could set up filegroups in your database, and then split data from a single table or index across those filegroups. That way you can reduce blocking in your objects by physically separating the data into parts. I even covered how you could use partitioning to speed…
Partitioning: MERGE, SPLIT, and SWITCH
OK, you know how to set up partitioning for a table and an index, and now you think you’ve solved your deadlocking, and your I/O issues forever, right? Hardly. Once you’ve been in SQL long enough you learn that no answer is forever. Inevitably you’ll have to revisit your old queries and see if their…