1. Connect with life www.connectwithlife.co.in Vinod Kumar M Technology Evangelist | Microsoft http://blogs.sqlxml.org/vinodkumar www.ExtremeExperts.com

2. Agenda These are my WISH LISTS Common “7” Mistakes My “7” Wish list for developers Demos, demos and more demos …

3. Common "7" Mistakes first !!! Not highlighting WHERE clause in DELETE In RDC – Shutting down instead of Logoff Checking – “Drop Dependent Objects” Hitting F5 instead of F6(parse only) GUI VS TSQL battle – know it, then use it Taking backup’s – Do we need one? Running scripts without Transactions List can go on ….

4. 1. Must Knows !!! You don’t have excuses for this

5. Must Knows!!! SQL Server Books Online Updated regularly SQL Server Management Studio Source Control Query Plans Data Browsing Profiler Monitor SQL Server activity on the server

6. Knowing the Tool - SSMS

7. 2. Know your Identity

8. Identity Problem Identity Keys Necessary evil Capturing the IDENTITY column values Olden days used @@IDENTITY Know the new constructs to work efficiently Know the options here and the reason

9. Understanding the IDENTITY Crisis

10. 3. The "X" factor

11. "NULL" factor NULL’s are unknown values ANSI-92 mandates: NULL = NULL returns false NULL <> NULL returns false Handling NULL challenges Use WHERE ColName IS NULL AVOID: WHERE ColName = NULL AVOID: Using OR predicate or COALESCE Know your data !!!

12. Know NULL behaviours and needs

13. 4. Conversions 

14. Conversions Happens with DateTime often Can become performance bottlenecks Worst are Implicit Conversions You own your database schema and hence own these pitfalls too Not always are these conversions bad … Know them

15. Conversions of any sort have overheads

16. 5. Fatal Exception – Errors

17. Error Handling Tough with SQL Server 2000 Yet manageable Had to understand the scope to handle errors New handles with SQL Server 2005 Be innovative on handling errors Errors are mostly logical in nature Can nest TRY-CATCH

18. Handle Errors properly

19. 6. Know your transactions

20. Transactions COMMIT TRAN matches BEGIN TRAN ROLLBACK TRAN cancels ALL transactions Always BEGIN, COMMIT and ROLLBACK transactions at the same level Adhere to some coding practices Always test @@TRANCOUNT before COMMIT or ROLLBACK Know these transactional pitfalls in your code

21. Transactional Behaviours

22. 7. Improper Normalization

23. Normalizations – Be practical AFAIK, all developers must be part of Database design phase Normalized based on: Requirement or Data distribution Application access mechanism Pitfalls No or poor indexing No or poor Key management Missed opportunities to de-normalize

24. Don’t Normalize to death …

25. Summary These are not tricks, these are things to remember ALWAYS. Most of them are easily implementable: Identity Problem Error Handling Conversions etc Know your tool inside-out

27. Contact Blog Address http://blogs.sqlxml.org/vinodkumar Webspace www.ExtremeExperts.com

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