08Apr 2009 by Grant Fritchey 15 Comments

PASS Summit 09 Call For Speakers Deadline Extended

PASS
It's now running until Friday April 24th. That's good news if you couldn't get yourself together by this Friday. However, I wonder if they're also extending the time for the committee to make it's decisions? That means extended worry and sweat for those of us who have already submitted abstracts. But, on the other hand, if they haven't extended the committee's deadlines, then that means those guys are going to be working their behinds off to meet the original date (end of May). I also wonder if it means that they're not getting enough abstracts or if the quality of the abstracts has slipped? New this year you can check out the abstracts to see what others have submitted. That makes for some interesting reading, but now I'm wondering if it's…
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07Apr 2009 by Grant Fritchey 3 Comments

SQL Server Standard Article Available

PASS, SQL Server, T-SQL
Unfortunately PASS decided to put the SQL Server Standard to sleep right after I got an article published in it (and no, it wasn't my fault). However, PASS, being the service oriented organization that they are, has decided to make back issues of the magazine available online. So, to read the article I wrote comparing various methods of retrieving versioned data using different TSQL constructs, click this link. Go to page 14. Oh yeah, and you can see other peoples articles here too. There are other things coming out of the editorial committee soon (although I need to get one of them done myself... yikes).
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07Apr 2009 by Grant Fritchey 6 Comments

NULL Is Not NULL

SQL Server, T-SQL
NULL as a concept seems so easy but it leads to so many problems for people. To put it as simply as possible, NULL does not equal anything. It does not "not equal" anything either. It can't be compared to other values in any way. There was a recent post over at SQL Server Central where the user had a query problem that one of the great people over at SSC solved, handily. They also pointed out that the bit of code being used "WHERE nt.NullableString NOT LIKE 'null%'" was also a problem. The user insisted that it was eliminating the NULL values. Well, yeah, sort of, it was, but not because it was actually applying a filter to the NULLs. Remember, a NULL does not equal or "not equal"…
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