Sid Atkinson

Sid is a business intelligence (BI) and SQL Server specialist at Catapult Systems, and blogs about Microsoft-related topics including BI.
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Feb24

Dynamic Table Paging*

*If necessary Paging data in your application, be it thin or thick client, is a frequent need: list of customers, address directory, invoice details, etc. – any number of situations may crop up where the paging grid in the UI becomes a necessity. If your data is big enough to be paged in your display, then, for the most part, it is a large enough set that you are not advised to pull all of ...
Posted by Sidney Atkinson on Tuesday, 24 Feb 2009 01:55.
0 Comments | Categories: SQL Programming

 
Nov16

SQL 2008 Intellisense

In my post, Why use aliases?, I spoke in favor of using a certain syntax in your SQL programming, particularly because SQL Server 2008 gives you almost no reason not to with integrated Intellisense. One little note for those who may have run into a frustration while developing – Intellisense in SQL 2008 does not always refresh timely. This can be particularly annoying if you are in the middle...
Posted by Sidney Atkinson on Sunday, 16 Nov 2008 10:53.
0 Comments | Categories: SQL Programming

 
Aug29

Stats and Query Performance Primer

  If you haven't picked up on a theme yet in my posts, then shame on you for not reading everything on this site….. To be frank, I love working with performance issues on databases (mostly from a design and code perspective, my hardware skills are a little out of date, but I try to keep up). This code snippet will be just one more for your tool belt in evaluating performance and looking for ...
Posted by Sidney Atkinson on Friday, 29 Aug 2008 05:05.
0 Comments | Categories: SQL Programming

 
Aug25

Objects and File Groups

To follow up with my previous post, Looking at Query IO stats, I thought I would add in one more performance notion that you are able to negotiate with your hosting provider (talking about majority, not specialists): SQL Server file groups. What does additional file groups help solve? Many things, but the basic concept from a performance perspective is to let SQL Server use parallel processin...
Posted by Sidney Atkinson on Monday, 25 Aug 2008 05:05.
0 Comments | Categories: SQL Programming, SQL Server

 
Aug17

Why use aliases? SSMS 2008 gives you good reason..

  Jamie Thomson's post T-SQL: Do you use aliases? Sparked a lively discussion inside the comment thread, with several people chiming in on pros and cons of the different ways to use aliases, whether to use them, or if fully qualified names were the way to go. I have my own preferred method which we implemented as standard at my team at Dell (for the curious, it matches Jamie's suggestion). T...
Posted by Sidney Atkinson on Sunday, 17 Aug 2008 05:02.
0 Comments | Categories: SQL Programming

 
Jul10

SQL Injection, a Microsoft Response

  .NET makes it incredibly simple to build a site, and for new programmers, it can sometimes provide an unwarranted warm feeling that they are coding to an enterprise standard just by implementing certain aspects of the Enterprise Library, or properly tier-ing their application. However, all is not well with the web world, as most of well know; many, many sites are exposed to basic SQL injec...
Posted by Sidney Atkinson on Thursday, 10 Jul 2008 04:19.
0 Comments | Categories: Security, SQL Programming

 
Jul6

Tools: Clear Data Consulting’s ClearTrace

  I love tools that make my job easier; I particularly love when those tools are free. One fantastic example is ClearTrace. Though it is simple in design, its purpose and use are clear: analyzing trace output for SQL Server 2005 performance issues. I have used this application numerous times and in many different scenarios. There have been two scenarios in particular where ClearTrace came ...
Posted by Sidney Atkinson on Sunday, 6 Jul 2008 04:19.
0 Comments | Categories: SQL Programming, SQL Server, Tools

 
May26

Tables and Sizes

  There are many reasons why you would want to know the size of a database that you are getting ready to work with – any bit of information helps put together the picture of what you are about to walk into (or dropped new deep into, depending on your work environment). From a DBAs perspective, knowing the different sizes of tables can assist readily in looking at the storage subsystem and maki...
Posted by Sidney Atkinson on Monday, 26 May 2008 08:35.
0 Comments | Categories: SQL Programming, SQL Server