Database Schemas are just containers – they aren’t users or anything else – think of a sub-directory on the hard drive. In early versions of SQL Server we “hid” schemas, placing all objects under “dbo”, which gave the erroneous perception that Schemas are users. In SQL Server 2005, we “un-hid” or re-introduced schemas within the database. Users ...

Microsoft is a big company – and of course we have a lot of IT infrastructure that we have to manage. It might surprise you to learn that we have an IT group, just like at your company. We have a networking team, a server hardware team, software teams, DBA’s, the whole bit. In fact, we have more Mac computers than just about anyone (other than ...

The final numbered post in this version of my “pillar” series of posts ends in the most contestable part of the design/implementation process.  Encapsulation. The concept of encapsulation is not contested (or even contestable by sane programmers in any field of the art of system creation. Every time you use a Windows API call you are ...

In my last post in this series, I talked about the assumptions many people make about IDENTITY columns.  In this post, I want to focus on choosing data types.  There are several areas where I see frequent mistakes in data type choice, and I'll mention a few here. Using CHAR / VARCHAR / INT for date / time values Countless times I have ...

A bit of terminology that gets beaten to death is that of the “physical” database.  I would think most every DBA uses this term (I do), but…to mean what?  I think there are two common utilizations: The layer of tables, constraints, indexes, etc used to store data The actual on-disk structures. Frankly, until 3 years ago, I ...

Okay, so on the first look this sounds like the most boring Japanese action movie ever. Requirements is tearing through the village, and Architecture is in the city.  Developers by the horde are trying to code both of these into oblivion…Maybe not.  Clearly I am talking about something a little more exciting…the battle between the forces ...