You can spend less money. Some of us are lucky. We work for very large corporations who can easily set aside a spare desktop or even space on a rack for a server on which we can train. Others of us are not as lucky. We work for smaller organizations that have to be more careful with their money. Not only do we not get the extra machine to train on, but our laptops could be weak things that can't run two or more VMs. In this case, how can you go about learning stuff? Spend your own money? Sure, it's an option. There are some very cheap servers available out there that won't cost you even $1000 dollars to set up. And for pretty cheap you can buy some…
Ever since David Moutray introduced me to the concept of cargo cult programming, it's been running round and round in my head. I'm actually coming to believe that this is a major issue in all walks of life. True or not, we're absolutely seeing it in the data professionals space. Don't believe me? OK. A few questions. Do you work for one of the organizations that absolutely requires NOLOCK on all queries (even INSERT/DELETE/UPDATE)? Why? Because it runs faster? Why don't you just use READ_UNCOMMITTED for your isolation level? What's that? Never heard of isolation levels? I'll bet you also don't know what is meant by "dirty reads" then either. READ_COMMITTED_SNAPSHOT anyone? In short, you're guilty of being in a cargo cult. You've got this form in your head of…
Red Gate visited three cities this year with our SQL in the City event; Pasadena, Atlanta and Charlotte. I just wanted to give you a quick assessment of how the events went from my point of view. Overall, each and every one of these events was awesome. I can safely say that because each and every one of these events provided something special, the opportunity to network with our peers and with the developers and project managers at Red Gate (who are also our peers, but not usually available to us). I both took part in the networking and stood back and watched it happen. I love seeing a bunch of data pro's sitting (or standing) in a circle exchanging war stories, ideas, questions, thoughts or suggestions. It means you…
Laws of Thermodynamics TANSTAAFL Gods of the Copybook Headings All magic comes with a price Winter Is Coming My adult years started with a pretty thorough education in physics thanks to Uncle Sugar and the Navy Nuclear Power School. The laws of thermodynamics were carved into our brains (along with Baumgart's Law*). Experience has taught me that all these other statements are more or less riffs on the concepts put forward by the fundamentals of the laws of thermodynamics. They're just applications of the same within social spheres. In short, if you have a physical engineering background, you tend to be a realist. But note, I'm not a pessimist. I just recognize a simple thing. No matter how positive my thoughts are, no matter my belief in the righteousness of…
This whole concept of the clustered index as a foundational structure within SQL Server is just plain nuts. Sure, I get the concept that if a table has a clustered index, then that index actually becomes the table. When you create a clustered index on a table, the data is now stored at the leaf level of the Balanced Tree (b-tree) page distribution for that index, and I understand that retrieving the data using a seek on that index is going be extremely fast because no additional reads are necessary. Unlike what would happen with a non-clustered index on a heap table. Yes, I get that if I store my data in a heap, the only way to access the data is through the Index Allocation Mapping (IAM) Â pages that…