To continue with the topic from yesterday on symptoms of a badly normalized database let’s talk about how index sprawl can be an example of a poorly designed schema. When your database has repeating data types in the same row it leads to the need for additional indexes. Let me give you an extreme example I would never use, but […]

I have found a few things that you start doing in your database when your application is not appropriately normalized. These indications are self-evident when you think about them. You find you need to materialize views. You find you have a huge number of indexes on tables. You find you have a lot of OR operations in your queries. All […]

A wise man once told me he could determine what I value most by two instruments. Viewing my checkbook and my calendar he could determine what I deemed most important in my life. Where do I spend my time? Where do I spend my resources? These two variables provide a great deal of reality for any person as to what […]

When NoSql data stores begin to support SQL queries, are now considered Not NoSQL? In other words, what does a database have to do in order to be considered an SQL database? Because SQL has been highly defined by different ANSI standards, the answer to the question is fairly clear. Even so, the current popular data engines aligning themselves with […]

I once wrote an application that allowed a company to reduce its accounting staff from 10 to 1 person. They had a requirement to report to their investors the state of their holdings on a monthly basis. It took 10 people 1 week to produce the necessary reports. The work was tedious and time consuming. My team built an application […]

In information systems, pragmatism drives reality more than optimized software, or even sometimes appropriate software implementations. I was watching a head to head comparison of three sports cars, each able to operate over 200mph, or for the metric genius speeds over 322kph. The price on these vehicles started around 1Million USD. They were really cool, really fast, and really unique. […]

As software professionals, how has the rise of the IOT (Internet of Things) impacted us most? As I am observing the phenomena I think the biggest impact is to our commitment to learning. Think about it. A smart watch you can purchase today has more power than a mid-range computer in the early ‘80s. If I remember correctly, an IBM […]

TempDB is a shared resource for every database hosted on an instance of Microsoft SQL Server. TempDB is used as working storage to optimize query performance. One way you can see it used is for sorting, or organizing data. When you join two tables not having indexes on the data being joined, SQL Server will sometimes parse the data and […]

How do we protect ourselves from our own biases? That’s a loaded question. What I am doing here is a little soul searching regarding my own personal biases where I have found that things I held to be truth were no longer accurate. Here are a few things that I have found changed over time. In SQL Server using the […]

Do you ever get so engrossed in solving problems that you lose all track of time? That is how it works out for me many times. I get so focused on completing the current problem that I lose all track of time. It’s nice to be able to concentrate like that, but it can sure get me into trouble. In […]