Migrating…
to SQL Server 2017. Into the unknown we go.
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Yearly Archives: 2017
A heap of trouble
Earlier this week I experimented, once again, with using temporary hash tables to speed up intermediate processing. Temp tables can be very useful for creating “optimizer fences” that serve to simplify queries to the point where the optimizer will consistently (more or less) come up with a good plan if not a great one. Temp heaps seem well suited to this purpose, when used simply as low-overhead FIFO structures.
Adam Machanic : Uniquely Identifying XML Nodes with DENSE_RANK
I came across this post today from 2009 that solves a problem I have been having with SQL Server XML shredding, and I thought I would pass it along in case anybody else has managed to miss it for as long as I have. When working with XML in SQL … Continue reading →
New DelimitedTextCleaner library available on github
I have released a small, free, C# single-class library that can be used with SSIS or in other environments to parse CSV and other similar delimited text formats (such as tab or pipe delimited), and to do so with some tolerance for errors in the use of double quote characters. … Continue reading →
GedcomReader library fails while reading FTM 2017 GEDCOM export
While testing Family Tree Maker 2017 (FTM), I happened to notice that GEDCOM imports for my Proximity Database project had ceased to work. At first I suspected FTM, but the output was fine and it was a complete mystery why the imports were failing.
Continue reading →Deployment fail at MacKiev/Ancestry.com
Update: It shipped! It shipped!! Less than four months late! That’s not too bad in this industry. There is an ongoing deployment-gone-wrong story involving SQL Server and about which I have heard nary a word on the SQL Server blogs. While it looks a lot like a classic, doomed-to-failure approach … Continue reading →
Losing it
Pieces of my Experts Exchange badge (left column on the home page here) keep dropping off. Am I losing skills as I grow older? (Update: I must really be losing it. I misspelled “losing.” Fixed now.) (Update to update: I refreshed the badge script and the widget looks much better … Continue reading →
‘Proximity’ Genealogical Database Project Update
Update: I have much more to report about the project, but I have to make choices between writing about it and developing, and right now the development work is taking precedence. Look for a new post soon. I hope. If this work sounds like something you might want to contribute to financially … Continue reading →
STRING_SPLIT and SSDT do not mix
Update (3/28/17): As a simple workaround, I added a string split UDF that does the same thing (only much more slowly). If I need to compile the DB project, I replace the intrinsic function with the UDF in the two places it is called. Otherwise I switch back to the … Continue reading →
ogr2ogr (GDAL 2.x) fails mysteriously
Update (2/26/17): It turns out that I did have uses for several of the GDAL 2.1 features, and there was a simple fix for the problem — switch to a different distribution. I tried the GIS Internals msi installer and everything worked the way it should.
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