The QCon London 2010 Experience
Posted on March 14, 2010
(Last modified on January 2, 2022)
| 6 minutes
| 1177 words
| Adrian Hills
QCon London 2010 - what a conference!
Awesome…with a capital AWE
So many inspiring speakers, a packed schedule of talks over 3 days on a number of tracks and a great bunch of people. This was my first QCon, and cannot recommend the experience enough. The only thing I didn’t enjoy, was having to decide between which talks to attend. But that’s the true sign of a good conference. I’m finding it difficult to write a blog post as my mind is still buzzing and there was a lot to soak up.
[Read More]Rise of the SQL Server DevBA
Posted on March 4, 2010
(Last modified on January 2, 2022)
| 3 minutes
| 608 words
| Adrian Hills
Something that has got me thinking recently is the distinction between an SQL Server Developer and a DBA. I imagine that most people would describe themselves as one or the other exclusively. My CV for example says I’m a developer - that is what I am. I would never market myself as a DBA; aside from the fact I just don’t have the full skillset of a DBA, it would just be an insult to the real DBAs out there whose knowledge and experience in that arena far outweighs mine.
[Read More]Queue table processing in SQL Server
Posted on March 1, 2010
(Last modified on January 2, 2022)
| 2 minutes
| 342 words
| Adrian Hills
Implementing SQL Server queue table processing logic is something I keep meaning to blog about and finally I’ve got round to it thanks to my memory being jogged by StackOverflow questions I’ve recently participated in, including this one. The scenario is you queue up records in a database table, each representing a piece of work needing to be done. You then want to have processes that periodically poll this table to pick up the next item of work from the queue and process them.
[Read More]Changing primary key index structure
Posted on March 1, 2010
(Last modified on January 2, 2022)
| 2 minutes
| 276 words
| Adrian Hills
Changing the structure of a primary key constraint index from nonclustered to clustered (or from clustered to nonclustered) is not necessarily as straight forward as it first seems. The process of changing it over, involves the constraint being dropped and then recreated. This could potentially cause a problem if you’re making the change on a table whilst there could be activity against it.
Example
TableX was originally created as below:
[Read More]SQLBits VI - Upcoming SQL Server event
Posted on February 25, 2010
(Last modified on January 2, 2022)
| 2 minutes
| 224 words
| Adrian Hills
SQLBits VI is scheduled in my calendar for Friday 16th April - and I’m expecting great things! It’s a 1 day, SQL Server event being held in London (Westminster to be semi-precise), and the theme is performance and scalability which, as I mentioned in an earlier blog post, is particularly high on my agenda at the moment.
Not only does it offer high quality speakers, but it’s a free event too.
[Read More]Autogenerated SQL constraint names - why to avoid them
Posted on February 23, 2010
(Last modified on January 2, 2022)
| 2 minutes
| 309 words
| Adrian Hills
Autogenerated constraint names in SQL Server - are they convenient, or are they a hindrance? For me, they are a hindrance.
Why should I care that SQL Server autogenerates a constraint name when I don’t explicitly specify one? Why does it matter if it names my PRIMARY KEY constraint “PK__Constrai__3214EC271FCDBCEB”, or my DEFAULT constraint “DF__Constraint__ColumnA__21B6055D”?
Why should I name each constraint myself and not rely on autogenerated constraint names?
Because it makes maintenance and database update deployments easier, simpler and in my opinion, safer.
[Read More]Optimising date filtered SQL queries
Posted on February 21, 2010
(Last modified on January 2, 2022)
| 3 minutes
| 435 words
| Adrian Hills
How you structure your SQL queries is very important and choosing the wrong approach can have big effects on the performance of the query.
One of the key things that should flag up the potential for needing optimisation, is if you are using a function/calculation within a WHERE clause. These can lead to inefficient execution plans, preventing sub-optimal index use.
A classic example to demonstrate this is when querying the data for a specific month.
[Read More]Using the SP:StmtCompleted SQL Profiler trace event class
Posted on February 17, 2010
(Last modified on January 2, 2022)
| 2 minutes
| 345 words
| Adrian Hills
One question I’ve seen popping up a few times recently, is how to check what individual statement(s) within an SQL Server stored procedure are taking the most time.
The scenario is that there is a stored procedure that consists of a number of SQL statements. The stored procedure has been flagged up as running slower than perhaps it was expected to, but as there are a number of statements/queries within it, it’s not immediately clear where the time is being taken.
[Read More]High performance bulk loading to SQL Server using SqlBulkCopy
Posted on February 15, 2010
(Last modified on January 2, 2022)
| 4 minutes
| 655 words
| Adrian Hills
If you ever want to bulk load data into an SQL Server database as quickly as possible, the SqlBulkCopy class is your friend (in the System.Data.SqlClient namespace). Since being introduced in .NET 2.0, it has provided an extremely efficient way to bulk load data into SQL Server, and is one the classes that I see as a “must know about”. A usual scenario is where you want to dump some data into the database to then do some processing on.
[Read More]Ways to improve technical skills
Posted on February 13, 2010
(Last modified on January 2, 2022)
| 2 minutes
| 366 words
| Adrian Hills
It’s nearly the end of my first week as a blogger. Already I’m feeling the benefits of finally getting round to starting up my blog. It got me thinking about what the best ways are to continue developing your skills and learning new things.
For me, there are 3 particular ways that I find are invaluable if you want to keep yourself on your toes technically:
Learn by doing - often you learn my making mistakes.
[Read More]