Having posted last night about row numbers and ranking, I realised in the shower this morning that there’s actually an easy way to get the first and last rows per group, just by using ROW_NUMBER. The trick is to PARTITION, … Continue reading →

Sometimes things pass you by. I’ve been using the ROW_NUMBER() function SQL Server 2005 for ages, along with Common Table Expressions, to do server side paging, but had completely missed some other new functions. This is an odd occurrence for … Continue reading →

While there are some know issues with Visual Studio 2005 on Vista (not that I’ve hit any of them), there is less talk about SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services. After a frustrating morning I of trying to get it installed … Continue reading →

I’ve blogged before about RedGate and their SQL tools and I’ve just tried SQLDoc. Once again I’m amazed; another cracking tool. Once installed, it had documented 7 largish databases within a minute, producing complete documentation for them as a set of … Continue reading →

I have decided that, as great and powerful as it is, SSIS sucks (but only a little). There are way too many little things that make working with it frustrating: Why did they feel the need to invent a new … Continue reading →

I’ve seen the Red Gate SQL Tools used in the past, but not tried them myself until today, when I ventured into SQL Compare and SQL Data Compare. My word, these are good. Really, really good. Not only do they do … Continue reading →

SQL Server 2005 supports notifications, allowing it to tell you when data has changed. This is useful for many reasons, invalidating the ASP.NET cache for example. Someone asked me about this at DeveloperDeveloperDeveloper (which was most excellent as usual) and … Continue reading →

I really should read my blog feeds before posting. Scott has just posted a good article about LINQ in ASP.NET “Orcas” with some good examples. However, I’m still worried about SQL style syntax in code – where should it go? … Continue reading →