Most T-SQL guides and tutorials I've seen concentrate on the following transaction commands: BEGIN, COMMIT, and ROLLBACK, which I'll henceforth refer to as the "big three". While they're certainly very important, there's also a fourth command, SAVE, which is typically treated like a distant cousin who's only …

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I had the immense pleasure of speaking at SQL Saturday #50 in Iowa City this past weekend. To say it was an awesome time would be quite the understatement. Special thanks to Michelle Ufford (blog | twitter), Ed Leighton-Dick (twitter) and Jeff Belina (twitter) for all you did to make this event possible. Also a giant …

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This post is my contribution to T-SQL Tuesday #10, which is being hosted by Michael J. Swart (blog | twitter) Each year my Boy Scout troop has a rummage sale as a fundraiser. All the scouts and their families gather up their old clothes, books, toys, electronics, and any other treasures they no longer need and donate …

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Let's say you're starting off in a new environment (new job, department, client, whatever) and after being shown your workspace and meeting with your supervisor, you sit down to start figuring out their databases. You send an email requesting the name of the development database, and the reply you get is as follows: …

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I feel extremely honored to have the chance to speak at SQLSaturday #50, which is taking place in Iowa City on September 18th. The organizers have put together a great schedule consisting of some amazing speakers and somehow I got on the list too! I'll be giving a talk called "Application Coding Sins." As …

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Tomorrow night I'll have the pleasure of speaking at the August 2010 Chicago Suburban SQL Server User Group meeting. Here's the details: WHERE: Microsoft Offices – 3025 Highland Parkway Suite 300, Downers Grove, IL WHEN: Tuesday, August 3, 2010. 6:00 – 9:00 pm I'll be giving my presentation entitled "Backups and …

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Do you like it when your schemata are easy to understand and maintain? If so, keep the following in mind when choosing names for tables and columns. If you're feeling evil and want to inflict some frustration on others, this might give you some good ideas too…

1. Data types make horrible names There's no rule that says …

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I've seen many articles and blog posts concerning what to do when you have to switch between SQL Server Recovery Models. A lot of these tips are very important, as they can mean the difference between being able to recover your data and the much less desirable opposite. After a lot of web searches on the subject I came …

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One of the nifty features available in SQL Server 2008 is the "Optimize for Ad hoc Workloads" option, which is at the instance level. If your workload involves a high number of ad hoc queries that are used only once, your plan cache (also known as the "procedure cache") may benefit from enabling …

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A few days ago Tim Ford (blog | twitter) put forth a challenge to describe a transaction in a non-technical fashion. I could have replied to the post directly, but I figured it would be rather wordy. Instead I decided to follow the lead of Janice Lee (blog | twitter) and write a post about it, providing Tim with a neat …

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