SQLServerCentral - www.sqlservercentral.com

A community of more than 1,600,000 database professionals and growing

Featured Contents

The Voice of the DBA

Database Brainstorming

I read a post recently that captured my attention for more time than I expected. The piece fascianted me, and I sent it to my son and a couple friends. In fact, reading it caused me to stop working for a bit as I thought through some of the concepts and ideas. It's about divergence and convergence, and how you can use these ideas when trying to be creative. I recommend you take a few minutes and go through it.

Is this something we ought to do a bit in database design? Should we spend first some time on divergent, creative thinking for how to implement some new entity or design some schema? Do you ever do this in your job, especially in a team? Or do you just push forward with your first thoughts, relying on experience and instinct? That's what I've often done.

We certainly need convergence thinking. We have to get things done and deliver software. Most of us are probably good at the convergent side of thinking and writing code or queries or configuring systems. Most of us probably do some amount of divergent and convergent thinking at the same time.

However, I'm not sure that's the best way to tackle creative work, especially when building complex systems or working to solve new types of problems. There is some value in separating out the brainstorming portion from the actual, let's write some code and see if it works. Getting a good list of potential ideas and spending a few minutes thinking about them before writing code helps us to avoid getting trapped pursuing into the first thing that works and possibly see other approaches.

In today's world of DevOps, trying to move faster and get small chunks of work to the customer quicker, we are under pressure to do more convergent work, quicker. If we want to ensure we do model our entities well and follow good database design practices, we need to spend some time with divergent thinking without doing work, perhaps speculating on potential future design challenges in advance. If we periodically spend this time, then we can rely on our previous brainstorming when it is time to converge and get things done.

Steve Jones from SQLServerCentral.com

Join the debate, and respond to today's editorial on the forums


The Voice of the DBA Podcast

Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 2.3MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and Libsyn. feed

The Voice of the DBA podcast features music by Everyday Jones. No relation, but I stumbled on to them and really like the music.

ADVERTISEMENT
Database DevOps

Continuous Delivery for SQL Server Databases

Spend less time managing deployment pain and more time adding value. Find out how with database DevOps

SQL Compare

The industry standard for comparing and deploying SQL Server database schemas

Trusted by 71% of Fortune 100 companies, SQL Compare is the fastest way to compare changes, and create and deploy error-free scripts in minutes. Plus you can easily find and fix errors caused by database differences. Download your free trial

Featured Contents

 

The OUTPUT Clause for the MERGE Statements

Amarendra Reddy Thummeti from SQLServerCentral.com

In this article, I will provide a set of examples to showcase the use of OUTPUT clause within the MERGE statement and how to capture the OUTPUT clause results into an archive table. More »


 

Benefits of Data Masking highlighted in Gartner’s 2018 Market Guide

Gartner released their 2018 Market Guide for Data Masking, providing an in-depth analysis of the market with recommendations and representative vendors – including Redgate. Gartner says that "Test data (or copy data) virtualization is a technology that is increasingly popular, when used in combination with SDM (Static Data Masking), to speed up the provisioning of and updates to target environments, in addition to significantly reducing the amount of storage required by these environments.” More »


 

What does Azure SQL DB Automatic Index Tuning actually do, and when?

Additional Articles from Brent Ozar Unlimited Blog

Azure SQL DB’s Automatic Tuning will create and drop indexes based on your workloads. Brent's latest blog post shows how to enable it and explains what it actually does. More »


 

From the SQLServerCentral Blogs - Adding Objects to our SCA Project

Steve Jones from SQLServerCentral Blogs

In my last post, I started out with a new SCA project, getting a connection to my database up and... More »


 

From the SQLServerCentral Blogs - I’ve added data classifications. Now what?

Daniel Janik from SQLServerCentral Blogs

About a year ago I wrote about a new feature in SSMS that allows you to add a data classification... More »

Question of the Day

Today's Question (by Steve Jones):

On SQL Server 2017, I have a brand new database with no objects. I run this code:

 CREATE PROCEDURE GetOne AS SELECT 1 GO CREATE PROCEDURE GetOne;2 AS SELECT 2 GO 

In SSMS, I only see one object listed, as shown here:

If I get the script code by choosing modify, what is returned?

Think you know the answer? Click here, and find out if you are right.


We keep track of your score to give you bragging rights against your peers.
This question is worth 1 point.

We'd love to give you credit for your own question and answer.
To submit a QOTD, simply log in to the Contribution Center.

Yesterday's Question of the Day

Yesterday's Question (by Steve Jones):

I create a new empty database in SQL Server 2017. I then run this code:

 CREATE PROCEDURE Sometest AS BEGIN SELECT * FROM WeLikeBeer END GO 

What happens?

Answer: The stored procedure is created.

Explanation:

The procedure is created successfully. With Deferred Name Resolution, the table doesn't need to exist when the procedure is created.

Ref: Deferred Name Resolution and Compilation - click here


» Discuss this question and answer on the forums

Database Pros Who Need Your Help

Here's a few of the new posts today on the forums. To see more, visit the forums.

SQL Server 2017 : SQL Server 2017 - Administration

Upgrading ~250 databases to SQL 2017. - Hello All, I am looking to upgrade our SQL 2012 HADR Availability Group (3 servers) to SQL 2017. On a Test...

Full-Text Search Not Updating - Hi Having issues with FTS. Installed 2017 on Server, RTM- CU9, Os is Windows Server 2016. The issue is that FTS is not updating. Have...


SQL Server 2017 : SQL Server 2017 - Development

Quering a Always Encrypted Column with a already encrypted value - Hi there, what I would like to do, is to query rows that have a specific encrypted value in the encrypted...

HOW TO USE EXISTS FUNCTION WITH 3 TABLES - Can you Please show me that how can we use EXISTS FUNCTION WITH 3 OR MORE TABLE. Please show me...

Retaining values between date range - Good afternoon I need to calculate rolling 12 month count I.e. 1/1/2018 - 12/31/2018 is period 1 , 2/1/2018 - 1/30/2019 is period...


SQL Server 2016 : SQL Server 2016 - Administration

Always On - I know we can have 4 secondary database using Always on. However, i am little unsure that 4 secondary means...


SQL Server 2016 : SQL Server 2016 - Development and T-SQL

SQL help to match only 3 values - Hello Experts,that Needed some help with a query, the requirement is to identify all PID IN TABLE1 that has exactly...


SQL Server 2014 : Development - SQL Server 2014

which way is better for joins? or are both options popular? - i have a question about joining tables.  I have read online people describing the two methods below.. Method 1 - joining tables...


SQL Server 2012 : SQL 2012 - General

How does the target table size impact the insert performance - I have a target table which is incrementing with 2 Million records every day from the past 30 days. Earlier...


SQL Server 2012 : SQL Server 2012 - T-SQL

query regarding compare-object output - Hello , Can anybody help me with below : compare-object (get-content file1.txt) (get-content file.txt) | where { $_.SideIndicator -eq '<='} InputObject          SideIndicator -----------          ------------- 02-06-2019       &nbs

Subset rows with opening and closing balance - Hello All, I trying to get result as mentioned below (excel format for illustration purpose only).  I try using my script and...

SQL QUERY: Request For Part Overflow - I have events on my database. Every event has datetime to be started and datetime to be ended. In every event appears...


SQL Server 2008 : SQL Server 2008 - General

Filtering by date crashes report\query - Hi, I have the following sql query SELECT DISTINCT                          scheme.ABC.users_text_field, scheme.efg.PAL_efg, scheme.efg.PAL_oqty, scheme.efg.PAL_product, scheme.efg.PAL_date, &nb

XML Path and table-Valued function? - Hello, In SQL Server 2008 R2, is it possible to return XML values comma separated from a user table-valued function?   FOR...

nvarchar to smalldatetime - Im currently working on updating company database in which on one of the tables  the 'CreateDt' is in the nvarchar...


Cloud Computing : Azure Data Factory

register Data factory self hosted IR - I am trying to install a Self-hosted Integration Runtime on my local computer. But when doing the register, I got an...


Programming : XML

For XML question - I am trying put some structure around my XML and running into an issue.  I would like <First>, <Second>, <Third>...


Data Warehousing : Analysis Services

SSAS users randomly losing connection - Hi all We've got 5 multidimensional cubes and access is granted by AD groups. There is one role per cube with a...


SQL Server 2005 : Administering

Missing backup information in backupset - Hello Folks, We have a SQL Server 2005 box (well, please don't ask why... :( ). Since last week, I have observed that...


SQL Server 2005 : SQL Server 2005 Integration Services

Change column order in Flat File Destination - Hi there, I have several Flat File destinations and I need to change the output column order in each. I've opened...

This email has been sent to [email protected]. To be removed from this list, please click here.
If you have any problems leaving the list, please contact the [email protected].
This newsletter was sent to you because you signed up at SQLServerCentral.com.
Feel free to forward this to any colleagues that you think might be interested.
If you have received this email from a colleague, you can register to receive it here.
This transmission is ©2018 Redgate Software Ltd, Newnham House, Cambridge Business Park, Cambridge, CB4 0WZ, United Kingdom. All rights reserved.
Contact: [email protected]