Ever needed to write a text file from within SQL Server?
Posted by Marc Jellinek in SQL Stuff, SQLCLR on December 9, 2011
Well, there are a three of ways of doing this: Extended Stored Procedures, OLE Automation and SQLCLR. While it is out of the scope of this post, Extended Stored Procedures and OLE Automation are things that have been retained in the SQL Server product in order to maintain a measure of backwards compatibility. Microsoft often […]
Concatenating Text using FOR XML
Posted by Marc Jellinek in SQL Stuff, Uncategorized on August 20, 2011
In my recent post about using CTE’s to concatenate text (see http://marcjellinek.wordpress.com/2011/07/10/cte-to-concatenate-column-values-in-multiple-rows-into-a-single-string/), I was very proud of myself and my genius. Then I read Majunath Bhat’s post “Grouping data from multiple rows into a single row” over on BeyondRelational (see http://beyondrelational.com/blogs/manjunathcbhat/archive/2011/08/07/grouping-data-from-multiple-rows-into-single-row.aspx) With some small changes, I now see the beauty in using FOR XML PATH […]
Backing up all databases on SQL Server
Posted by Marc Jellinek in SQL Stuff on August 9, 2011
I was reading a blog post by Paresh over on LinkedIn (see his post here) and his recommendation for automagically backing up all databases within a SQL Server instance. It inspired me to share my backup stored procedure. What does mine do that Paresh (and many others) do not do? Here’s what I generally do […]
CTE to concatenate column values in multiple rows into a single string
Posted by Marc Jellinek in SQL Stuff on July 10, 2011
UPDATE: While using PIVOT and CTEs to concatenate strings is cool, I’ve found a better way using FOR XML… see http://marcjellinek.wordpress.com/2011/08/20/concatenating-text-using-for-xml/ ORIGINAL ARTICLE: Using SQL Server, one thing I’ve always done is used PIVOT to concatenate strings. The one thing about that solution is you have to impose a maximum number of rows that will […]
Latest RAID Experiment – VirtualBox and FreeNAS (8 TB RAID 5)
Posted by Marc Jellinek in Storage, Toys on March 20, 2011
When we last left off, I found Christmas joy in a big honking bag of hard drives and an external SATA enclosure. But my joy was not complete without a measure of redundancy and recoverability. The controller that shipped with the enclosure did not support RAID 5 in firmware and the embedded controller on my […]
SSDs: Geeky Goodness and the Holy Grail
Posted by Marc Jellinek in SSD, Storage on January 19, 2011
I was reading Heather Clancy’s blog over on ZDNet, where she asks “Will 2011 bring an enterprise SSD adoption breakthrough?” http://www.zdnet.com/blog/green/will-2011-bring-an-enterprise-ssd-adoption-breakthrough/15955?tag=zd-left I hope so. It would be one step closer to my personal Holy Grail (insert gratuitous Monty Python reference here). I yearn for the day when all storage, temporary (ie: RAM) and persistent (ie: disk), […]
Excel and PowerPivot – Missing the Point
Posted by Marc Jellinek in Business Intelligence, Data Warehousing, SQL Stuff on January 17, 2011
Steve Gray posted a question about Excel 2010 and PowerPivot on the LinkedIn Microsoft Business Intelligence Group. See the thread at http://www.linkedin.com/groupAnswers?viewQuestionAndAnswers=&discussionID=12822397&gid=59185&commentID=29629258&trk=view_disc Steve wanted to know the business-level benefits of Excel and PowerPivot for the SME end-user. Here’s my response with some editing. My original comments can be found in the thread referenced above. The […]
Holy Smokes! 7 TB RAID-5 for less than $1000 (not quite… read comments)
Posted by Marc Jellinek in Storage, Toys on December 18, 2010
OK, I’m a geek. What did I decide to get myself for Christmas? A big ole honking bunch of storage. Nothing says happiness like a shopping bag filled with hard drives. Yes, I’m the same guy where the highlight of a recent Friday night was shopping for an Android tablet at Kmart. This shouldn’t come […]
WikiLeaks/CableGate
Posted by Marc Jellinek in CableGate, Information Security, WikiLeaks on December 10, 2010
I feel bad for the US Government and Military. They are in a horrible position. Prior to 9/11, many systems were separate and did not communicate with each other. Where systems did communicate with each other, security measures in place did not allow many people to see anything beyond their immediate need to know. After […]
New Toys from Kmart (if you see a programmer carrying a screwdriver, run!)
Posted by Marc Jellinek in Android, Augen, Linux, Toys on November 13, 2010
OK, I usually don’t brag about buying stuff at Kmart, but this was kinda cool. Remember when Kmart was the #1 computer reseller? It was in the days of of the Commodore 64. It was a bare-basic geek toy for $99. Any self-respecting nerd over the age of 39 had one. Well, the glorys days […]
