Jack of all trades; Master of one.
I am setting up a new computer running VMware GSX Server (because the new free VMware Server is still in beta) for which I plan to use one of the virtual machines to run a few websites including a DotNetNuke website that stores its content in SQL Server. So I decided to install Windows 2003 Server …
Continue reading “Windows 2003 Server Web Edition doesn’t support SQL Server?!?”
I just spotted the new free VMware Player. This is totally cool. I can envision companies using VMWare Player to demo complete environments, like an ASP.NET & SQL Server Express application; just configure the virtual machine to have everything needed! This basically eliminates most potential configuration problems that could cause a vendor to loose a …
Continue reading “Next Generation Demo Software with VMware Player”
I know I’m the tool man (with Xtras.Net) but I can’t seem to find a T-SQL code formatter and wondered if anyone else knows about one? I’m got someone inhouse who writes his SELECT, INSERT, and UPDATE statements in stored procs as if his monitor were infinitely wide, and only ever uses the tab or enter …
It’s always something! At Xtras, we have a rather sophisticated email broadcast system that we developed internally. Our system uses a set of tables in our SQL Server database that models the type of email, who it should go to, the mailing lists, etc. It loads each newsletter subscriber’s name and email address using a FOR XML …
Refactoring. Yes, I want refactoring in TSQL/SQL Server. What do I mean by Refactoring in SQL? Specifically, I want to be able to evolve my database schema without breaking the application. For me at least, I frequently evolve the naming of my database schema as I’m adding features to deployed apps, but it is really …
I just found a very cool site called ConnectionStrings.com (I found it on the .Text Basic Configuration web page.) This site provides examples of connection strings for all of the following including subsets of each: SQL Server Access Oracle MySQL Interbase IBM DB2 Sybase Informix Mimer SQL PostgreSQL DSN Excel Text DBF/FoxPro Visual FoxPro Pervasive UDL …
This next feature isn’t exactly a TSQL feature, and it is not highly visionary, but after spending literally the past eight (8) hours (I kid you not) using SQL tools to manipulate data and evolve some table structures, I remembered it is something I really would like to see. What I’d like to see added …
I believe SQL was invented back in the 70’s back by E.F.Codd (don’t shoot me if I’m wrong; I’m not a historian.) Given the collective wisdom about programming back then, SQL is an amazing language. I probably use TSQL more often than any other because of ad-hoc queries into my company’s SQL Server database. However …
I just had an epiphany! (So everyone, go ahead and send me 50 links that I personally have yet to run across where others have already suggested this. :) I’ve always wanted to review key numbers related to my company’s permformance on a periodic basis; i.e. each day, each week, and each month, etc. I …
I use MS Access from time to time, and for what it is, it is a pretty nice tool. However, there are a few things I’d really like to see added (subject of a future blog) and there are a few bugs that I run across from time to time that really frustrate. For example, …