One of the things that fascinates me about SQL is the extreme limits on reserved words, especially when compared with most procedural languages. I’ve written about using reserved words for IBM Db2 and MySQL. I thought I’d explore the issue…
I have to say, I love Snowflake, and I think I’ve found my career home, at least for a while. I’m fairly sure I’m past the honeymoon period at this point, too. I’ve been frustrated with a couple of things,…
It’s summer! Kids are out of school, the pools are open, and …. technical conferences are in full swing? For those who are not aware, the IDUG North America 2024 technical conference is happening next week in Charlotte, NC (June…
I spent more than 20 years working with relational databases, gaining a deep expertise with Db2 LUW and a lesser expertise working with MySQL along with a bit of time spent on MS SQL Server, Oracle, and random other database…
This blog entry compliments a webinar on February 8th where I will be a panelist answering questions on Amazons RDS for Db2. Register for “Introducing Amazon RDS for Db2”now. I was lucky enough to be invited to speak at IDUG…
I have answered this question so many times and in so many different ways. Conceptually, my article Db2 Basics: The Role of Databases covers the concept of a database or database management system, why we need them and how we…
I’d really like to thank Shopify for laying me off back in May. I am so much happier in this role, and already starting to feel competent, only six months in. Don’t get me wrong, I have a ton to…
IBM, the Death Star, and rise of the Resistance. In the spring of 2018, Ember and I attended a dinner with members of the Db2 Technical Advisory Board (TAB). This was a collection of respected Db2 end-users, clients, and consultants…
The revelation that Snowflake doesn’t (currently) use b-tree indexes may be shocking to some who are used to a more traditional rdbms environment. It is interesting, therefore, to walk through some of the generalities of the methodologies to understand why…
Every database platform has a way to select from nothing. Sometimes we use it to generate data manually, sometimes we use it to get values of various system functions, but it is important to be able to do. Dummy Table…
As I’ve been learning about Snowflake, at least once a week, I find small things in the SQL or feature set that just make me happy. I really feel like Snowflake is meant for someone who loves SQL, but also…
There are many ways to scale databases. One I was less familiar with before my last job is application-level sharding. While there are tools that work on some platforms to help you achieve application-level sharding (like Vitess with MySQL), the…
