Michael Coles: Sergeant SQL

SQLSaturday #69 - Philly Love

2011-03-07T01:38:00Z

Thanks to the Philly SQL Server User Group (PSSUG) and to everyone who attended SQLSaturday #69 in the City of Brotherly Love yesterday. It was a great event with a lot of great people. My presentations are available for download at the links below: http://www.sqlsaturday.com/viewsession.aspx?sat=69&sessionid=3333 http://www.sqlsaturday.com/viewsession.aspx?sat=69&sessionid=3334 I just went through my speaker evaluations, and I'm happy to report the response was pretty positive across the...(read more)

SQLSaturday #60 - Cleveland Rocks!

2011-02-04T16:44:00Z

Looking forward to seeing all the DBAs, programmers and BI folks in Cleveland at SQLSaturday #60 tomorrow! I'll be presenting on (1) Intro to Spatial Data and (2) Build Your Own Search Engine in SQL. I've reworked the Spatial Data presentation based on feedback from previous SQLSaturday events and added more sample code. I also expanded the Build Your Own Search Engine code samples to demonstrate additional FILESTREAM functionality. See you all tomorrow! A little road music, please! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vU0JpyH1gC...(read more)

Why "Tailoring" Your Resume Is Bad

2010-12-31T03:16:00Z

I was just writing a response to a comment on my "Sell Yourself!" presentation ( http://sqlblog.com/blogs/michael_coles/archive/2010/12/05/sell-yourself-presentation.aspx#comments ), and it started getting a little lengthy so I decided to turn it into a blog post. The "Sell Yourself!" post got a couple of very good comments on the blog, and quite a few more comments offline. I think I'll start this one with a great exchange from the movie "The Princess Bride": Vizzini: HE DIDN'T FALL? INCONCEIVABLE....(read more)

This Year's SQL Christmas Card

2010-12-24T19:42:00Z

This year's Christmas Card is similar to last year's. I used the geometry data type again for a spatial data design. Just download the attachment, unzip the .SQL script and run it in SSMS. Then look at the Spatial Data preview tab for the result. Also don't forget to visit http://www.noradsanta.org/ if your kids want to track Santa. Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and have a great new year!...(read more)

Here Comes the FY11 Earmarks Database

2010-12-19T04:51:00Z

I'm really interested in politics (don't worry, I'm not going to start bashing politicians and hammering you with political rage). The point is when the U.S. FY11 Omnibus Spending Bill (the bill to fund the U.S. Government for another year) was announced it piqued my interest. I'm fascinated by " earmarks " (also affectionally known as " pork "). For those who aren't familiar with U.S. politics, "earmark" is a slang term for "Congressionally Directed Spending". It's basically the set of provisions...(read more)

Sell Yourself! Presentation

2010-12-05T23:01:00Z

Thanks to everyone who attended my "Sell Yourself!" presentation at SQLSaturday #61 in Washington, D.C., and thanks to NOVA SQL for setting up the event! I'm uploading the presentation deck here in PDF, original length, with new materials (I had to cut some slides out due to time limits). This deck includes a new section on recruiters and a little more information on the resume. BTW, if you're rewriting your resume I highly recommend the book Elements of Resume Style by S. Bennett. I've used it as...(read more)

Try-N-Save SSIS Packages

2010-11-29T05:17:00Z

The Try-N-Save SSIS Packages from my SSIS Dimensional Data Optimization presentation are available at http://cid-8f7e6c950afc6b3e.office.live.com/self.aspx/.Public/Presentation/TryNSave.zip . I'm still working on getting the sample database uploaded - even compressed a backup is larger than SkyDrive's upload filesize limit. I'll script it out when I have time (in addition to DDL, there are some tables that need to be prepopulated)....(read more)

High Performance Dimensional Data Loads With SSIS Presentation

2010-11-20T18:25:00Z

Just finished giving the SSIS High-Performance Dimensional Data Load presentation at SQLSaturday #59 NYC . Here are the slides in PDF format. I'll upload the Try-N-Save code and sample data later for attendees to play with. Thanks to everyone who attended my session and thanks to Melissa D. and NJSQL for putting this together. For those who are interested in Alejandro Mesa's composable DML solution to the problem of Type 2 dimension updates, here's the complete statement from the demo: INSERT INTO...(read more)

Dynamic SQL and Late Binding

2010-06-23T16:54:00Z

We all know that dynamic SQL runs in its own scope (see here for details), and that if used improperly it can have serious security implications. But it's also important to realize that dynamic SQL evaluates your SQL statements more like a stored procedure than a regular script. In stored procedures, if the tables you reference exist the stored proc must reference the table structures as they exist at stored proc creation time. That is to say stored procs will late bind to referenced tables only...(read more)

T-SQL Tuesday #006 Round-up!

2010-05-13T23:40:00Z

T-SQL Tuesday this month was all about LOB (large object) data. Thanks to all the great bloggers out there who participated! The participants this month posted some very impressive articles with information running the gamut from Reporting Services to SQL Server spatial data types to BLOB-handling in SSIS. One thing I noticed immediately was a trend toward articles about spatial data (SQL Server 2008 Geography and Geometry data types, a very fun topic to explore if you haven’t played around with...(read more)

T-SQL Tuesday #006: Tiger/Line Spatial Data

2010-05-11T23:11:00Z

This month’s T-SQL Tuesday post is about LOB data http://sqlblog.com/blogs/michael_coles/archive/2010/05/03/t-sql-tuesday-006-what-about-blob.aspx . For this one I decided to post a sample Tiger/Line SQL database I use all the time in live demos. For those who aren't familiar with it, Tiger/Line data is a dataset published by the U.S. Census Bureau . Tiger/Line has a lot of nice detailed geospatial data down to a very detailed level. It actually goes from the U.S. state level all the way down to...(read more)

T-SQL Tuesday #006: "What About BLOB?"

2010-05-03T23:29:00Z

Invitation for T-SQL Tuesday #006: "What About BLOB?" It's getting warm outside just in time for the May T-SQL Tuesday blog party. I’ll be your host this month--and the secret word for this T-SQL Tuesday is "Large Object (LOB) Data" . What’s T-SQL Tuesday? About 6 months ago Adam Machanic (Twitter: @AdamMachanic ) decided to throw a worldwide blog party. Every month Adam picks a host to post the topic and the rules. Everyone who wants to participate publishes a blog entry on the topic of the day,...(read more)

Find a Hash Collision, Win $100

2010-04-17T21:38:00Z

Margarity Kerns recently published a very nice article at SQL Server Central on using hash functions to detect changes in rows during the data warehouse load ETL process. On the discussion page for the article I noticed a lot of the same old arguments against using hash functions to detect change. After having this same discussion several times over the past several months in public and private forums, I've decided to see if we can't put this argument to rest for a while. To that end I'm going to...(read more)

T-SQL Tuesday #005: Creating SSMS Custom Reports

2010-04-13T00:14:00Z

This is my contribution to the T-SQL Tuesday blog party, started by Adam Machanic and hosted this month by Aaron Nelson . Aaron announced this month's topic is "reporting" so I figured I'd throw a blog up on a reporting topic I've been interested in for a while -- namely creating custom reports in SSMS. Creating SSMS custom reports isn't difficult, but like most technical work it's very detailed with a lot of little steps involved. So this post is a little longer than usual and includes a lot of...(read more)

Bit-Twiddling in SQL

2010-04-04T03:40:00Z

Someone posted a question to the SQL Server forum the other day asking how to count runs of zero bits in an integer using SQL. Basically the poster wanted to know how to efficiently determine the longest contiguous string of zero-bits (known as a run of bits) in any given 32-bit integer. Here are a couple of examples to demonstrate the idea: Decimal = Binary = Zero Run 999,999,999 decimal = 00 111011 1 00 11010 11 00 1 00 1 11111111 binary = 2 contiguous zero bits 666,666,666 decimal = 00100111 10111100...(read more)