There I was. A freshly printed bachelor's degree in Computer Science tucked under my arm, I walked into my First Real Job. I'd never touched the technologies I was going to work with--ASP 3.0 and SQL Server--but my employer knew that, and I figured I'd be able to pick things up relatively quickly. After all, I'd been programming since the 2nd ...

“This ugly hack is only temporary,” you think. Six months later, a coworker curses your name, sacrificing a chicken to any deity that will help expedite your getting struck down by lightning, a school bus, or both. Crap code. We’ve all seen it. We’ve all created it. We’re all guilty. Yes, even you. Sometimes our crap is purposeful—the ugly, ...

Just over a year ago I kicked off T-SQL Tuesday, ''a recurring, revolving blog party.'' The idea was simple:Each month a blog will host the party, and about a week before the second Tuesday of the month a theme will be posted. Any blogger that wishes to participate is invited to write a post on the chosen topic. The event is called ''T-SQL ...

Apologies for the late reminder; tomorrow is T-SQL Tuesday. This month's event is hosted by Robert Davis over at SQL Server Central and the theme is ''Gettin' Schooled.'' How do you learn? Or how do you teach? Have you learned anything interesting recently that you'd like to share? Post about it! For full details see Robert's blog. By the way, ...

Just a quick note for those of you who may not have seen Michael Coles's post (and a reminder for the rest of you): The topic of this month's T-SQL Tuesday is LOB data. Get your posts ready; next Tuesday we go big!

This month's T-SQL Tuesday is hosted by Aaron Nelson of SQLVariations. Aaron has picked a really fantastic topic: Reporting. Reporting is a lot more than just SSRS. Whether or not you realize it, you deal with all sorts of reports every day. Server up-time reports. Application activity reports. And even DMVs, which as Aaron points out are simply ...

Hey bloggers! Wake up and get your favorite editor ready. T-SQL Tuesday is back again, this time with a great topic hosted by Mike at StraightPath Solutions. Stop reading this blog and go read his. And then post! As I mentioned to a few Indian MVPs at the MVP Summit a couple of weeks ago, there have been no T-SQL Tuesday contributions as of yet ...

According to T-SQL Tuesday rules as ratified by me in the first and second T-SQL Tuesday posts, the T-SQL Tuesday host is supposed to post a roundup within two days of the end of the event. So a reasonable person should expect a roundup to be posted by the second Thursday of the month. It gives me no pleasure to admit that I've been completely ...

The query optimizer is a finicky thing, and sometimes it doesn't understand exactly what you're trying to do until you give it a bit more information. The situation I'm going to describe in this post is one such case. By providing the optimizer with ever-so-slightly more data, it's possible to make some XML processing over 300 times faster. ...

Welcome to the second installment of T-SQL Tuesday, the monthly SQL Server blog party! Last month's kickoff event was a great success, and I'm really excited for this month's theme. I hope that we see even more bloggers, with even more great posts this time around--so please spread the word!   Theme Have you ever found yourself unable to ...