21Apr 2009 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

Spatial Data

Spatial Data, T-SQL
I work for an insurance company. If you think that maybe, we might be interested in the physical location of the things we insure, you'd be right. Actually, we're an insurance company predicated on the idea that risk can be managed. That means that not only do we know where your factory is located. We know the wind zone, earthquake zone, flood zone, rain zone and temperature zone it's in. We send engineers out to the site to inspect it and recommend upgrades. We track the upgrades and the condition of your facility. With all that location specific information, just how important do you think it is that with SQL Server 2008 we're finally getting a spatial data type? Yeah, exactly. We're in the process of launching our first full implementation…
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17Apr 2009 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

Pushing Connect

PASS
I have posted multiple times that I think Microsoft Connect is one of the best tools you can use to communicate with Microsoft. It works. Buck Woody is reinforcing my position from the Microsoft side of the fence. Look, Microsoft is not a small nimble company like Red Gate. And again, unlike Red Gate, you might not find yourself in a conversation with the CEO of Microsoft on the floor of a conference like the PASS Summit. And short of going to PASS or TechEd to track down some of the developers and project managers (many of whom attend these conferences), you need to have a mechanism to communicate with the company. You can try standing on your front door step and screaming (trust me, the neighbors just call the police)…
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16Apr 2009 by Grant Fritchey 6 Comments

SQL Quiz Part 4

Misc
Thanks SQLBatman. It's not like I need to do work or something. Who has been a great leader in your career and what has made them a great leader? First, I need to define what I understand a leader to be and then I'll see if I have any great ones on the list. There are a lot of ways to define what a leader is. You could say simply the managers, team leads, CEO's and CIO's that you've worked for or with are leaders. But I don't see that. I think of a leader and I see Henry V and the St. Crispin's day speech, "...And gentlemen in England now-a-bed shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here, and hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks that fought with…
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14Apr 2009 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

Publishing at PASS

PASS
I've been working with Andy Warren on several things for PASS through the editorial committee. Some of the work is available now. First, I've searched out all the online SQL Server communities that I could track down. I gathered information about the community and whether or not they published articles and what the contact for publication is. All the information about the online communities is gathered in one place. Please look them over. If I missed someone's favorite community, please let me know. I'll update it. If I've got some bad information up there, again, pass the word and I'll get the changes in. If you're looking for somewhere to go for help, support, or just someone to talk to, I think you can find something to suit you there. PASS is…
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13Apr 2009 by Grant Fritchey 4 Comments

Paul Randal’s Database Size Survey

SQL Server, T-SQL
If you have three minutes to spare, swing by Paul Randal's blog and answer his survey questions about the size and distribution of your database. The results are very interesting. I was most interested in the number of respondents to each of the questions.  As each size category switched, fewer and fewer people responded. However, a lot more people responded than I expected. 94 last I looked had databases under 10gb in size, but 42 had databases over 1tb. Yeah, that's only 1/2, but, holy cow, it's 1/2. I wish I had a database to manage that was over 1tb. Back in the 7.0/2000 days I was at a dot com that was getting close. When I left they had 700gb. I understand they got close to 850 before the…
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11Apr 2009 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

SQL Server Execution Plans Published… Again

T-SQL
My first book is finally in print. OK. I know. It sounds funny. But my first book was printed in only a limited print run from Red Gate, most of which they gave away at Tech Ed last year. Then they offered it for free in an electronic form. Very few people got a printed copy. Well, if you were waiting around for the dead tree version, it's here! Thanks again to Tony Davis & Brad McGehee for all the work they did. It just wouldn't have been possible without them.
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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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