byrmol Blog

Garbage

Redneck DBA

It’s 5:47AM and two things woke me up. The dogs at the dairy next door. Like clockwork except driven by the sun and not adjusted for human convenience. Rumour has it that no “foreign” non-Homo sapien has ever made it half way down the drive-way. Read more →

A gift from Alistair

After my series on implementing relational operators on.NET DataTables, I received several requests to post the whole code library. I was reluctant to do it for 2 reasons 1. Read more →

Chess using SQL Server

I thought I would pimp my latest article... http://www.sqlteam.com/item.asp?ItemID=26942 I am hoping to get it completed in 3 articles. The first article looks at technique, the second on modelling and finally the last article brings it all together. Read more →

A letter to MS press writers

Dear Microsoft Press Writers, As a long time user of your database products, I find myself becoming increasingly aggravated by the utter nonsense that your press releases state. Specifically, the utter lack of knowledge of the theory that underpins your enterprise database engine. Read more →

A new error

It had been nagging me for a while. When I started building this application, I reached into my code library and started copying and pasting various bits and pieces. One in particular was an Error dialog control. Read more →

The Abstraction Indicators - A Database Design Measure

Before I kick this one off, please remember that these measures can only be taken into consideration when the full scope of the database model and its implementation are known. The Abstraction Indicators try to measure the databases capacity to cope with change and the "profile" of the database to calling applications. Read more →

The Hermetic Ratio - A Database Design Measure

Over the years, several of my contracts involved analysing and critiquing third party databases. On arrival at the client site, I would be given the business model specification, a copy of the database and a room/cubicle to work in. Read more →

7 Downsides to IT…..

While I love lots of different facets of IT, there are a few downsides that I have experienced over the years and I thought I would share... The respect! Don't you just love how the corporate machine has diminished our trade? Read more →

Using WITH RECOMPILE?

Most SQL Server based apps use stored procedures exclusively, so the idea of forcing SQL Server to ignore plan caching is nasty. According to the BOL, it is "unusual" to use this option. Read more →

My schema change management tool choice

It has been over 2 years since I started my current job. That's almost a personal record for me. It has been a dream job so far.... Start from scratch, work from home, boss of all technical aspects of the project including analysis, design and coding. Read more →

Dave's guide to the EAV

I created an article instead of a Post (what's the difference?). I hope you find it informative... http://weblogs.sqlteam.com/davidm/articles/12117.aspx Legacy Comments Jeff 2006-09-16 re: Dave's guide to the EAV David -- can you add some line breaks to some of the longer lines of code? Read more →

Dave’s guide to the EAV

This guide is intended to help programmers and DBA’s understand the considerationsand consequences associated with an EAV schema and to provide a basic framework forits implementation in SQL Server (>= 2000). Read more →

The Birth of JOIN: Chapter 3 (Final)

War & Victory Various Academic Institutions… “Wow!”“What Chris?”“There is a guy in California who has invented a multipurpose n-dimensional data model.”“Really! Hashtables are hard enough to work with and they only have 2 dimensions. Read more →

The Birth of JOIN: Chapter 2

Results Rockwell Space Division The monochrome screen flickered as the data flowed. Men gathered around the monitor as if it was a shrine. The tension was real. Without fanfare a message appeared on the screen that said “IMS READY”. Read more →

The Birth of JOIN: Chapter 1

Problem AD 1962 Stratosphere"Zarya-1, Zarya-1, I can't hear you very well. I feel fine. I'm continuing the flight.....”The encrypted VHF band they communicated on quickly became useless as the converted ballistic missile passed over the horizon. Read more →

10 Common Design Mistakes

1) No logical model Obvious isn’t it? But I can almost guarantee that everyone has started a DB project without one at some stage. You are lucky if you see an ERD and should buy a Lotto ticket if you see a Functional Dependency analysis. Read more →