There is a very clear and present limit to how much performance you can achieve in an SQL Server simply by adding RAM. If you don’t have the necessary indexes or statistics on a table, the query plan produced by the Query Optimizer may be such that no amount of RAM will solve the problem. I found this to be […]

Can’t I just add a bunch of memory to my SQL Server instance and have the same performance as using in memory tables? It turns out that the answer is no. Adding memory, if your database can use it, will often help performance. Everything SQL Server does to a database file is created initially in memory, and then written to […]

One of the things I dislike about POCOs (Plain Old CLR Objects) is the limited encapsulation available in Dot Net. POCO classes tend to be quite anemic, often implemented using properties only. That’s because the purpose of a POCO class is to transport data in object form. Including other behaviors makes the POCO more powerful, but increases the complexity for […]

What problem is being solved by doing a migration first design? Eilenblogger asked this question in another way, “What do you do if your user acceptance tests fail? Do your migratons roll back, or do you simply restore from a backup?” This question is the crux of why I like to do database migrations first. I worked on a project […]

Today I want to introduce what I think may be a new term…Database Migration First Development. Most database developers use a number of different techniques to make changes to the next version of a database. This includes the very first instance of a database, as well as making modifications to an existing database. Here are some processes used in the […]

There are two key requirements to building software with a team of developers. First, you must have the ability to isolate the software modifications that are not dependent. For code, we do this by branching. For databases, the separation is more difficult to implement. The second key requirement is that we need the ability to merge new, complete, functional changes […]

As I read the comments for a number of editorials I continue to see folks who have had negative experiences when working on agile projects. I have to say I understand where they are coming from. I also have had negative experiences from time to time. That causes me to wonder, what is it about agile that draws such feelings? […]

When I was young we used to play a game called Twister. Twister consisted of a mat having four lines of dots. Each line had a different color, Red, Blue, Yellow or Green. It also had a spinner. Someone would spin and call out what action the players had to do on the mat, “Right hand on Red; Left Foot […]

More and more companies seem to be moving away from hiring a pure DBA role. Instead they defer to talented developers who may or may not be able to design a solid database structure. Oddly enough, this doesn’t seem to be as much of a fad as many other silly things companies do; at least with SQL Server. It appears […]

Your database is under attack. You look at the database log and see that someone has been trying for hours to hack your SA password. They haven’t gotten in yet. What do you do? I’m not a security guru, so I’m not going to provide directions here. What I can tell you is that when this happens, it’s too late […]