Sequence tables in SQL Server 2005

Interesting post by Paul White about Sequence Tables in SQL Server.

Mistake in Wikipedia article on the Builder pattern

The following article on the Builder Design Pattern on Wikipedia, is sort of OK, except that the Java example provided is inaccurate.

The abstract PizzaBuilder class uses abstract functions. That's not really recommended - if you subclass this then it means that you have to implement all the functions. But really, the pattern is meant to be more flexible than that - if you don't want to use the function then you shouldn't have to use it. Therefore, as the Gang of Four say in their book on page 101, the build methods should be left intentionally empty and not declared as abstract functions, "letting clients override only the operations they are interested in".

ICloneable: Microsoft's big mistake

So here's the deal: if you implement ICloneable in a public API, you are a making a big mistake. Why? Because there's no way of knowing if the Clone() function will do a deep or shallow copy.

As it turns out, even Microsoft know that they have made a mistake with this interface. Oopsy!

SQL Server indexing...

There's a series of articles called SQL Server Index Black Ops... and indeed they are!

Posts:

• Index Black Ops Part 1 – Locking and Blocking
• Index Black Ops Part 2 – Page IO Latch, Page Latch
• Index Black Ops Part 3 – Index Usage
• Index Black Ops Part 4 – Index Overhead and Maintenance
• Index Black Ops Part 5 – Page Splits
• Index Black Ops Part 6 – Fill Factor vs. Page Splits