Triggers may have uses, but they are verboten in my shop because of the maintenance difficulties you mention. We are a small dev shop with no DBA. Somebody...

Not me. If I am leaving an application on an old version, it is because I don't want...

Your comment about MS having myopia with regard to enterprise needs is spot-on. They have always been a desktop company. They have gotten better, but they need to...

OMG do I have opinions on this topic! As the manager of a small development team that has no DBA, it is absolutely critical that we have absolutes and...

There are 38 men with my first and last names in Texas alone. Like you said, surely HR has more important things to do than google me.

This issue is something that has concerned me for years. I participate in two major online forums, and both of them are controversial. If someone really actively googled...

Scott, you took the words right out of my mouth. I have always disagreed with the mindless use of sprocs in the design of systems, and I am glad...

After this discussion of phonetic algorythms that we have been having, I cannot believe that I just ran across this:

http://www.prnewswire.co.uk/cgi/news/release?id=189324

The gist of the article is that the US...

I have really enjoyed reading this thread. Mike C especially has been extremely enlightening. What I take from his expertise is that there are numerous phonetic matching algorithms,...

I think a hash table would be a much better implementation. It would be hugely faster, and if the word doesn't hash, it would be easy to grab all...

I agree with your implicit thesis that we tech geeks are by nature curious problem solvers that tend to DIY. However, and this is a big however, in my...

To everyone who knows me, I am the IT guy. I am so NOT the IT guy. I can barely spell the word 'network'. I know that...

You should be very afraid. I have worked at many shops where nobody knew the value of a DBA or what one could do for them. There are...

I believe that performing tech transfer to my teammates is part of my professional responsibility. I have even gotten jobs to perform precisely that task. I do not...

This is by far one of my favorite subjects. I once worked at a huge IT company that will remain nameless (EDS). The failed project went for seven...