Louis Davidson

Upcoming Database Design Pre-Cons

2013-06-13T04:45:19Z

In July and October, I will be doing my "How To Design a Relational Database" full day conference in two places. First on July 26 for the East Iowa SQL Saturday , and then for the big daddy SQLPASS Summit in Charlotte, NC on October 14. You can see the entire abstract here on the SQL PASS site. It is essentially the same concept as last year, but this year I am making a few big changes to really give the people what they have desired (and am truly glad to have a swing at it several months...(read more)

Why We Write #6-An Interview with Kevin Kline

2013-06-06T01:00:38Z

Wow, so far in this series, I have interviewed some very good friends, and some truly excellent writers (and usually both), but today, following on the heels of Jason Strate , we are going to hit someone whose name is synonymous with community, a person who really needs no introduction. According to Bing, Kevin Kline ( @kekline ) is the most important Kevin Kline on Twitter (though it clearly could be due to my typical searches, I am giving him the benefit of the doubt… here try it yourself: http://www.bing.com/search?q=kevin+kline+twitter...(read more)

Why We Write #5–An Interview With Jason Strate

2013-05-20T02:40:59Z

My next guest is a person I have known for years, and have worked with on several occasions, Jason Strate ( @stratesql ). Jason is a very active writer and speaker (at my first SQL Saturday event, he spoke four times!), and always seems very busy. His blog ( jasonstrate.com ) had 23 posts just last month, and his twitter account is always active with interesting SQL and non-SQL tweets. If the blogs and tweets weren't enough, just this past year, Jason was a coauthor on one book last year ( Expert...(read more)

Speaking about Relational DB Design the next two weeks (Knoxville, then Atlanta)

2013-05-06T01:57:54Z

On Friday, May 10 I will be speaking for the Knoxville SQL Server User Group, and on May 18, I will be speaking at SQL Saturday in Atlanta. Both days, my session is my old chestnut “Database Design Fundamentals”. It is my favorite session to do because of two things. 1. I love to talk about database design 2. No demos :). The abstract is: In this session I will give an overview of how to design a database, including the common normal forms and why they should matter to you if you are creating...(read more)

Why We Write #4 - An Interview With Doug Lane

2013-04-24T02:56:22Z

My next guest is Doug Lane , who has been blogging for the past few years on his website: http://www.douglane.net/ . Doug is also a speaker who has spoken at SQL Saturdays as well as the SQL PASS Summit , and as I write these interview questions was on his way to speak at the SQL PASS Business Analytics conference in 2013 . I also liked quite a few of the pictures in his photostream here ( http://www.flickr.com/photos/58251371@N06/ ), particularly because I tried the bean bag juggling, though I cannot...(read more)

Why We Write #3 - An Interview With Rob Farley

2013-04-08T17:04:14Z

In the third entry in this series, we take a turn south, not in quality, but in the geography of our next entrant. Rather our interview target is Rob Farley, who is from (well lives in) Australia. Rob Farley is a SQL Server MVP, and is quite a busy fellow. He is the owner of a consulting company named LobsterPot Solutions , located in Adelaide, and is a current member of the PASS Board of Directors. His blog is located at SQL Blog , where I also blog, and he tweets under the extremely unobvious...(read more)

Why We Write #2 - An Interview With Mark Vaillancourt

2013-03-28T17:30:12Z

My second guest is Mark Vaillancourt (whose last name makes me very happy for the copy and paste feature), who is an Information Management consultant working for Digineer , and is a Regional Mentor for PASS in Canada. Mark is also a speaker at SQL Saturday events, as well as the SQL PASS Business Analytics conference in 2013 . Mark has been blogging regularly since early 2009 on his website ( http://markvsql.com/ ), and interestingly, has degrees in English and Theater, two degrees that almost always...(read more)

Why We Write #1 - An Interview With Thomas LaRock

2013-03-22T00:03:00Z

I 've been a writer of trade level technical materials for over 13 years now, writing books, articles, blogs, and even tweets for a variety of outlets, almost exclusively about Microsoft SQL Server. While I won't claim to be the best writer in the world, I feel like I have the process of writing down fairly well, yet, for the life of me, there is still the question of "why do I do this?" stuck in the back of my mind that I have yet to appease. Note that my quest specifically deals with non-verbal...(read more)

My New Year's Goals 2013

2013-02-18T04:17:21Z

So, I have completely given up on my new year starting on Jan 1 where blogging/writing/community is concerned. I love the holidays WAY too much, and I love football (of the American variety with the oblong ball, of course) WAY too much, and so, that is why this year I waited until after the Super Bowl to get to this point (this was supposed to be posted last week, but #1 on the list got in the way!). Last year, I promised to do some things in my resolutions , and because I failed on one (1. get the...(read more)

One more reason to to understand query plans, not directly performance related

2013-01-23T04:28:00Z

One of the things that separates a good programmer from a great one is a firm understanding about what is going on inside the computer. For some programming languages, it is very obvious what is going on inside the computer because you are working at a very low level. For example, if you are a C/C++ programmer writing an OS, you will know a lot about the hardware as you will interact with it directly. As a .NET programmer you are more encapsulated from the hardware experience, making use of the .NET...(read more)

Pro SQL Server 2012 Practices Chapter 8: Release Management Review

2013-01-18T21:06:14Z

This past year, I contributed a chapter to an anthology book of best practices for working with SQL Server 2012 entitled Pro SQL Server 2012 Practices ( http://www.apress.com/9781430247708 ). As authors, for publicity we decided to do summary reviews one another's chapters. There are lots of great technical sounding chapters, but when I picked, I picked a chapter that I hoped to help me learn more about a process that is not in my favorite normal design or coding techniques area. Of the parts of...(read more)

A wee bit exhausted… time to reenergize

2012-12-11T02:26:00Z

I admit it. I am tired and I have not blogged nearly enough. This has been a crazy year, with the book I finished writing , the pre-cons I have done (teaching is NOT my primary profession so I do a lot more prep than some others probably do), lots of training on Data Warehousing topics (from Ralph Kimball, Bob Becker, and Stacia Misner, to name three of the great teachers I have had), SQL Rally, SQL PASS, SQL Saturdays and I have gotten a lot more regular with my simple-talk blog as well… Add to...(read more)

PASS Precon Countdown… See some of you Monday, and others on Tuesday Night

2012-11-03T02:06:58Z

As I finish up the plans for Monday’s database design precon, I am getting pretty excited for the day. This is the third time I have done this precon, and where the base slides are very similar, I have a few new twists in mind. One of my big ideas for my Database Design Workshop precon has always been to give people to do some design. So I am even now trying to go through and whittle down the slides and make sure that we have the time for design. If you are attending, be prepared to be a team player....(read more)

24 Hours of PASS next week, pre-con preview style

2012-09-14T00:53:47Z

I will be doing my Characteristics of a Great Relational Database , which is a session that I haven’t done since last PASS. When I was asked about doing this Summit Preview version of 24 hours of PASS, I decided that I would do this session, largely because it is kind of light and fun, but also because it is either going to be the basis of the end section of my pre-con at the summit or it is going to be the section of the pre-con we don’t get to because we are so involved in working out designs that...(read more)

Utility Queries–Structure of Tables with Identity Column

2012-09-02T20:05:00Z

Edit: At the suggestion of a much knowledgable commenter who shall remain named Aaron, I changed from using schema_name() function to using sys.tables. When writing code that is expected to have reuse, it can be safer to use the tables rather than functions because the tables will work in the context of the database that is in the from clause, so if you changed the code to database1.sys.tables because you wanted the tables from database1, and you were executing the code in database2, the columns...(read more)