Well I didn't have any time to blog during Teched (by the end of my last talk I was completely exhausted and I still had to work at the booth with my friend Clemens Vasters ) but I survived. I really wanted to thank to all the folks who attended my sessions, specially the Real World BAM which opened...

Here are the highlights from the TechEd 2008 Keynote (as seen from afar by watching the TechEd 2008 Keynote and reading posts and press): Via Microsoft PressPass , here are the key announcements (with my notes): Internet Explorer 8 beta 2 will be available this August Silverlight 2 beta 2 will be available...

After my last post, it got me thinking about the power and peril of product naming. A good product name can describe, define, and identify your product, it can energize customers to buy, attach an ideal, culture, or image to a widget (think iPod), and it can even make your product memorable or seem unique...

IF EXISTS( SELECT * FROM dbo . sysobjects WHERE id = OBJECT_ID ( N'[dbo].[PartitionLeft]' ) AND xtype in ( N'FN' , N'IF' , N'TF' ) ) BEGIN DROP FUNCTION [dbo] . [PartitionLeft] END GO CREATE FUNCTION [dbo] . [PartitionLeft] ( @value bigint , @min bigint , @max bigint , @range bigint ) RETURNS bigint...

IF EXISTS( SELECT * FROM dbo . sysobjects WHERE id = object_id ( N'[dbo].[IsValidCPF]' ) AND xtype in ( N'FN' , N'IF' , N'TF' ) ) BEGIN DROP FUNCTION [dbo] . [IsValidCPF] END GO CREATE FUNCTION dbo . IsValidCPF ( @CPF varchar ( 11 ) ) RETURNS bit AS BEGIN DECLARE @Digito int DECLARE @Index int DECLARE...

Suppose I have the following query run against Pubs database SELECT employee . emp_id , employee . fname , employee . minit , employee . lname , employee . job_id , jobs . job_desc , employee . job_lvl , employee . pub_id , employee . hire_date FROM employee INNER JOIN jobs ON employee . job_id = jobs...

Today I had to write a SQL statement quite similar to the sample below: SELECT ProductID, ProductName, CASE WHEN ProductDescription IS NULL OR ProductDescription = '' THEN '<no description>' ELSE ProductDescription END AS ProductDescription FROM Products ORDER BY ProductName Then...

Q: When I try to compile the procedure below I get the error Must declare the variable '@TableType'. Can you guess why the following stored procedure does not compile? CREATE PROCEDURE #SystemTablesAndColumns AS DECLARE @TableType TABLE (id int, name sysname) INSERT INTO @TableType ( id, name...

Last week, I created some scripts to move data from an old database to a new one. Some tables consisted of many fields and the old ones were not typed, that is, all fields where char, varchar, etc. INSERT INTO targetTable ( targetField1, targetField2, targetField3, ... targetFieldN ) SELECT targetField1...

Last week, I found out DA team, using ERWin to synchronize models and databases, had messed up with some foreign keys on a database I architected for an application I am developing and the FKs were missing. Then the question "How to find out which FKs are missing on a database made of about 200...