database management

scalability

Scaling Up vs. Scaling Out: Hidden Costs

In My Scaling Hero, I described the amazing scaling story of plentyoffish.com. It's impressive by any measure, but also particularly relevant to us because we're on the Microsoft stack, too. I was intrigued when Markus posted this recent update: Last monday we upgraded our core

By Jeff Atwood ·
Comments

database management

Get Your Database Under Version Control

A little over a year ago, I wrote about the importance of version control for databases. When I ask development teams whether their database is under version control, I usually get blank stares. The database is a critical part of your application. If you deploy version 2.0 of your

By Jeff Atwood ·
Comments

database management

Is Your Database Under Version Control?

When I ask development teams whether their database is under version control, I usually get blank stares. The database is a critical part of your application. If you deploy version 2.0 of your application against version 1.0 of your database, what do you get? A broken application. And

By Jeff Atwood ·
Comments

indexes

Why Can't Database Tables Index Themselves?

Here's a thought question for today: why can't database tables index themselves? Obviously, indexes are a central concept to databases and database performance. But horror tales still abound of naive developers who "forget" to index their tables, and encounter massive performance and scalability problems

By Jeff Atwood ·
Comments

sql server 2005

Sample Databases in SQL Server 2005

SQL Server 2005 doesn't include the classic Pubs and Northwind databases. You can, however, download them from Microsoft [http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=06616212-0356-46A0-8DA2-EEBC53A68034&displaylang=en] . You'll get both binary database images (*.mdf and *.ldf) as well as SQL scripts. If you

By Jeff Atwood ·
Comments

stored procedures

Who Needs Stored Procedures, Anyways?

It’s intended as sarcasm, but I believe this Daily WTF entry on Stored Procedures should be taken at face value: I’m sure we’ve all heard, over and over, that inline SQL is generally a bad practice, and that we should use Stored Procedures when possible. But let&

By Jeff Atwood ·
Comments