Developing in Windows Azure is at once not that much different from what you’re familiar with in on-premises systems, and different in significant ways. Because of these differences, developers often ask about the specific process to develop and deploy a Windows Azure application - more formally called an Application Lifecycle Management, or ALM. ...

I see a lot of people suggest while loops instead of cursors in situations where row-based processing is required (or, at least, where folks think that row-based processing is required). Sometimes the justification is that constructing a while loop is simpler and more straightforward than constructing a cursor. Others suggest that a while loop is ...

This one is quite subjective, and I'm sure I will face plenty of opposition - not only because it's a preference thing and many people are married to their preferences, but also because it violates the strict interpretation of the standard. Personally, I'm more worried about the former than the latter - I have no concerns whatsoever that ...

I served in the U.S. Military for a while, and as part of my training we had to maintain a “Bug-Out Bag”, which was a large duffle-bag full of certain items that we could live on/fight with in an emergency. I’ve carried the spirit of that idea forward with me into civilian life, in Florida and especially here in the Pacific Northwest. In Florida ...

One of the things that drives me crazy as I'm getting older is that my brain is losing the capacity to differentiate version numbers. As I speak travel around speaking with customers and at conferences, I find my self saying things like ''I can't recall if this problem was fixed in SQL Server 2000 or 2005. But you don't have to worry about that ...

When you create a Windows Azure application, you’ll pick a subscription to put it under. This is a billing container - underneath that, you’ll deploy a Hosted Service. That holds the Web and Worker Roles that you’ll deploy for your applications. Along side that, you use the Storage Account to create storage for the application. ...

I've come across quite a bit of code that uses date/time shorthand that can either be confusing or downright dangerous. There are two areas I want to focus on: shorthand for date arithmetic, and shorthand for date parts. Date Arithmetic This one I mentioned quite briefly in a previous ''Bad Habits to Kick'' post, but I see it in use enough ...

As most of you know, I don’t like the term “cloud” very much. It isn’t defined, which means it can be anything. I prefer “distributed computing”, which is more technically accurate and describes what you’re doing in more concrete terms. So when you think about Windows and SQL Azure, you don’t have ...

“Git-Go” is something we say in the South that means “right at the start”. I’ve seen several applications for on-premise systems that don’t have much in the way of diagnostics - the developers rely on a debugger, the event logs on the server and client workstation, and most of all, the ability to watch the system from end-to-end. This approach ...

I've had enough time off from traveling after my surgery to finally travel again.  First on the circuit , set for August 27th, is Omaha, Nebraska and SQL Saturday #91.  As a former Crimson Tide alum, I was stoked about going to the University of Nebraska, our once and future rivals on the Grid Iron.  But after a moment's ...