Links for the Week of 2009-01-30

SQL SERVER

Set based random numbers George Mastros points out that generating a random number using RAND() in a set-based operation will always return the same value for every row in the result set. What’s a DBA to do? Luckily, George also covers a great way to get around this predicament. Hardware for SQL Server 2008 Andrew Fryer posted a few links to SQL Server 2008 Hardware recommendations from Microsoft. Good times. The IDENTITY Property: A Much-Maligned Construct in SQL Server Aaron Alton gives a great overview of IDENTITY and why you might want to go about using it.

DEVELOPMENT

Sharing ASP.net Session State Between Web Applications With SQL Server – Part I Back when I was a web developer I tried to figure out how to do this on multiple occasions (back in the .NET 1.1 days). Unfortunately, I never came up with any good way to accomplish this without re-implementing session state storage and project deadlines always took hold so we developed quick, hacky, brittle solutions. Looks like Alex Cuse has put together something a lot more robust than anything I’ve ever come up with. Thanks Alex! (Part 2 available here) Software + Services in Plain English Brian H Prince has provided a link to a video featuring some sweet paper dolls to explain Software + Services (not Software as a Service). Plus, there’s some implied dating between the paper dolls when they “meet for coffee” and end up talking about their crappy IT infrastructure (total nerd date). Löve In Two Dimensions Why the Lucky Stiff provides information on a game/graphics programming framework called Löve that’s something like a combination of Lua and SDL.

GENERAL

Hold the Coprophagia William Gibson is, hands down, my favorite author. As he works on a new novel he publishes fragments on his blog. Enjoy. 22 Most Used Free Fonts By Professional Designers The kind folks over at instantshift.com have put together a list of freely available fonts from the pros. Very good additions to anyone’s collection.