In the inevitable run-up to Xamarin Forms tumbling slowly off of a cliff face our attentions turn towards alternative technologies to usher us into a new golden age. I’ve seen a good number of developers transition to things such as the classic Flutter/Dart combination. As far as Microsoft offerings, the next evolution for cross-platform application […]
What are we up to then and why? With the licensing changes around Docker Desktop, I’ve been on a journey to investigate the possibilities of just running the Docker Engine, with other kinds of tooling and WSL 2 (Windows Subsystem for Linux). For someone who is mostly focusing (at the moment) on leveraging this for […]
I recently had to do a very quick ‘rip and tear’ (high fives for the ‘Doom’ reference!) of stored execution plans for a bit of exploratory work I was involved with. It seems like a simple, shareable piece so here it is for you to grab, use and modify as and when you need it. […]
I’ve worked on numerous occasions with the various flavours of the FOR XML clause within SQL Server. Taking that a step further, this seemed like as good a time as ever to check out how to work with the FOR JSON clause. This clause can, simply put, be used to boil down data retrieved via […]
I recently found myself in a position whereby I needed to know how the identity columns within a given database where configured. The information I was hunting for was as follows: Identity column name and table the column belonged to. The column Data Type The last seed value used. The difference between the maximum value […]
I’m having a random ‘pick a Channel 9 video and blog from there’ session; the subject of the day is Azure Maps and the inspiration came in the form of this video. The plan is to see what I can achieve in an hour or two, so here’s my quick rundown to wet your whistle. […]
I recently came across a scenario whereby we wanted to programmatically, via T-SQL, inspect locking behaviour on objects in a particular database when operations were being performed on given data (actually just a SELECT (WITH (NOLOCK) and DELETE statement, on a table). The requirement was to get a direct view on whether the table was […]
Greetings all, In the interim, whilst I juggle my time to get more in-depth posts rolled out (like the one surrounding Alexa skills), I back-tracked once again to look at overlooked features from the distant past of SQL 2008. I’ve chosen the topic of GROUPING SETS as the basis of this post; which basically boils […]
A little sideline post to tide everyone over (as I’m still working on the Alexa piece, which I want to do proper justice to when it’s released). I’ve been messing around with a few rough and ready projects and wanted to get an idea of how to dig into code coverage, in respect of Unit […]
Howdy all, I am a bit of a customisation nut; pretty much with any software package I pick up I have the uncontrollable urge to dig straight into the options and get on the hunt for how to ‘theme it up’! The one that probably upsets me the most is poor old SQL Server Management […]
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