21Mar 2011 by Grant Fritchey 10 Comments

Communication

Object Relational Mapping, SQL Server, T-SQL, Tools, Visual Studio
It sure seems like there’s a lot of miscommunication between developers and database specialists. In fact, the communication can become so poor that outright hostility between the groups is common. At the end of the day we are all working towards a common goal, to add value to whatever organization we are working for. It's a shame that we all lose sight of this commonality and create such a false dichotomy between the groups. I think there are some ways that we, as database specialists, can use to attempt to cross that gap. Prior to being suborned to the dark side, I was a developer. I had a little over 10 years experience working in VB, Java & C#. I remember, distinctly, cursing our database team for being so problematic…
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17Mar 2011 by Grant Fritchey 4 Comments

Where does slow performance come from?

SQL Server, T-SQL, Visual Studio
I have my opinions and experience, and I’ve no doubt you have yours. Paul Randal (blog|twitter) has put up another one of his interesting surveys to try to collect our opinions and our experience. You should run right over to here and vote immediately. Now that you’ve completed that, I’ll tell you what I think. Based on my experience (neither particularly broad, nor particularly deep, but there has been quite a bit of it), I’ve mostly seen problems in code. When talking about databases, the T-SQL code. When talking about apps, the application code. This is followed not too far back by really poor database structures and poor indexing strategies. I’m sure other people have seen other things, but these really are the areas where I’ve seen the most problems. The one…
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14Apr 2010 by Grant Fritchey 3 Comments

SNESSUG 4/14/2010

Misc, Visual Studio
Tonight's Southern New England SQL Server Users group is sponsored by Idera. Our presenter is Scott Abrants of Iron Mountain. He's talking about deploying databases using Visual Studio Team System:Database Edition. We have a good turnout with 12 people (yeah, we're small). Scott's presentation was a lot of fun and very informative. He's very involved with automating his deployments to a fare-thee-well. He really has Visual Studio dancing and singing. It was a very thorough overview of the VSTS:DBE soltuion. Other user groups should be jealous that we got to see this presentation.
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01Dec 2009 by Grant Fritchey 4 Comments

How do -You- use SQL Server

nHibernate, SQL Server, T-SQL, Tools, Visual Studio
I've been tagged by a misplaced yankee, uh, New Englander, whatever. The question is, how do I/we use SQL Server where I work. That's a tough one. It would make a much shorter, and easier, blog post to describe the things we don't use it for. However, keeping with the spirit of these tags, I'll try to lay out it. For those that don't know, I work for a rather large insurance company. This means that we have lots and lots of databases, but not much data. We also are cheap. That means we'll run an app into the ground rather than spend the money & time to replace it. We have apps still running from the 70's and 80's propped up by ancient men with pocket protectors, spit, bailing wire…
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19Mar 2009 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

Database.sqlpermissions

Visual Studio
Raise your hand if you think this is a real pain in the bottom method for editing user permissions? Yeah, me too. Visual Studio Team System Database Edition is far to fine a tool to make us edit XML to set database user permissions. A co-worker has posted a change request on MS Connect. Connect works really well as long as people vote for what you report. I've seen several things change in SQL Server or get fixed primarily because of the reports in Connect. So if doing this: <PermissionStatement Action="GRANT">      <Permission>EXECUTE</Persmission>     <Grantee>UserRole</Grantee>      <Object Name="dbo" Type="SCHEMA"/> </PermissionStatement> Makes you crazy and you would rather type this: GRANT EXECUTE ON SCHEMA :: dbo TO UserRole ; Then click on the link and get the word in front out to Microsoft.
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03Mar 2009 by Grant Fritchey 2 Comments

MSDN Magazine: Article on VSTS:DB

Visual Studio
Jamie Laflen and Barclay Hill have published an article in MSDN Magazine outlining the new features in in VSTS:DB GDR. The description of the intent and use of the server project is extremely enlightening. I wasn't aware of the master.dbschema files available for use within a project. Luckily I haven't needed them yet. Another thing I wasn't aware of, if you use the refactoring tools, say rename a table, not only does it save you a lot of typing, but the project will remember that the table was renamed and instead of dropping and recreating it in the next deployment, it will issue SP_RENAME. I'm spreading that word to my team right now. Another good point is that you can make a configuration to work only on your local machine…
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