Nov 03

My links of the week – November 3, 2013

 

wasd

The most visited post here is the one on my experience with performance on Azure, using WA SQL and VMs. There seems to be a lot of interest in the subject, so in the links for this week, there are quite a few links to articles by the Microsoft SQL Server Support Team on Windows Azure SQL Server. Articles on jQuery, CSS and scalabilty are also featured. 

  • Microsoft SQL Server Support Team’s Windows Azure SQL Database (WASD) Primer is the first of a series of articles on what is known as Windows Azure SQL – the Azure hosted Platform as a Service version of SQL Server. This first article presents some of the terminology used on the article series on WASD and includes some reference links that help understanding the differences between WASD and a “normal” SQL Server installation.
  • Is my query running fine in the cloud? is another of the articles in the series. Addresses several resources that can be used to determine causes of performance issues with WASD – available DMVs, performance, connectivity and resource usage related, execution plans. Again, it includes references to other relevant articles. It should also include a link to scripts to collect DMV info, updated for WASD, but I couldn’t find the article.It is still very informative, even without the link.
  • Do I need to upgrade my DBA skills for the cloud?, yet another article in the series, addresses some of maintenance / administration tasks needed, once the database is online. The series includes two more articles, on firewall configuration to secure access to the database and on getting a database to Azure, that are accessible from any of the articles in the series.
  • Slightly changing subjects, Brent Ozar’s What Developers Need to Know About SQL Server presents advice gathered through a Twitter session on what DBA’s think developers need to know about SQL Server. It has very interesting advice for developers using SQL Server for persistence.
  • Joe Celko’s Window Functions in SQL addresses the whole range of windowing functions in SQL, from aggregate to ranking and analytic functions, with some examples included. A very interesting read.
  • Jeremy Girard’s Selling Responsive Web Design To Clients, starting with a situation where a customer wasn’t interested on having a website redesign, presents a few benefits of responsive design, that usually are not primary motivators for responsive design adoption and concludes that these benefits can be, by themselves, a good way to sell responsive design.

That’s all for this week, thanks for reading.

The image used on this post was originally posted on Wayne Walter Berry’s Inside Windows Azure SQL Database

Oct 20

My links of the week – October 20, 2013

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.