Query Optimisations Team Blog

For some time now I have subscribed to Craig Freedmans blog. The guy really knows his stuff and if you want to understand some of the gubbins(?) of the SQL query executions, plans  and processing, this is really worth a looksee.

In a post I saw today, There is a link to the SQL Query Optimization Team blog. I had not encountered this before but it looks like another goldmine of query optimisation  and execution tips – “providing tips, tricks, advice and answers to freqeuently-asked questions in a continued effort to make your queries run faster and smoother in SQL Server”

SQL Server and Trade Me

I went along to the Wellington SQL Server Users Group this evening, where we heard a great talk by a guy named Paul Gold.
Paul was the technology and database architect for www.trademe.co.nz, New Zealand’s equivalent of E-Bay, from 2001 to 2007, so he has seen the business basically from start up to its current position in the top 5 sites in Australasia, Alexa rates this site 436 in the world!
He had some very interesting things to say about performance issues, from both a SQL and an IIS perspective, when you get into high volume transactions as well as database structures and server farms / clusters.
I would say that my eyes have opened a little to the different requirements in database design when you need to do serious performance without doling out serious investment to do it – and how much denormalisation and removing expensive SQL commands can impact it (for expensive commands see OR and IN clauses and aggregates as given examples).

A most informative speech well worth the time. And hey – we got pizza too.

Anyway – the group meets every 3rd Thursday of the month. Last months talk was a very good talk on the new SQL Spatial enhancements for SQL 2008. So there looks to be a good variety of speakers. Watch this space for more updates.

Those ever productive folks at MS

The guys at the SQL Server 2005 Blog have just posted that the much anticipated (at least by me) SQL Server 2005 Performance Dashboard Reports are now available here.

“a set of Reporting Services reports that will help DBAs diagnose potential performance problems. These reports were designed to leverage the new Custom Reports functionality in SQL Server Management Studio (Service Pack 2)”.

I look forward to trying these out :).

Thanks guys.

Development Firefox Extensions

In my working life, I work as a web developer. In my tireless search for tools to help in this endeavor I use some absolutely invaluable Firefox Extensions. Most people that work in the field will probably know about them, but I figured I would post something with links to the extensions I use. Let me know if there are others you use which I have missed.

Bookmark Sync and Sort – connect to an FTP/WebDAV server and synchronize your bookmarks

Deepest Sender – (OK, not really development software, but great for posting to WordPress without needing to explicitly log in to WordPress.com) post to blogs from directly within Firefox

Dowload Statusbar – View and manage downloads from a tidy statusbar – without the download window getting in the way of your web browsing.

Firebug – edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page

FireFTP – secure, cross-platform FTP client

GoogleTabs – open Google search results in tabs

HTML Validator – adds HTML validation

IE Tab – see how your webpage displayed in IE with just one click and then switch back to Firefox

Stylish – User styles empower your browsing experience by letting you fix ugly sites

Web Developer – Adds a menu and a toolbar with various web developer tools

P.S. If you don’t have Firefox yet, go get it now! :p

Free Outlook integrated RSS Feed and Blog reader

A free Rss Feed reader (much like Newsgator but free) is available at http://rssfeederdotnet.sourceforge.net/.

This integrates really well into Outlook and as an added bonus, the source code is available too.

Testing media player inspection from Deepest Sender

Update: If it did get the music info, I can’t see it 😐

Just trying to see whether Deepest Sender (an excellent Firefox plugin for posting to WordPress blogs from Firefox) actually picks up what is currently playing in Media Player.

Oh and if you are having trouble logging in to your WordPress blog with Deepest Sender, this blog helped me out by telling me:

you just need configure the plug-in with the following post URL: http://username.wordpress.com/xmlrpc.php”

Nice little extension that one 🙂