Scott Forsyth has a job that is out of the ordinary for database geeks, but what he does can impact many of us. Scott is the director of IT for ORCS Web, a premier Web Hosting company. Scott is responsible for helping lots of folks keep their hosted sites running.
Doug: As someone monitoring a number of shared database servers, you must see all kinds of databases, from the elegantly designed and tuned to the ones upsized from Microsoft Access that have field names containing spaces and punctuation marks. From your vantage point, do you have advice on whether to use stored procedures or not?
Scott: That’s a loaded question because it encompasses performance, maintainability, nTeir architecture, and even consideration of the expertise and preferences of the developers. With tools like LLBLGen and other O/R mappers, many complex projects don’t use stored procedures at all. Yet there are many obvious situations in which a stored procedure is essential to performance.
The entire interview is here.
Adam Machanic is this week's Database Geek of the Week. Adam is an independent consultant, as well as a co-author of a SQL Server 2005 book. From the interview:
Doug: Have you done much with XML?
Adam: I have done a lot more than I like. If you read some of my writing, you’ll understand that I’m not a fan of what XML has become. XML is a document interchange format, and I think it’s wonderful in that regard. But when you try to mold it into a data management format, you suddenly run into all sorts of issues.
Using XML for data management is like jumping in a time machine and going back to the days of hierarchical DBMSs. We’ve been there, and we’ve seen the problems and ambiguities. So why go back? It’s unfortunate that many IT professionals are so affected by marketing that logic and common sense are ignored.
Reat the entire interview here.
My latest book, Programming Microsoft Web Forms, is now out, and I have a copy right in my hands! If you are an experienced ASP.NET developer, this is likely not the book for you (take a look at Dino's latest), but if you are or know of an experienced programmer who has not done ASP.NET and wants to begin Web development, or a newcomer to programming in general looking to do Web forms, do remember my book.
The book starts out with an introduction to the Web forms environment. Web forms are just different than Windows forms or Windows services. The book then moves on to controls, Web form layout (including the hows and whys of HTML tables and CSS), as well as Web Parts, Data Binding, Custom Controls and User Security and Administration. Finally, I show how to access your Web application through a Windows forms application, using the WebBrowser control. There is an appendix that explains how to create and deploy applications in IIS, an especially important issue for Visual Studio 2005 users, since unlike earlier versions, Visual Studio 2005 does not create an IIS application on the development machine for you.
And buy 2. They make great stocking stuffers<g>.
Jim Hoffman is the rarest of technical people. After working for a long time as a heavy duty database geek, he was able to move into a management role and continue his success in that arena. So, I guess Jim is a reformed Database Geek. Jim began working with SQL Server really early on, working with the first port of the Sybase database onto the Windows platform. From the interview:
Doug: You were involved in some early work on SQL Server. What do you think have been the greatest differences in the product from then to now?
Jim: The optimizer is smarter. The tools are better. The profiler, especially, has seen continuous improvement. It may be SQL Server’s most underappreciated development tool.
There are some significant non-technical issues as well. The development community for SQL Server in the mid-1990s was relatively small, and there was more access to technical staff at Microsoft. You could easily get a same-day customized patch if you discovered a critical bug, for example. As SQL Server has grown more popular, things have changed by necessity. The flip side is that with the almost simultaneous growth of the Internet, there are more resources available to the developer or DBA.
The entire interview is here.