Ever heard of the SQL_VARIANT_PROPERTY function? I didn’t think so. SQL Server developers very often make the mistake of making their NUMERIC fields too large. When faced with a choice of how to size the column, they’ll often think “make it way larger than I need to be safe”. This works OK as long as… Read More The coolest SQL Server function you never heard of
If you haven’t explored using Snapshot isolation in SQL Server, I recommend you give it a look. A snapshot enabled database allows the reader to get a clean read without blocking. Prior to this capability, the only way to guarantee a non-blocking read from the database was to sprinkle NOLOCK statements all over your queries.… Read More Reading from Snapshot Databases With Multiple Tables
Ever since I saw Hans Rosling’s 2006 GapMinder TED Talk on African wealth and saw his use of Motion Charts, I’ve been looking for ways to implement this in my own websites. Up until now, there really hasn’t been anything ‘framework-y’ enough to use it with your own data. Google bought the rights from GapMinder… Read More Motion Chart using D3.js
William Edwards Deming was sent to Japan in the early 1950’s and propagated his ideas about quality control and production process throughout Japanese industry. There’s a wealth of wisdom in Deming’s work, albeit much of it industrially focused, but I’m particularly fond of his “Seven Deadly Diseases” of management (with my comments): Lack of constancy… Read More Deming’s Seven Deadly Diseases
Here’s a handy little code snippet. Find any stored procedures that won’t compile on SQL Server. The routine will list all procedures, showing ‘– Failed’ with the error messages for those that fail. Note that recompiling the procedures may also throw dependency errors also that can’t be caught with try/catch block … these errors likely… Read More Find stored procedures that won’t compile
Brett W. Green's On the Contrary 