Phil Factor 01 May 2024

Technology For Humanity

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Editorials

There was a time, when I was in a team that was designing an important IT system for a multinational bank, the testers arranged for perfectly normal office workers from the bank to try the system out. This was long before the days of instant video. The software team watched from behind a two-way mirror. … Read more

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Editorials

Phil Factor 17 April 2024

Database Subsetting and Data Extraction

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Theory and design

Let’s start by defining a subset and why you would require a data subset? When dealing with the development, testing and releasing of new versions of an existing production database, developers like to use their existing production data. In doing so, the development team will be hit with the difficulties of managing and accommodating the … Read more

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Theory and design

Phil Factor 19 February 2024

Database Feature Toggles

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Software Delivery

In software development the concept of feature toggles are used to selectively turn on and off features. They are, for example, used to restrict some newly introduced features to a select group to see how these features work. While this concept has been long used for user-facing application code, it is also a practice that … Read more

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Software Delivery

Phil Factor 18 December 2023

Using a SQL Tokenizer

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Theory and design

Imagine this: you have several directories full of SQL script files, and you need to know where a certain table is used. You’d rather like the context too, so you can check the whole SQL Expression and work out why it is running so slowly. Maybe, from that same daunting set of several directories, you … Read more

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Theory and design

Phil Factor 17 July 2023

Managing Test Data for Database Development

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Testing

In coming up with a strategy for managing test data, first you need to understand what the many test requirements are likely to be for the particular database you are developing. Next, you need to create all the different categories of test data required to suite test requirements and, finally, work out how to manage … Read more

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Testing

Phil Factor 08 May 2023

Xerox stars for accessibility

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Editorials

I was working for Xerox when the Xerox Star, precursor to all the computer systems in use today, was introduced. Before then, computer users just had command-line or character-based GUIs. The Xerox Star workstations were displayed for the first time for us insiders in a special room, like a secular chapel, guarded over by the … Read more

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Editorials

Phil Factor 17 April 2023

Let’s talk about Artificial Intelligence, ChatGPT and Gobbledegook

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Editorials

I use Chat-GPT occasionally, instead of Google, to get answers to technical questions. Well there is definite value in promise in the technology, the trouble is that it currently uses authoritative sources with the same eagerness as blog posts written by newly-trained wannabe database devs who seek to get their names known, and I have … Read more

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Editorials

Phil Factor 29 June 2022

Searching through a database via SQL

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Blogs

Imagine that while developing or testing a SQL Server database, you get an error message mentioning a database object, and you scratch your head, and mutter ‘by the bones of the saints, what is that?’. If it is a small database, then you can glance, maybe, at the browser pane. Once it gets to any … Read more

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Blogs

Phil Factor 03 September 2021

Diff-Objects: a PowerShell utility Cmdlet for Discovering Object differences

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Blogs

You can use PowerShell’s Compare-Objects to do just that, but it’s not always useful enough for database objects. Phil Factor explains how his Diff-Objects works in this post.… Read more

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Blogs

Phil Factor 07 July 2021

Display-Object: a PowerShell utility Cmdlet

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Blogs

How do you list all the objects and values within a PowerShell object, investigate an object or explore its structure? There must be a simple way. I used to use ConvertTo-JSON. This is fine up to a point but what if you just wish to search for strings or look for objects with a cartain … Read more

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Blogs

Phil Factor 08 June 2021

ConvertFrom-XML: a PowerShell utility Cmdlet

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Blogs

I have to deal with XML data with PowerShell. That’s fine, but I always find myself sighing when I need to read an XML object. I have a copy of ‘XML in a Nutshell’. It is over six hundred pages of essential information on XML. Some nutshell. XML is, I believe, a way of representing … Read more

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Blogs

Phil Factor 04 November 2020

Unwrapping JSON to SQL Server Tables

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Blogs

If you know the structure and contents of a JSON document, then it is possible to turn this into one or more relational tables, but even then I dare to you claim that it is easy to tap in a good OpenJSON SELECT statement to do it. If you don’t know what’s in that JSON … Read more

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Blogs

Phil Factor 17 September 2020

Converting Manually-Entered Strings to Dates

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Before computers, the British, US and Canadians all entered dates with the full month-name first, followed by the day number, followed by an ordinal suffix (1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th etc) followed by the year. It was generally the full four-figure year. I know all this because I’ve just been converting many thousands of these … Read more

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Phil Factor 01 August 2020

Temporary Tables in SQL Server

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T-SQL Programming

Temporary tables are used by every DB developer, but they're not likely to be too adventurous with their use, or exploit all their advantages. They can improve your code's performance and maintainability, but can be the source of grief to both developer and DBA if things go wrong and a process grinds away inexorably slowly. We asked Phil for advice, thinking that it would be a simple explanation.… Read more

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T-SQL Programming

Phil Factor 06 July 2020

SQL Server JSON Diff. Checking for differences between JSON documents.

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Blogs

If you are working on any module or routine such as a procedure, function or batch that produces a result, then you will want to compare it with something that you’ve prepared earlier to make sure that it is the same. It is often necessary to compare objects, particularly when you are working on a … Read more

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Blogs

Phil Factor 13 May 2020

Database Kill and Fill

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Blogs

When testing database code in development, you usually have a lot of tests that aim to prove that the various processes such as ETL, reporting or the processing of an order, still work as they always did. If it is a changed process, you need to ensure that, from a known dataset, the process yields … Read more

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Blogs

Phil Factor 06 May 2020

Tackling Imperial and US Customary Measurements in Databases

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The old measurements of length, area, volume and weight in the UK and the States refuse to die. They are known as the Imperial and US customary measurement systems respectively. Not only are they a natural way of dealing with approximate measurements, and tied to human dimensions, but they are no longer difficult to calculate. … Read more

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Phil Factor 16 April 2020

How to Document SQL Server Tables

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Database DevOps

When you create a table, SQL Server doesn’t save your comments explaining the table as it does with stored procedures, for example. In this article, Phil Factor explains how you can merge the documentation from your build scripts into the database.… Read more

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Database DevOps

Phil Factor 19 February 2020

Grappling with sp_describe_undeclared_parameters(). The Hows, Whys and Wherefores.

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Blogs

sp_describe_undeclared_parameters() promises a great deal, but delivers less. It was added mostly for executing application queries via sp_prepare using a TDS link, but has several quirks and restrictions that rather spoils its more general use. It is designed to provide you with all the parameters of a batch. You might use it when a SQL … Read more

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Blogs

Phil Factor 17 February 2020

Using sys.dm_exec_describe_first_result_set_for_object. The Hows, Whys and Wherefores.

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Blogs

I’ve been working on a project unkindly nicknamed ‘The Gloop’ because the code is a bit amorphous. Basically, it is an approach to documenting SQL Server databases, using the facilities provided such as the metadata views and DMFs. Although it is relatively simple to record the result returned by a table-valued function I’d rather neglected … Read more

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Blogs