Whenever I write code, I churn out garbage. I do it this way so I can get the general idea down and mess around with the problem. I don’t need a good solution to solve my problem while I’m in development, I need a working solution. Once I get a working solution, I go back and I optimize the code and I eventually write something that doesn’t look like a baby panda threw up on my keyboard.
It’s been a technical week. Exclusion constraints are generalized SQL UNIQUE One of the cool new features of PostgreSQL 9.0 is exclusion constraints. Exclusion constraints make it possible to create a scheduling grid for a classroom or hotel that prevents double bookings of a room. Your Software Can Learn A Lot From ATMs ATMs are simple. They work. They work well. When they don’t work, they tell you that something is up, but they don’t do anything sneaky or have side effects or do two things at once.
Where Good Ideas Come From It’s more watching than reading, but whatever. There are words in there! Storyselling 101 It’s a marketing piece, sure, but it applies to everything you do. The most compelling way to educate is to do it with a story. People identify with and engage in stories. Ever watch a good movie and end up on the edge of your seat for most of the movie? That’s engagement.
We can’t all just pick a street corner and start spouting off about whatever strikes our fancy. That’s not how things work, unless you’re a crazy street preacher. Very few people down at the local university will appreciate you getting on a soap box with a megaphone and ranting about normalization. Trust me on this one. A few days ago, Jen McCown (blog | twitter) put up a blog post aboutBreaking Into SQL Showbiz.
Facebook Privacy Settings for Bigamists The Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy Your brain plays tricks on you and looks for patterns everywhere. Don’t be that guy. Cognitive Load A world with more heads up displays and instantly available information carries a lot of distraction. I don’t want more information constantly streaming into my brain. I want the right information instantly available, when I choose it. Peak MHz Scale out, young man. Scale out.
You’re not using a NoSQL database right now? I’m not all that surprised. Many IT shops are still evaluating moving from SQL Server 2000 to SQL Server 2005, much less these non-relational databases. A lot of people don’t even know what they would use a NoSQL database for. Does it replace the RDBMS? Work alongside it? Do something else?
1) Analytics One reason to consider adding a NoSQL database to your corporate infrastructure is that many NoSQL databases are well suited to performing analytical queries.
When Michael J Swart asked me to take part in T-SQL Tuesday #10 – Indexes, I was incredibly flattered. Nobody’s ever asked me to do anything since a cop asked me to stop doing that one thing (speeding). I had to say yes. Here’s my contribution to T-SQL Tuesday #10.
[caption id="" align=“alignright” width=“241”] An index is a horological lever-like something or other.[/caption]
WTF is an index? My 1967 Children’s World Book Encyclopedia doesn’t provide a definition for an index.
ISO Time Formatting Standards Read it. Love it. Use it. Reducing Bloat Without Locking Just in case you wanted to know all about ghost record clean up in PostgreSQL land. Links and Link Walking Links are crazy awesome fun and make riak a wonderful thing to behold. BEHOLD THE LINKS! Cassandra Data Model Cheat Sheet New terminology is confusing. Pictures are helpful. Setting the record straight – “So, What is an MVP Anyway?
Last week I painted a rosy picture of NoSQL databases. Before you deploy any kind of NoSQL database, you need to be aware of the potential pitfalls of NoSQL databases.
1) Architecture NoSQL databases have different architectural concerns than traditional RDMBSes. If you’re wokring with a BigTable or Dynamo database, your network backbone will need to be able to handle the increased traffic from replication and materializing MapReduce data. Dynamo databases are very chatty – reads and writes are only guaranteed when a specific number of servers respond to a query.
Don’t. Fooled you, didn’t I? If you’re already using a relational database, keep using it. If it’s scaling just fine with your hardware and workload, keep using it. If you aren’t running into any complexity problems, keep using it. There’s no reason to change the way you’re storing your data just because you read an article about how BrandNewStartup.com was able to increase uptime and throughput eleventy-four percent by utilizing a new key-value storage solution.