Monthly Archives: April 2012

Less Energy through Better Design

Posted on April 30, 2012 by

When I attended SQL Saturday #131 at the Chandler Gilbert Community College, I was struck by a few design elements that I thought were great examples of how a little thought can improve the experience of a space, and use … Continue reading →

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SQL Saturday #131 Recap

Posted on April 30, 2012 by

This past weekend I attended a SQL Saturday in the desert. SQL Saturday #131 was held in Phoenix, AZ It’s April, but it was definitely hot. However the campus at Chandler Gilbert Community College was geared to the desert with … Continue reading →

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You need to run DBCC CheckDB regularly

Posted on April 30, 2012 by

You never know when you’ll encounter corruption. It can happen at any time, usually due to some sort of hardware problem or driver issue. Corruptions don’t disappear and you can’t necessarily Corruptions can be caused by numerous factors, and it … Continue reading →

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Being Responsible for Code

Posted on April 30, 2012 by

I read this great account of how Facebook releases new code, and found it to be very interesting. Apparently the entire FB site compiles to a single 1.5GB binary at this time. That in and of itself is interesting, but their … Continue reading →

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Cool Data Visualization

Posted on April 27, 2012 by

I attended a course from Edward Tufte a few years ago on Data Visualization, and while I learned some neat things, I never was able to implement them well. I think part of it is a complete lack of an … Continue reading →

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A Lifetime of Software

Posted on April 27, 2012 by

I’ve been working with computers and software for most of my life, but it’s been a career for a couple of decades now. I don’t do as much technical work as I used to, mostly testing and experimenting, but my … Continue reading →

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Security Outside the Database

Posted on April 26, 2012 by

It’s 2012. We’ve known about SQL Injection for years, we’ve known about the issues with high privilege admin accounts for decades, and poor configuration has been an issue ever since we first started networking two computing devices together. Yet these … Continue reading →

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The Mentoring Experiment – Cycle 2

Posted on April 26, 2012 by

It’s been a long time, almost a year since Andy Warren and I kicked off The Mentoring Experiment. We had a successful cycle 1, and are not in the process of looking for mentors for cycle 2. Once we get … Continue reading →

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Technology for Sharing

Posted on April 25, 2012 by

Computer technology has done an amazing job of making many parts of business more efficient. It has streamlined processes, freed up many people from relatively menial tasks and increased the speed at which we can accomplish many things. This has … Continue reading →

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Creating a Symmetric Key in SQL Server

Posted on April 25, 2012 by

Symmetric keys in SQL Server are recommended for encrypting data in columns. They are a good balance of security and resource usage, much better than asymmetric keys. Creating a symmetric key is fairly simple, using DDL that’s easy to understand. … Continue reading →

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