Wayne Sheffield

My blog about SQL Server

The PASS Summit 2012 schedule has been released, and I’m proud to announce that I’ve been selected to present a regular session during this event. The session that I’m presenting is: Table Variables and Temporary Tables: What you NEED to know! Almost all SQL developers are familiar with table variables and temporary tables. While each […]

Lately, I’ve been asked by several folks about the interview questions that I use when I interview candidates for SQL positions. I have the interview process broken down into three processes: Part 1: Phone screening questions. I really like the questions that Grant Fritchey has on his blog. To get in the door for an […]

ORM tools. They’re great. They’re evil. In the right hands, used the proper way, they can be a very powerful, very efficient, Rapid Application Development tool. It’s all about how the ORM tool is used – if it is abused or misunderstood, then very bad things will happen. The biggest problems with ORM tools are […]

Next up on the SQL Server 2012 Performance testing circuit: Gap Detection. You know, where you find missing values from a table of sequential numbers. SQL Server 2012 introduces the LEAD function, which I’ve previously blogged about here. In that blog post, I covered how to do Gap Detection using the LEAD function. Now, it’s […]

This month, T-SQL Tuesday is being hosted by Nigel Sammy. Since the RTM of SQL Server 2012 just occurred, he wants to know: “What do you think is a useful feature of SQL Server 2012?” Well, if you’ve been following my blog, then this should not be much of a surprise to you. My #1 […]

On Saturday, April 14, 2012, I’ll be presenting “Table Vars and Temp Tables – What you NEED to know!” at SQL Saturday #111 in Alpharetta, GA (just north of Atlanta). Forget the tax man… come out and join me in this code filled session, where we’ll discover the differences and similarities of Temporary Tables and […]

SQL Server 2012 introduces several new date/time functions that allow you to build a date/time from the individual parts of a date/time value. As I was experimenting with them, I was thinking that this is pretty neat, and bound to be very useful. And then I started wondering how well it performed. Before I had […]

This month, Argenis Fernandez (blog, @DBArgenis) is hosting our monthly T-SQL Tuesday, and he wants to know: Are you specialized? On something? Or anything at all? Has that been a good or a bad thing? Why? I do specialize, in SQL Server, in development and administration areas. Why I decided to specialize My decision to […]

On Saturday, March 10, 2012, I’ll be presenting “Table Vars and Temp Tables – What you NEED to know!” at SQL Saturday #110 in Tampa, FL. Come out and join me in this code filled session, where we’ll discover the differences and similarities of Temporary Tables and Table Variables, dispel some widespread myths about each, […]

Table-Valued Functions. What a wonderful addition to SQL they make. They take parameters, do some work, and return a result set that can be used in queries. You can select directly against them, or utilize them with the APPLY operator. These are truly versatile additions to SQL -and since you can pass parameters to them, […]