March 2008 - Posts

• OT: Books: Bill Bryson "Down Under"

  I was on a flight from Houston to Washington via Dallas today. We seemed to sit forever on the tarmac in Dallas, in fact just over 1.5 hours from leaving gate to taking off. The captain was warning that if he had to stop and restart the engines one more Read More... Posted Monday, March 31, 2008 12:46 PM by Greg Low | 4 Comments

• OT: Banks, security, IE7/Vista, password policies and CardSpace

  I had to go through the signup procedure for direct account access for Bank of America today. It reminded me of how much nonsense gets perpetrated and how it's always done supposedly in the name of security. In the end, it usually achieves the exact opposite Read More... Posted Wednesday, March 26, 2008 6:35 AM by Greg Low | 2 Comments

• Sessions announced for CodeCampOz 2008

  Sorry to all for the delay in working these out but we've now posted details of the sessions for CodeCampOz in 2008. You can view them on the "2008" tab at www.codecampoz.com . There's a really great lineup of sessions. We also have two extra special Read More... Posted Thursday, March 20, 2008 10:42 AM by Greg Low | 0 Comments

• SQL Server 2008: Interesting Full-Text Dynamic Management Function

  I've been playing around with full text search in SQL Server 2008 and was intrigued by the DMF sys.dm_fts_parser(). It allows you to see the result of the word-breaking occurring within full text search. If you execute the query: select * from sys.dm_fts_parser('"Hello Read More... Posted Thursday, March 20, 2008 9:57 AM by Greg Low | 5 Comments

• Arthur C Clarke made his final orbit of the Sun today

  I was really sad to hear that Arthur C Clarke died today. For those that enjoyed his work, it's worth watching his "goodbye" video he made on the occasion of his birthday in December 2007. He knew at that time that the end was near. I particularly liked Read More... Posted Wednesday, March 19, 2008 12:20 PM by Greg Low | 0 Comments

• SolidQ Australia growing

  Our team at SolidQ Australia is expanding. I'm really pleased to see Peter Ward and Jeff Wharton coming on board. They are both very talented guys. We're excited to be working with them and know they will help us with our vision of building a superb team Read More... Posted Wednesday, March 19, 2008 11:56 AM by Greg Low | 5 Comments

• SQL Server 2008 - DMF: "On change - prevent" is the wrong name

  One of the things I really don't like in the Declarative Management Framework is the term "On change - prevent" for the execution mode. Given we don't have INSTEAD OF DDL triggers and only AFTER DDL triggers, we can't *prevent* these things at all. All Read More... Posted Wednesday, March 19, 2008 11:11 AM by Greg Low | 0 Comments

• SQL Reporting Services: be very careful with using "c" formatting for currency

  While on site this week, another common problem that I see everywhere arose again. When you need to format currency, you use the "c" format right? It's in nearly every set of course materials I've ever seen. In many cases, that's wrong! Take a long hard Read More... Posted Friday, March 14, 2008 11:12 AM by Greg Low | 4 Comments

• SQL Down Under show 35 - Roger Doherty - SQL Server 2008 for Database Developers

  Hi Folks, SQL Down Under show 35 with guest SQL Server DPE Evangelist Roger Doherty is now available for download from www.sqldownunder.com . In the show, Roger discusses what developers are looking forward to in SQL Server 2008. Enjoy! Regards, Greg Read More... Posted Friday, March 14, 2008 11:06 AM by Greg Low | 2 Comments

• SQL Server Reporting Services: Avoid T-SQL in Reports

  I spent time working with Reporting Services again today on a client site. The complexity of the reports we were working on reminded me that I really, really don't like seeing T-SQL scripts (or really any business logic) embedded in reports. DBAs tend Read More... Posted Tuesday, March 11, 2008 9:32 PM by Greg Low | 10 Comments

• SQL Down Under show 34 - Geoff Hiten - SQL Server Clustering and SANs

  Hi Folks, SQL Down Under show 34 with guest SQL Server MVP Geoff Hiten is now available for download from www.sqldownunder.com . In this show, Geoff discusses SQL Server clustering, SANs and magic SAN dust. Enjoy! Regards, Greg Read More... Posted Friday, March 07, 2008 9:53 AM by Greg Low | 0 Comments

• SQL Server Data Services in Cloud for the WideOpen Web

  SQL Server Data Services was announced today at MIX. This new offering from Microsoft provides Internet-based data services using RESTful interfaces like those provided by ADO.NET Data Services. This is going to enable some outstanding new applications. Read More... Posted Thursday, March 06, 2008 11:56 AM by Greg Low | 2 Comments