Contents tagged with SQL
-
SQL 2005 XML WebServices? Yuck...
At this years TechEd 2004 in Amsterdam, I went to a session regarding XML Web Services, which are basically now embedded into SQL 2005, provided it runs on Windows Server 2003 with the HTTP.SYS kernel. All I heard was how great all this stuff is for interoperability, Java clients connecting to your HTTP SOAP endpoint blah, blah etc...
I have some reservations about this. In fact, I won't be exposing HTTP endpoints from within SQL Server 2005 (when I get to use it in 2008 sometime ;-) ) to the Internet. Why? Simply because of the fact that I wouldn't want to expose a database server to the Internet. Sure, you configure a firewall and allow only the minimum ports and protocols required, but any network engineer would rather see a database server sitting in a DMZ, and rightly so.
So, how would you use these cool XML web services features when your SQL Server 2005 box is sitting in its own DMZ? Well, simple, as the presenter of the session told me afterwards - you use ISA server to route the HTTP requests through. Great. Sounds like an extra product that needs to be purchased and a lot of hassle to maintain all these mappings. I'll code my own web service, thanks very much.
Bottom line (all IMHO): use SQL 2005 XML web services if you require basic interoperability between apps on your local network, otherwise if you want to expose this to external, global apps, just don't go there. -
Been to TechEd Europe? Get SQL Server 2005 beta 2!
Yep. Just go to the attendees website and after logging in, navigate to this link:
-
Random records from table
Hi all,
Great to be part of this blogging community. I will try to submit several posts each week and will make sure they contain snippets of code here and there.
Now, what would you do to select a random set of several records from a SQL Server database table?
A couple of months ago I came across the following simple, but yet very effective solution to do just that. For instance to get 10 random quotes from a Quotes table:
SELECT TOP 10 * FROM Quotes ORDER BY NEWID()
Personally I think it's pure gold.