Louis Davidson

2012 Blog Resolutions

2012-01-03T04:20:34Z

I skipped last year making blog resolutions, but this year I need to get myself back on the straight and narrow and encourage myself to do a few things. 1. Finish my book quickly and efficiently – Well, duh, I supposed, but the quickly and efficiently is the biggest important part. I have no idea when SQL Server 2012 will be released, but with RC0 having been publicly released, it isn’t going to be SQL Server 2013 now is it? 2. Blog regularly – Note I didn’t exactly say more, but I do want...(read more)

Planning my Louisville SQL Saturday Presentation

2011-10-26T02:47:14Z

So it is Tuesday night, just a few days until my presentation entitled What Counts For A DBA and I am still not completely sure exactly what is going to go on. In fact, I don’t exactly plan to know what is going on until the presentation is over. On paper it seems like a simple idea. I am going to use 9 of the topics I have posted on my simple-talk blog about What Counts For a DBA ( http://www.simple-talk.com/community/blogs/drsql/ ), and write them on my spinning wheel that looks like this:...(read more)

PASS Week/Speaking/Doing Schedule

2011-10-10T23:20:08Z

Well, we are finally here at what is the secular version of the holiday season for Microsoft SQL Server nerd types, the week of the SQLPASS Summit. This year, I am speaking 3 times and will also be doing the Quiz Bowl at the Welcome Reception, so I am going to be busy. If you are here and are interested in database design, please do stop by and check out my sessions. Monday and Tuesday I will be in side sessions that are NDA for much of the day, and that is probably all that I can say. Tuesday night...(read more)

Chapters 9, 10, 11, and 12

2011-09-29T03:28:52Z

So I have been a bit remiss on my blogging the book duties. The fact is, the first 8 chapters were fairly heavy rewrites and reworkings, and even a good amount of new material. But when doing a new version of a book that has already existed, you do need to reuse a good deal of the material from previous version. Chapters 9, 10, and 11 are these chapters for this edition of the book. The chapters are: Chapter 9 - Database Security and Security Patterns – The biggest change to this...(read more)

MVP Deep Dives 2: Coming Really Soon

2011-09-27T04:49:43Z

You probably have noticed that I haven’t blogged all that much these days. Part of the reason has been taking on way too many projects/speaking engagements/writing projects etc. I am generally proud of all of these things, but the most project that I am probably the most proud of is the MVP Deep Dives 2 book. The project was helmed by the one and only Kalen Delaney , whom I have always admired for many reasons. Working with her on the project has been awesome, even when she had to crack the...(read more)

PASS First Timer Advice–Make it worth it!

2011-08-26T19:45:41Z

I have seen a lot of other people giving advice about what to do on your first trip to the SQL PASS Conference and I want to give you my two cents worth as well. Many people will be pushing the social aspects of the conference and that is excellent advice which I too will emphasize, but in my mind there is one main thing you need to do: Make it worth it. Someone has shelled out a pretty large sum of money to get you there, and they want to see some return on investment in order for you or your coworkers...(read more)

Denali Enhancement–Duplicate Key Error Message

2011-07-14T05:12:35Z

When I was editing my chapter on implementing a database, I noticed a really nice improvement in the error message I had from the previous edition of the book. Instead of just telling me that there was a value in my modification statement that duplicated an existing value (or multiple values affected by the statement), it told me the duplicated value. To demo, I created the following quickie table in tempdb. USE tempdb GO --drop the object if it initially existed if object_id('test.testErrorMessage')...(read more)

Chapter 8–Patterns and Anti-Patterns

2011-07-10T17:29:42Z

In this last kind of “creative” chapter, I will look at some of the ways you implement common problems in your relational database, and some of the ways you probably shouldn’t. The “should” sections will deal with: Uniqueness – Beyond the simple uniqueness we have covered in the first chapters of the book, looking at some very realistic patterns of solutions that cannot be implemented with a simple uniqueness constraint. Data Driven Design – The goal of data driven design is that you never hard code...(read more)

Chapter 7–Enforced Data Protection

2011-06-21T04:36:13Z

As the book progresses, I find myself veering from the original stated outline quite a bit, because as I teach about this more (and I am teaching a daylong db design class in August at http://www.sqlsolstice.com/ … shameless plug, but it is on topic :) I start to find that a given order works better. Originally I had slated myself to talk more about modeling here for three chapters, then get back to the more implementation topics to finish out the book, but now I am going to keep plugging through...(read more)

Speaking at PASS (and a plug for two other conferences)

2011-06-18T03:14:25Z

So I was notified a few days ago that one of my sessions was selected, and one is an alternate. Luckily, it was the one that I have the most experience with, and the alternate is my latest session that I am really quite happy with after doing it virtually and now at the SQL Saturday in Columbus. The selected session is: Database Design Fundamentals In this session I will give an overview of how to design a database, including the common normal forms and why they should matter to you if you are creating...(read more)

See you in Columbus Saturday?

2011-06-06T04:32:45Z

Assuming all goes as planned, I will be in Columbus, OH this Friday night and Saturday for SQL Saturday 75 . I really love SQL Saturday events the best of all of the events because they are very intimate in nature. As a fairly antisocial person, I sometimes get overwhelmed by the size of other events, even the SQL Rally was just barely in my comfort range. Here the number of people and size of rooms just feels like home, like you are shooting the breeze with a group of friends. My session will be...(read more)

Normalization and How to Know When You Are Done… The short version…

2011-05-29T20:54:15Z

A while back, I was working on a short article about Normalization for a book that never got published (admittedly I wasn’t getting paid for the article, and it wasn’t for charity, so I wasn’t that broken up over it.) The task at hand was to, in 2 pages or less, describe the process of normalization and help you to know when you have finished. In my upcoming book Pro SQL Server 2000 + N (where N > 10) Relational Database Design and Implementation, it takes about 45 pages. So it wasn’t really...(read more)

SQLPASS Submissions

2011-05-07T01:20:14Z

So I am a bit hesitant to post this because the past few times I have posted about something I have submitted they have failed to occur. But hey, I might as well. If I don’t I might get all 5 sessions I submitted and have to do them.. and that would be super tiring. So I put in 5, including a 1/2 day session and a pre-con and if I could choose only one, it would be the pre-con. Before you start thinking I am stating the obvious, I have done one pre-con by myself at the Orlando SQL Saturday...(read more)

Going to Plamen Ratchev’s T-SQL 2008 Coding Skills Pre-con -- Join Me?

2011-04-18T17:22:05Z

This week I signed up for Plamen Ratchev’s PASS SQLRally pre-con, “ Maximize Your SQL Server 2008 Coding Skills ,” and here’s why you ought to join me. This is a bit of an odd experience because, well, if you readers had voted a few more times for me, I would be writing examples for my pre-con instead of attending this one :) Once I decided to attend SQLRally, May 11-13 in Orlando, I decided that I wanted to attend a pre-con for a couple of reasons. First off, I like to learn about how other people...(read more)

Chapter 6–Physical Database Creation Basics

2011-04-16T15:45:50Z

Or “Finally getting to use SQL Server like the dang name of the book implies” I am smack dab in the middle of chapter 6 now, and I have finally figured out the concept and how it is going to be. Originally, chapter 6 was going to be the start of a series of design pattern chapters, but a funny thing happened when I reached the end of Chapter 5 on Normalization. The book felt incomplete. My feeling had been to assume that the reader had used SQL, knew how to execute a create table statement, an insert...(read more)