DevWeek and PASS Europe

manowar — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 16:16:23 GMT

In the next month I’ll be speaking at two conferences, one in London, the DevWeek and another one at Neuss, the PASS European Summit.

At the DevWeek I’ll deliver a session created explicitly to give developers some insight on SQL Server development, so that when they have to deal with a database they can do the right thing just from the beginning. As a developer I learned at my expenses (looooong ago, in the around-2K golden years) that application performances are strictly related to database performance. And since a database can be (IMHO) seen as the fundaments of an application, the more it can be done correctly at the beginning, the more your application will be solid and fast.

SQL Server best practices for developers
http://www.devweek.com/sessions/conference1.asp

In Italy we created a specific course (from 2 to 4 days) upon this idea, and I can tell you that right from the start it was a big big big success, so we'll try to replicate that success in this session. I’m sure developers will love it!

After DevWeek, the month after, in April, I’ll also speak at PASS. One spotlight session will dedicated to SQL Server Development again, but in this case the focus will only be on how we approach the solution to a problem and how we write the query to solve it. I’ll show that “just” changing that approach – and thus also changing the query – we can make the query run at much higher speeds! It’s all about our mind, not the code.

Blazing Fast Queries: When Indexes Are Not Enough
http://www.sqlpass.org/summit/eu2010/Agenda/Spotlights/BlazingFastQueriesWhenIndexesAreNotEnough.aspx

The other session is specific for the BI guys, where I’ll not discuss architectures but I’ll focus engineering. Yes, I’ll try to make some order, defining some rules regardless the architecture and the methodology you want to follow, rules that will help to have a solid yet flexible (“adaptive”) solution:

Adaptive BI Best Practices
http://www.sqlpass.org/summit/eu2010/Agenda/ProgramSessions/AdaptiveBIBestPratices.aspx

So, see you there!

SET IDENTITY_INSERT little bug(?)

manowar — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 05:52:22 GMT

While I was working on a package to incrementally load a dimension in the DWH I’m developing for a customer, I stumbled upon a tricky little bug (I think, I still have to have a response from MS) that had – and will have – a little impact on how I create my packages.

I’ve found that, when working on an empty table that has an identity column, if you insert a value forcing the identity value, the next time SQL Server will generate the identity value, it will generate it missing one number. So, for example, you’ll have

0	(Forced Identity Value)
2
3

instead of having the correct sequence

0	(Forced Identity Value)
1
2

Not a huge problem as you can see, but I’d like to see it fixed, since can cause little troubles if your forgot about it and you expect to have predictable identity values. I know that identity values are usually not 100% predictable, but I find them useful to speed-up SSIS package development for loading dimensions tables while keeping package complexity low. Since I apply Agile Principles to BI, simplicity is fundamental, since it allows me to change package quickly, easily embracing changes that comes from refactoring or from customer new needs.

You can find the connect item to vote here:

https://connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=492452

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DevWeek and PASS Europe

SET IDENTITY_INSERT little bug(?)