Author Archive

SQL Server Compressed Backup v1.2 Released

Monday, November 23rd, 2009

I've just released version 1.2-20091123 of SQL Server Compressed Backup which can be downloaded here.

SQL Server Compressed Backup will back up SQL Server databases using either gzip, zip or bzip2 compression.

The new features are:
(more...)

How SSAS Cube Processing Affects Running Queries

Friday, May 29th, 2009

SSAS cube processing can kill running queries. That's right, it may kill queries in order to commit changes to the cube.

Here is what happens during SSAS cube processing. (more...)

Execution Plan of Frequent Queries

Friday, May 29th, 2009

Bill Galashan, DBA of bet365 sent over the following query that lists the execution plan of the 10 most frequently executed queries.

He writes:

We got into this due to different query plans coming from a VB or a web app than what was seen when running the same query from Management Studio. Eventually tracked this down to a difference in the set options predominatley whether Arithabort was on or off.

Read more to see his query. (more...)

GWT is Flexible — an iPhone Demo

Monday, May 25th, 2009

GWT is a very flexible environment that allows you to write a web application in Java and compile it to Javascript -- even for the iPhone.

A number of people have fears with GWT, for instance

  • (not true) GWT isn't flexible which will lead developers down a dead-end path.
  • (not true) GWT is ugly, and can't be used to make "gucci" UIs.

This post will show that these are just myths. (more...)

OpenID is great

Saturday, March 7th, 2009

It's so easy to set up, I can't believe I haven't done it before.
(more...)

The “Many Core” Problem

Saturday, October 25th, 2008

We, as developers, have a problem.  CPUs will continue to have more cores, and each core is not going to be any faster.  The only way to write faster applications is to write multithreaded code, which has two challenges:

  • Multithreaded code is complex to write and think about.
  • Multithreaded code is difficult to test.

From what I've seen, people are pursuing 4 approaches.  (more...)

Functional Language Explosion

Saturday, October 18th, 2008

There is suddenly a lot of interest in functional languages recently.  The two advantages are

  • Writing a DSL (Domain Specific Language)
  • Writing concurrent code

The languages that seem to come up are:

  • Clojure (JVM)
  • F# (based on OCaml, Haskell, and ML) (.Net CLR)
  • Erlang (JVM)

I'm not particularly interested in DSL (despite my last post on code generators), however as CPUs contain more and more cores, we'll need a way to safely write multithreaded code.

The Clojure project has an interesting post on its approach on simplifying multithreaded code.

Erlang handles concurrency by only having local variables and providing a way to send messages to and from other threads.

Lastly, MPI is a .Net library for distributed processing where the same program executes multiple times and each instance communicates with each other using message passing which sounds very Erlang-like.

GWT for Web Applications

Saturday, October 18th, 2008

There are several approaches for writing web applications, each with their own advantages.  GWT is a new framework with its own niche.

  • Your standard ASP.Net (or JSP/PHP/etc) w/ Ajax and JQuery (or other Javascript library)
  • Java WebStart or .Net ClickOnce
  • GWT w/ Webservices

(more...)

Code Generator Built-in to VS 2008

Saturday, October 18th, 2008

Guess what, a code generator is built-in to Visual Studio 2008.

MSSQL Compressed Backup 1.0 Released

Sunday, August 24th, 2008

I've just released version 1.0 of MSSQL Compressed Backup.  This is a command line utility that allows you to backup or restore your SQL Server 2005 databases to/from compressed files such as zip, bzip2, or gzip.

http://mssqlcompressed.sourceforge.net/