Category Archives: Web Development

Oct 20

My links of the week – October 20, 2013

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This week saw the release of Windows 8.1 and Visual Studio 2013. It was also the week of PASS Summit 2013, but surprisingly this is possibly the week where more SQL Server related posts are included.

  • If you are interested in Visual Studio 2013, I have compiled a list of the links I found most interesting in Visual Studio 2013 Resources.
  • Robert Sheldon’s SQL Server SQLCMD Basics provides a detailed description of the features available witthe SQLCMD utility. A very good read.
  • Aaron Bertrand’s Use Caution with SQL Server’s MERGE Statement addresses some of the bugs that have affected the MERGE statement since it was made available with SQL Server, some of which seem to be present even in the preview releases of SQL Server 2014. It’s a comprehensive analysis and a must read for anyone considering the use of MERGE statements.
  • John Sterrett’s SQL Server Performance Root Cause Analysis in 10 Minutes is the introduction to a series of posts that address analysis of performance problems in SQL Server. The article includes links to several articles that include scripts covering multiple aspects of performance analysis.
  • Moving to responsive design, Syed Fazle Rahman’s Building Responsive Websites Using Twitter BootStrap provides a detailed guide to developing responsive websites using the popular Twitter Bootstrap. It also includes a link to a previous article from the same author, that addresses the use of Twitter Bootstrap for complex designs.
  • Jake Rocheleau’s Popular Web Design Trends for Responsive Navigation analyzes several techniques found in great responsive websites. It’s a very interesting read on several of the ways that can be used to design navigation elements in responsive websites.
  • Carlos Cessa’s Mobile First With Bootstrap 3 provides an analysis of the changes in the recently officially released version 3 of Twitter Bootstrap.
  • Jessica Enders’s Flat UI and Forms addresses some of the issues that affect forms as a result of the move to flat user interfaces and proposes some solutions to improve affordance, better distinction between form elements and a more clear hierarchy between form elements.

That’s all for this week.Thanks for reading.

Oct 13

My links of the week – October 13, 2013

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This weeks links cover multiple subjects from to NoSQL to Performance Tuning and  Responsive Design.

  • Buck Woody’s Data Science Laboratory System – Document Store Databases is the 9th article on a series hosted on the Simple Talk website, on setting up a Data Science Laboratory server. The whole series is a great read. In this article, the concept of a document store database is presented. The system chosen for the server is MongoDB and the author provides a brief walk-through of the installation process and includes links to multiple useful references on MongoDB. An excellent read.
  • Microsoft’s Patterns and Practices Team Data Access for Highly-Scalable Solutions: Using SQL, NoSQL, and Polyglot Persistence is a guide to on how to design and build applications and services that can take best advantage of SQL and NoSQL databases by combining them into a polyglot solution. It provides an end to end walk-through of a business application that uses SQL Server with a variety of NoSQL databases, showing how the designers selected the databases to closely match the various business requirements.
  • Brent Ozar’s Performance Tuning kCura Relativity is an excellent overview on how to approach performance tuning in a real world case and includes links to other useful resources for performance tuning. A great article on performance tuning.
  • Jes Schultz Borland’s Get a Report of Your Server’s Top 10 Worst Queries provides a guide to finding a SQL Server server 10 worst performing queries, and building a report with the results, using SQL Server Reporting Services. The article includes additional links that may be of use, even to tune the offending queries, once you find them. A good read.
  • Allen McGuire’s My DBA Toolbox is a good example of a DBA toolbox. Includes links to tools, scripts, articles and blogs that should be present in a DBA’s arsenal.
  • SMG Research Reveals DBA Tools Not Effective for Managing Database Change is an unsigned article that addresses some findings of a study that “examines the views of application development and deployment professionals in large organizations with $100 million or greater in IT department spending”. Including in the findings is the high number of organizations surveyed that feel that the DBA tools available are not very effective dealing with database application changes. The article includes a downloadable infographic with some interesting and surprising figures. A very interesting read.
  • Kenji Hiranabe’s Modeling in the Agile Age: What to Keep Next to Code to Scale Agile Teams raises the question of whether modelling is still useful, in an age where Agile methods are mainstream and working code and tests are considered the most important team artifacts. The article proposes a strategy to overcome the difficulties of making models live beyond conversations, based on keeping “big picture models” on architecture, domain model and key use cases. An excellent read.
  • Rockford Lhotka’s Does .NET Have a Future? addresses the future of .Net as a relevant technology. The author’s opinion is that not only .Net, but also Java and the underlying operating systems (Windows, Unix / Linux) will gradually fade away into “the misty twilight of time”. The article explains how this relevance fading will occur and how developers can deal with the this obsolescence and points to Javascript as the alternative platform. An interesting read.
  • Konstantin Lebedev’s So We Wanted To Build A File Uploader… (A Case Study) is an article describing Russian email provider Mail.ru development of a file uploader to overcome the difficulties experienced with their previous Flash based uploader. An attention grabbing article on the development process, up to the final result, a file uploader using multiple technologies and freely available on GitHub.
  • Daniel Mall’s Now With Responsive, is a great walk-through on the conversion process he used to make the site responsive. The article addresses several steps, from CSS to Sass conversion, changing the page location where javascript is loaded, using webfonts and resolution independent graphics. A very interesting read.
  • Rachel McCollin’s Design-Based Media Queries proposes a rethink of the way breakpoints are usually employed in designs. Considering the frequent design-based media queries are becoming untenable,  due to the explosion of devices used and the multitude of resolutions featured, Rachel proposes defining breakpoints based on the design, to make sure that the designs adapt to any devices widths while ensuring readability and to ensure that navigation items are large enough to be used in touch based and mobile devices. A very interesting read.

That’s all for this week. Thanks for reading.