Getting the most out of SQL Server 2008
April 1, 2009 —
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SQL Server 2008 has been credited for its markedly better scalability and performance, but it also has an assortment of capabilities that fundamentally change how enterprise developers interact with the database.
Microsoft made several changes to SQL Server from version 2005, ranging from the introduction of new developer tools to fulfilling long-sought developer requests in coding, tools, management and performance monitoring.
Among the added capabilities is a new merge operator in Visual Studio 2008, a “great concept” that has been needed for years, said Chris Menegay, a principal consultant for Notion Solutions and a Microsoft regional director (recognized by Microsoft’s Developer Platform evangelism group for technical expertise).
Merge can join a data source with a target table or view, then perform multiple actions (insert, update, delete) against the target based on the results of that join, according to Microsoft TechNet.
"The merge command can do in one line of code what would have taken 10 before," when they would have had to write multiple CASE statements, said Tim Huckaby, CEO of InterKnowlogy, a .NET solutions provider. "From a plumbing perspective, merge changes how to do all of our updates."
Menegay said that programming managers should be certain that merge is supported in their code generation tools and unit tests before they adopt it. "It is a core change to how people interact with the database, and managers should stop people from doing it until everyone on the team does it."
Huckaby was less cautionary, stating that while merge makes programming easier, developers will not go back and refactor or remove old code that works just because Microsoft released a new feature. "In my opinion, it would be used for new applications," he said.
He added that merge would be particularly useful for business intelligence and data warehouses for pulling data from a transaction database for storage.
Another one of the most welcomed changes is the inclusion of a data type for storing dates, said Menegay. "[SQL Server] 2005 made doing internationalization more difficult. You used to have to parse out everything that you did," he said.
Related Search Term(s): Microsoft, SQL Server
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