October 2007 - Posts

SQL Server - Nullable column comparisons needed?

Published Tue, Oct 30 2007 7:22 | GregLow

It is very common to need to compare the values in two nullable columns, without changing the ansi nulls setting. For example, it is common to have to write: WHERE (a.SomeColumn IS NULL AND b.SomeColumn IS NULL) OR (a.SomeColumn = b.SomeColumn) Given...

Bouquet for Vista

Published Sun, Oct 21 2007 11:33 | GregLow

Everyone seems to love knocking Windows Vista. However, I regularly find things about the operating system that just impress me. Today I changed my hard drive to a new one, and yes it made me reactivate the system *but* I was trying to think of what sort...

QANTAS: Last week's score - Electrical staff needed?

Published Sat, Oct 20 2007 6:31 | GregLow

Clearly, a lot of people have been following my QANTAS postings lately . This week, I've had many that have asked me how the flights went this week. The daytime flight from Sydney to Canberra on Wednesday was fine. The flight home from Canberra to...

Ajax Control Extender for CardSpace

Published Sat, Oct 20 2007 6:25 | GregLow

Another bright colleague at Readify , Daniel Bartholomew has just published an Ajax control extender to enable CardSpace authentication . Daniel has been working with CardSpace for quite a while now and this should be a worthwhile addition to the Ajax...

SyncLink - LINQ extensions for data binding

Published Sat, Oct 20 2007 6:21 | GregLow

Readify colleague Paul Stovell has been working on an extension to LINQ for a while. He's finally announced it. Paul describes it as " SyncLINQ is a set of extensions to LINQ that enable data binding over LINQ queries. SyncLINQ alters LINQ queries...

Movember, Readify Mo Madness and Men's Health

Published Fri, Oct 19 2007 6:14 | GregLow

My Readify colleague Philip Beadle has been taking a great lead amongst our staff in promoting Movember . He put together a team last year and I didn't get to take part. I wish I had been around to do so. I'm not going to miss it this year. I've...

SQL Down Under show 24 - Paul Randal

Published Fri, Oct 19 2007 2:00 | GregLow

Hi Folks, SQL Down Under show 24 with guest Paul Randal is now available for download from www.sqldownunder.com . In this show, Paul discusses DBCC CHECKDB in SQL Server 2005 and improvements in SQL Server 2008 for database mirroring and partitioned tables...

QANTAS: The fun (not) continues

Published Tue, Oct 9 2007 3:35 | GregLow

Another one for those that follow my travel postings: In a recent post , and a prior post , I noted some of the issues I've been having with QANTAS flights recently. In the latest one, I mentioned I was heading off to Singapore for the week last week...

Outstanding SQL Server Blog: Paul Randal

Published Tue, Oct 9 2007 3:32 | GregLow

Since he has left the SQL Server group at Microsoft and joined his wife Kim Tripp at SQL Skills, Paul Randal has been becoming even more prolific with his blog posts. If you really want to learn a lot about how things like DBCC CHECKDB, DBCC IND, DBCC...

Book: The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich

Published Tue, Oct 9 2007 3:20 | GregLow

Timothy Ferris' new book The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich contains some pretty solid (and again challenging) thinking for most of us. Tim describes the DLP (delayed life plan) that most of us aspire to as ill-conceived...

Book: God is not Great: How Religions Poison Everything

Published Tue, Oct 9 2007 2:57 | GregLow

Regular readers will notice that I've: a) been reading a lot lately and b) part of the reading has been on life/religion/etc. Out of the anti-religious books I've read, Christopher Hitchens' God is not Great: How Religions Poison Everything...