Friday, August 26, 2011

SQL Server Denali THROW statement to raise an exception

Raising exception with THROW statement in SQL Server Denali
Prior to SQL Server 2005, writing code for exception handling was painful for T-SQL developers. SQL Server 2005 introduced structured exception handling with BEGIN TRY...BEGIN CATCH blocks. Though this inclusion made managing exceptions in T-SQL programming quite easier, it has some limitations. In this tip I am going to talk about some of these challenges and limitations, then show how a new command THROW in SQL Server Denali overcomes those items, click here for more info.

Understanding Ad-hoc paging in SQL Server Denali

SQL Server Denali Server Side Paging
When designing a User Interface (UI) you normally display 10, 20, 50 or 100 rows on the screen for readability purposes and easy navigation. One way to do this, is to bring all the data from SQL Server to local memory and do the navigation locally. This approach looks simple, but has a couple of issues. First, it could choke the network during a huge data transfer from the server to the local machine (or machine running UI). Second, you could need much more memory to accommodate the data locally. Third, when you navigate to the next page you are actually viewing data stored locally and you will not be able to see updated records on the server until you re-fetch all the data again. So what are some options for server side paging and how does SQL Server Denali improves on this process? Check out this tip to learn more.