Weekly Link Roundup

Sitting at Schlotsky’s enjoying free Wifi; Isabel’s in ballet, Grace is in swimming, and my lovely wife is at home slaving away on her doctoral dissertation.  Me?  I’m wishing I had a netbook instead of this big ol’ clunky laptop from work.  I’m hoping that when they replace this thing sometime in the next year, I’ll either get something with more power or less weight.

Anyway, on to the links:

I’m amazed at how much good stuff there is out there in people’s blogs; I just found Joe Webb’s post on adding a column to every table in the database.  I’m a big fan of practical uses for dynamic SQL, and this is another example of it.

Speaking of blogs, SQLServerPedia is now starting to syndicate blog posts.  I plan on doing this, but I’m gonna try to survive SQLSaturday first.  A lot of good stuff is there already.

Just found this one today: Covering Clustered Indexes.  I love this quote: “To assume that the Primary Key will only be used for singleton selects is “strange” –  and to assume that the PK will always be the clustered index is also unhelpful. “

Sigh; Schlotzky’s is starting to fill up with families, and the chatter of children is making it tough to write.  I’ll have another couple of posts tonight (I’m in a writing mood).

Wow, busy week this week.

How I Get By Without Sysadmin:  Jeremiah Peschka has a great article on tuning queries from a developer’s perspective.  I’ve been a big advocate of some of his methods for a while now, and it’s nice to see other people come to some of the same conclusions that I have.

Index Clean-Up Scripts:  It seems like I’ve beeen reading a lot about performance tuning and maintenance issues; you’re right.  I’m sudying for the upgrade to my MCDBA (MCITP), and a lot of my maintenance skills are rusty.  Posts like these are very interesting and help to keep the skills in check.

To be honest, I haven’t read a lot of technical sites this week; too worried about what’s going on with this joke of a stimulus package.  I’ll do better next week, I promise 🙂

Stuff I’ve been reading:

Lots and lots of stuff on the digital tv transition:  This is fascinating to me; it’s a perfect example of the stupidity of federal government.  They sold the bandwidth, so everyone needs to upgrade.  They set a date.  We have a change in exeuctive administration (but not in legislative), and suddenly the date’s no good anymore.  I wonder how many lawsuits will be filed by the companies that will technically own the airwaves past the transition date if it gets delayed?

I’ve gone back to the newsgroups:  I used to post quite frequently in microsoft.public.sqlserver.programming (and a few others), but got tired of the same old questions, and many of the same old responses.  However, since SQL Server 2008 has been released, there’s some fresh meat in there.

Notes from SQLSaturday #10 in Tampa:  I’ll admit it; I’m starting to get nervous about our own upcoming SQLSaturday.  Andy Warren’s writeup of the recent SQLSaturday just goes to remind me of how much we’ve got left to do.  Speaking of Andy, he’s also posted his PASS Updates: 1, 2, 3

Happy coding.

Stuff I’ve been reading:

Causing a stir in Tok Alaska: I first started reading this blog after reading about the -78 degree weather in Alaska on the Drudge Report. The writer is quite talented, and it’s a lot of fun to read.

Wordle:  Technically, this ain’t reading.  I found out about Wordle from Brent’s blog, and thought it was a cool exercise in computer-generated art.  Below is the wordle for my site, generated today.

Joe Celko’s Temporal Data Techniques in SQL:  I’ve said some pretty harsh things about Joe Celko in the past; his online persona is, frankly, obnoxious, and I’ve disagreed with him on many of his approaches to programming in SQL Server.  However, he’s very intelligent, and it’s hard to argue with him when it comes to pure design.

Tony Davis’s Bar-Poo for DBA’s & Developers: Tony writes some esoteric stuff, and this particular post is no exception.  But hey, I won a prize!

Happy coding!

Happy New Year! Another short list this week; I had shoulder surgery yesterday (bone spur near my rotator cuff), so I’m just now coherent. Hydrocodone is potent stuff. I’m hoping that next week will get things back to normal.

Eyespi20: I always enjoy it when someone comments on my site, because it gives me the opportunity to find new sites to read. Margaret’s site is one of those links (I need to add her to my BlogRoll page). I particularly enjoyed this post, because it turned me on to TwitterTools. She’s apparently also into remodeling, a subject that once was near and dear to my heart.

It’s All About the Wireless Access:  Andy Warren’s brief musing on a new netbook; I’m currently lusting after an Asus EEE 900HD (or 1000HD; can’t decide).  Google led me to Scott Hanselman’s Dell Mini 9 – Practical Developer’s Review, which in turn led me to Omar Shahine’s article:  Welcome to a new era of computing… netbook and Atom. 

Obviously, I’ve been keeping up with facility9 (who appears to be sharing free code with Brent Ozar), since his last link round up spurred my Monday post: Auto generated SQL Server keys – uniqueidentifier or IDENTITY – a rebuttal.  Is it shameless self-promotion to list your own stuff in your list of links?

Finally, this last one is kind of specialized; I’m a fan of SageTV(software for Home Theatre PC’s), although not necessarily a power user.  A recent thread in their user forums has opened up about form vs. function, which is interesting to anybody from a developer background.  At what point do you allocate resources to alter the design as opposed to adding new features?

Happy coding!

As promised during my last roundup, I’m going to start doing these on Wednesday’s.  And since Christmas is tomorrow, the season is on my mind:

10 things for non-coders to do with free software over Christmas: Interesting list of stuff to do; I particularly like the final point (even though it’s tough for me to do).

Give Camps: Now that I’ve gotten SQL Saturday rolling, I really want to keep my eye on the next iteration of user group camps: a give camp.  Although the main site appears to be down, here’s a couple of links to give camps in the past.

• We Are Microsoft:  check out their charity listing page, and look at the projects they want to do in a weekend.
• Ann Arbor Give Camp: This is from their 2008 event.  The cool thing is that they had a satellite camp in Knoxville, TN.  (I’m beginnng to think very highly of that dev community there).
• Twin Cities Give Camp: If you’re near Minneapolis/St. Paul area around April 26 & 27th, here’s a camp for you!

And finally, a couple of different versions of the Programmer’s Christmas:

• Version 1
• Version 2

Merry Christmas, everybody!

I’m going to have to start posting these on Wednesdays; trying to post them at the end of the week just causes too much stress. It seems like time just flies on Fridays, and the weekend is wrapped up with house stuff (I finally got Christmas lights up, BTW). Anyway, here’s the links of interest this week:

SQL Batman’s post on Web Persona: As a budding blogger, I wish that I wrote as eloquently as the Batman. I also wish I had been creative enough to choose a moniker like his, but if I keep building the brand, I think codegumbo will eventually have some of the same power.

The Code Camp Manifesto: I’m trying to put together SQL Saturday #13 in Atlanta, so I’ve been cruising the web looking for interesting reads on code camps around the country. This is a very succinct synopsis of the code camp philosophy. You may also be interested in the following:

• Open Space Technology: A lot of the code camps have adopted OST as a method of generating interaction with the attendees. This wiki entry lays out the basic principles, as well as providing some history of the concept.
• How to Write and Present Technical Information: An actual book, thanks to Google Books.

Not a lot this week, I know. Been spending a lot of time offline with the wife and kids.

OK, I realize this post is late, but my site has been having all sorts of issues (excuses, excuses, I know).  For some reason, this post didn’t get released on schedule. 

DevGuru’s CSS2 Manual: I’ve been spending a lot of time tweaking the site this week, so I’ve been hanging out here a lot.  It’s very easy to appreciate DevGuru’s approach to all things scripting.

Chris Shaw’s SQL Quiz: Interesting reads; feeling a little left out that nobody tagged me.  Could be that I call myself a developer these days, instead of a DBA (one of these days I need to write a post on that topic).   Anyway, you may also want to check out the following responses:

• Brent Ozar
• TJay Belt
• Mr Denny

Andy Novick’s site: I met Andy at PASS Summit this year, and really enjoyed a conversation with him.  His website his chock full of presentations, and there’s lots of great learning opportunities in there.

Vyas’ SQL Snippets:   I found this site, and he’s got some great little code snippets in there.

Not a lot of time spent reading this week; it’s Nutcracker week (my daughter dances in the ballet), and my schedule has been nuts.  On top of that, my wife’s birthday was this week, I blew up my site, and my parents are in town.  However, what I have read is worth sharing:

Brent Ozar has been writing some great articles about Technical Blogging.  I linked to part 3, but there are 5 in the series.  Get them while they’re fresh.

Speaking of Brent, I’ve been browsing the SQLServerPedia project.  At some point, I plan to actually start contributing, but like I said, busy week this week.

TJay Belt has been thinking some more about the PASS high (thanks to the SQLBatman). 

Catching up on Andy Warren’s blog; I haven’t read it since PASS, so it was nice to catch up on it  (I even got a  name drop).  He has a rather important post titled Why I Want To Be On The PASS Board; now that’s he’s elected, let’s see what he can do about it.  I’m glad he’s on the board, but I think that just like regular politics, we need to remind our representatives of the promises they make from time to time.  

That’s it for this week; keep reading, and keep coding.