It has always been possible to interrogate SQL Server for metadata (schema) information. You can easily discover all the objects in a database (tables, views, stored procedures, and so on) and their types by directly querying system tables (not recommended, as they can change from one version of SQL Server to another) or information schema [...]
SQL Server 2012 adds many significant improvements to the spatial support that was first introduced with SQL Server 2008. Among the more notable enhancements is support for curves (arcs), where SQL Server 2008 only supported straight lines, or polygons composed of straight lines. Microsoft also provides methods that test for non-2012-compatible (curved) shapes, and convert [...]
SQL Server 2012 adds many significant improvements to the spatial support that was first introduced with SQL Server 2008. In this blog post, I’ll explore one of the more notable enhancements: support for curves and arcs (circular data). SQL Server 2008 only supported straight lines, or polygons composed of straight lines. The three new shapes [...]
A client project uses a .netTiers data access solution. Some of my recent tasks involved working with the .netTiers layer of the project to perform copying and auditing of the application data. Out of the box nettiers offers a convention that gives the ability to crawl through the entire structure of a large object graph. [...]
Also posted in Enterprise .NET |
SQL Server, particularly its relational database engine, matured quite some time ago. So the “significance” of every new release over recent years can be viewed—in some ways—as relatively nominal. The last watershed release of the product was actually SQL Server 2005, which was when the relational engine (that, for years, defined SQL Server) stopped occupying [...]
Recently I was tasked with migrating a Microsoft Access 2010 database to SQL Server 2008 R2 while preserving the form functionality built into Access. While the migration using Microsoft Access’ ‘Upsizing Wizard’ was easy enough for a majority of the objects, I found that a few of the more complex Access queries and tables needed [...]
Recently I found myself stuck on a problem while constructing a query for a stored procedure. Like any other developer when I get stuck I start looking through my “bag of tricks” to see if I can find something that will help me solve this problem, but this time I came up empty handed. That’s [...]
Also posted in Tips and Tricks |
SQL Server 2008 introduced FILESTREAM, an innovative feature that integrates the relational database engine with the NTFS file system to provide highly efficient storage and management of BLOBs. Now FileTable, a new feature coming in the next version of SQL Server (code-named “Denali”), builds on FILESTREAM and takes database BLOB management to the next level. [...]
Synonyms are a useful tool to make database aplications more flexible, portable and easier to code. A synonym can be viewed as a pointer to a fully qualified SQL Server object that is used in place of its fully qualified name. This allows application code to be more concise and easier to maintain.
Synonyms are a [...]
This is the second part of my two-part article on windowing functions in SQL Server 2012. In Part 1, I explained the new running and sliding aggregation capabilities added to the OVER clause in SQL Server 2012. In this post, I’ll explain the new T-SQL analytic windowing functions. All of these functions operate using the [...]