18Mar 2008 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

SQL Inspect

Tools
I was asked if I would look at a new tool from a company I hadn't heard of. It's SQL Inspect from Yohz Software. Nominally this is a SQL query editor. However, strictly as a query editor, especially when compared to what's available in SQL 2008 or what tools like Red Gate's SQLPrompt or SQLRefactor can do for you, it's not so hot. Luckily, that's not where its strengths lie. Instead, it's all about performance tuning your queries and it does this very well indeed. It takes a query and returns a tree structured execution plan, looking a bit like the old text plans, but much more sophisticated with roll-ups, etc. It shows you all the details of the operations, just like an execution plan, but immediately accessible on the screen,…
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07Mar 2008 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

Unit Testing Database Code

Tools
Steve Jones, in his daily email from SQL Server Central, supplied a link to a terrific article in the MSDN magazine. Apply Test-Driven Development to your Database Projects. It was written by Jamie Laflen who is a Tech Lead on the DBPro team.  I've written a couple of articles on database unit testing, but none of them touch this. It's the new gold standard for introducing the topic to beginners (and lending a helping hand to experienced users). It's worth a read, or even two. I'm going to go back and review it a couple of times with Visual Studio open and a project running. No word yet on new virtuals. I'm going to work on another set of tests that I have to run. More on that later.
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