Finally a competitor to the Ipad. $300 and it runs android.

William Harris — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 23:48:22 +0000

It has a webcam, VOIP over wifi, android, web browsing, multitouch, 3d gaming acceleration, FULL FLASH SUPPORT, email, and more. I want one, so very very bad!

http://www.ehomeupgrade.com/2010/09/02/archos-4-7-and-10-inch-android-tablets-offer-what-you-need-for-under-300/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ehomeupgrade%2Fentries+%28eHomeUpgrade+1%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

Developers are losing their minds

William Harris — Wed, 12 May 2010 20:54:07 +0000

I’m going to say something controversial, but I’m pretty sure it is true.

Pursuing a development career or hobby makes people lose their minds. The kinds of thought processes so prized in the community are detrimental not only to the world at large, but often to the developer himself(or herself.)

Forcing people to classify everything in the world, and often to classify it as good or bad, is NOT a good way to look at the world. Seeing everything in processes is a very simplified way to look at our subtle and nuanced existence, and despite your opinion of your brain’s power, you cannot possibly “model” the complexity of most things in your mind and believe it to be fully accurate.

Once developers get into this mindset, they start doing insane things like throwing out their furniture because they only sit on it 10 percent of the time, or eat out of a frying pan so they’ll have to wash one less dish. Eventually they will throw out their dishes because they only use them a certain percentage of the time. The world is not about efficiency, its about experience. Don’t let your passion for efficiency and procedures keep you from enjoying the beauty this world has to offer. Stay human, please…even if it means you’re not going to be the perfect dev.

Giving a quick intro to SQL Server class in Las Vegas, NV

William Harris — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 21:17:59 +0000

I’m planning to give an “Intro to Microsoft SQL Server” class for a friend who is interested in learning SQL server for work. I’d be covering basic administration via SSMS and SQL, commonly used SQL like INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE with JOINS, and maybe some basic performance tuning/evaluation/troubleshooting via DMVs, execution plans, logs, etc. It might take about 2-3 hours, and would only be useful for those with little to no experience. Would anyone be interested in coming along? It would be nice to show a few people while he’s learning, and would provide more people for asking questions, talking about confusing parts of my lesson, etc.

If you’re interested, or know someone who is, just email me or have them contact me directly, or leave a comment here. We haven’t set a date, yet, but it will probably be next weekend.

Time for a certification bender

William Harris — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 03:44:57 +0000

I’ve got nothing better to do, I am going to be spending the next few months working on completing some certifications. I figure I’ve got about 60-70% of the knowledge I need via real world experience, and I’ll really only have to cover things like hardware requirements, Service Broker, endpoints, XML, etc.

I’ve mapped out a quick plan to achieve my goals of MCITPs for Database Administration and Business Intelligence in both SQL Server 2005 and 2008.

MCTS – SQL Server 2005 – Exam 70-431

The first step on my path, and my introduction to many of the technologies that I’m weak with. This one will take me a few weeks of study and practice.

MCITP – Database Administrator – Exam 70-443 (database design)

This one should be pretty easy. Designing DBs is what I do, and I don’t think I’ll have much of an issue here.

MCITP – Database Administrator – Exam 70-444 (optimizing and maintaining)

Basic database administration here, simple stuff.

MCITP – Database Administrator 2008 – Exam 70-453

The upgrade to 2008, I’ll likely spend more time on this one, since it will cover the new technologies in SQL 2008 that I haven’t had much exposure to in the real world. I’ll be forced to learn things like geospatial and temporal data handling, filestreams, and other bleeding edge technology. I expect this to be one of the more enjoyable studies, but it may take me 2 months to get a hold of the material.

MCTS – Business Intelligence – Exam 70-445

This one should be difficult, as I am quite well versed in reporting services, but have almost no experience with SSIS and Microsoft’s ETL.

MCITP – Business Intelligence – Exam 70-446

More of the same here, lots of new technology to learn with respect to Data Warehousing and Data Mining. I don’t even know how much MDX I’ll have to learn to pass this one.

MCITP – Business Intelligence Developer – Exam 70-455

Since I’ve been quite interested in the capabilities of SQL 2008′s data warehousing, this one should be a really fun study.

MCAS Excel 2007 – Exam 77-602

The cherry on top of my certification stack, this will give me the basic Excel chops to extend my BI work on the desktop.

Once these are complete, we’ll have a look at the MySQL CMA exam, and possibly the Database Developer MCITP track. Someday, maybe even the $20,000 3 week Master Certification for SQL Server 2008. Has anyone looked deeply into this certification? I’d be very, very interested in talking with you!

Rails Rumble 2008

William Harris — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 08:28:43 +0000

I’m competing in Rails Rumble 2008 this year with my PBG peeps and Nate Ostgard. Its a 48 hour competition to write a web application using Ruby on Rails! Check out our live blog here, and the final product once it is done! To get an idea of what we’re working on, check out some preliminary text from our about page (first draft hehe)

iheartgames is a new way to schedule console games with your friends and family. If you’re tired of playing with strangers, or not having enough people online to get a great multiplayer experience, then iheartgames has you covered.

iheartgames lets you add your list of games on any console from our complete and updated database of games from metacritic.com. It also manages a fully featured friends list with tons of contact methods, so you know your friends will always know when you want to play.

You, or any of your friends, can schedule game times for any game in your list. Notifications (twitter, SMS, etc.) will go out automatically to any of your friends owning the game. They will then be able to reserve their spot in your game until all available spots are filled. With iheartgames, you are guaranteed a full house with people that you trust across all platforms. Pickup games are a thing of the past with iheartgames.

Storing UTC datetime in your database? Is that really how you want to see your dates in reporting services?

William Harris — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 22:35:26 +0000

If you’ve got your dates and datetimes stored as UTC in your database, but want to show the local time value on your reports in SQL Reporting Services, there is a simple solution for this!

Change the expression for the filed to the code below :

=System.TimeZone.CurrentTimeZone.ToLocalTime(Fields!DateTime.Value)

This converts your UTC datetime field to the local time zone value.

New RSS feed

William Harris — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 09:15:29 +0000

Please check out my new RSS feed at http://feedproxy.google.com/DbaWill if you like RSS!

This will help me to see who is reading my blog, if anyone is at all. I would appreciate it if you could update your RSS if you’re using my feed.

If anyone needs help setting up RSS, let me know in the comments.

Google Chrome : about commands?

William Harris — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 00:16:19 +0000

In the address bar of the new Google Chrome, you can type about: much like Firefox.

Does anyone know of a complete list of these about commands for chrome? A quick google search turns up a few Mozilla lists, and some of them carry over, like about:cache or about:memory, but about:config doesn’t work.

I can’t find a list specific for Chrome anywhere, someone help!

Here are some basics to get you started

about: — show version info

about:version — same as about:

about:network — network tools

about:stats — a message, shh! this page is secret!

about:internets — a message, the tubes are clogged!

about:cache — show the content of your cache

about:plugins — show all information about currently installed plugins

about:memory — show memory usage from chrome and others web browsers running!

about:crash — crash the tab! and show the friendly crash image

about:dns — show dns info, like time

about:histograms — histograms resume

about:% will crash the browser!!!

Filtered indexes presentation for the August PASS meeting

William Harris — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 09:33:22 +0000

At the recent PASS meeting for the Las Vegas Chapter, I gave a quick talk on filtered indexes for SQL Server 2008. I posted a powerpoint presentation over at slideshare.net, check it out!

In MySQL, Count(*) or LIMIT (1) to determine an empty set?

William Harris — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 20:53:19 +0000

I want to find out if I’ve got an empty set or not. In MS SQL I’d just use IF EXISTS and write a branch for either outcome, but I don’t have that luxury in MySQL. So, if I want to find out if a set is empty, which one of the following will be faster?

SELECT * FROM `table` WHERE (`table`.app_id = 455) LIMIT 1

SELECT count(*) AS count_all FROM `table` WHERE (`table`.app_id = 455)

The answer here is the LIMIT is probably going to be faster, and the key lies in the WHERE clause.

If you run a count in MySQL on an indexed column, it is smart enough to use the cardinality of that column’s index to report to you the count. This makes the count method quite inexpensive when we truly want a count, without qualifications. As soon as we add that WHERE, we need to return every row that matches our criteria. The trick with LIMIT, though it is doing the same thing, is that it stops after it gets a match. Once that first row comes back, it’s done. On an indexed column, this shouldn’t be much of a difference at all, probably imperceptible to the user and certainly close enough even for a timing test…but on an unindexed column, stopping the table scan in the middle, or if you’re lucky enough, the beginning, would be an enormous time savings.

I may revisit this with some real numbers, but a friend of mine brought the question to my attention and I thought it was a really great one. I’m hoping to get some feedback.