Content copy in the era of Internet

I´m always following blogs and twitters of known people and last week some public sparks have been all over the place, the reason? A SQL Server consultant was publishing in his blog links to a series of articles, with some pieces of it directly in the blog post (this is usually forbidden by the article´s publisher). Maybe to attract people to his blog or really help the community pointing to good resources (the articles are great!), this should be done with parsimony, then some well known figures from the SQL world went straight to the point and a huge debate was installed.

Letting the buzz aside, I think that we must reflect a little about it. I´ve seen in the past some fights about people pasting other´s scripts in his book and publishing it, scripts reuse in presentations, all of that without giving credits to the author, anyway, things you see when you are dealing with the technical community. After that I wrote some suggestions.

1. We shall not prevent spread of the content, in the contrary, copy at will and help other people, but be respectful and give due credit.
2. If you have a resource on the web that you liked enough, go ahead, blog and Twitter freely about it, but not faithfully copy the contents, simply weave your ideas and point to the page where the content is.
3. It is NOT ugly to use in you work other presentations as a basis or reuse scripts from someone else, after all we have to learn from somewhere, but make it clear to everyone all the sources that were used. The right way would be to ask the author if you can use the information, but in the Internet world the control is weak and sincerely, I do not need people bothering me all the time for something simple as this.
4. If you have no background to speak on a particular subject or you are learning, do not present the subject or make it clear to the listeners, because worse than not teaching others, is to teach it wrong. Everyone make mistakes and I have my share, but we can avoid some mess or embarrassment.
5. Try to create new content or variations of what you find, which may be useful. The world is full of repeated subjects and I think we need to generate more differentiated technical content. I cheer for us in Brazil to continue raise the level of discussions and keep an equal footing with the U.S., for example.
6. If you are going to use multiple (even many!) resources created by another professional, then you'd better talk to him before. Thus you guarantee friendship and maybe even find a mentor for yourself.
7. Read some articles and make a demo does not make you an expert, beware of this false impression. Look continually to improve and recognize your weaknesses.

I have a lot of posts pointing to articles, downloads or news, and I will continue doing that because I believe that I´m following more closely the news than others, so I will share this with the community. But I´ll try always to publish new articles, after all I believe that this is what the community wants to see most.

In the end John has published a nice post about the matter: http://sqltechconsulting.com/2010/03/24/plagiarism-and-attributions-on-the-internet/
There´s a small joke at youTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DWR3zdUsQA

Keep studying, always. I play around with SQL Server for about 10 years, then maybe in the next 10 years I will start to really understand it… ;-)

Doscendo Discimus

Luciano Caixeta Moreira - {Luti}
Chief Innovation Officer
Sr. Nimbus Serviços em Tecnologia Ltda
luciano.moreira@srnimbus.com.br
www.twitter.com/luticm

Will Denali be the codename of SQL Server 2011?

Early today I went across an information about "Denali" being the codename for SQL Server 2011. I first ready it thru Mary-Jo Foley (http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=5288), source of information I've used before to know some news from Microsoft.

I also did some searches to find more about Denali and I found: http://redmondmag.com/articles/2010/02/16/microsoft-to-release-sql-server-sps.aspx and http://news.softpedia.com/news/Introducing-Microsoft-Codename-Denali-the-Great-One-135006.shtml.

The curious thing is that all the original sources pointed by the articles doesn't show the Denali name anymore. A post from Dan Jones (http://blogs.msdn.com/dtjones/default.aspx) published on 02/14/2010 isn't there and the last post we see is from 02/08/2010.

Maybe someone told us the name before the it was meant to? I know that the MVP Summit is being held now at Seattle and it seems to me a good moment to talk about Denali, so probably the MVPs are listening about SQL Server 2011 under NDA… Yes, I'm jealous, I want to know about details and plans!

Well, the doubt about the codename for the next major release of SQL Server says, maybe is Denali, but to make sure I'll be following it very close.

[]s

Luciano Caixeta Moreira - {Luti}
Chief Innovation Officer
Sr. Nimbus Serviços em Tecnologia Ltda
luciano.moreira@srnimbus.com.br
www.twitter.com/luticm

A late introduction

Hello everyone.

My name is Luciano Caixeta Moreira and I live in Brasília, Brazil’s capital. This is my blog and I would like to talk a little bit about me before start putting some SQL/.NET stuff.

I have been working with Microsoft technologies since 2000 (wow - ten years, time is running fast), focused on SQL Server and the development platform. My last job was at Microsoft, where I spend 3 years and a half acting as a SQL Server Premier Field Engineer and as a Developer Evangelist.

Late on March/2009 I quitted MS to start my own company with some associates, a company called Sr. Nimbus, focused on specialized consulting/training on the .NET dev platform + SQL Server and, what gave the name for the company, cloud computing.

I’m also a certified professional and you can see my transcript below.
TranscriptID: 700199
Sharing code: MSCertbyLuti
http://www.microsoft.com/learning/mcp/transcripts

In this blog I’ll approach many subjects of my interest and I hope you you’ll enjoy it. In time you will have a chance to know a little bit more about me.
My e-mail is luciano.moreira@srnimbus.com.br

Luciano Caixeta Moreira - {Luti}
Chief Innovation Officer
Sr. Nimbus Serviços em Tecnologia Ltda
luciano.moreira@srnimbus.com.br
www.twitter.com/luticm

Script to generate views based on your tables

Hello everyone.

Today I were in a customer and had to do a very manual and repetitive task: create many views with different names from the source tables, but with all the fields defined in the table schema.
What is the reason for that? We´re creating a temporary environment where I´m putting a lot of data and we´ll expose an "interface" using views, that the (power) business user will use to create queries and reports. So this abstraction layer, that in the present moment will reflect almost all tables, will be used to avoid some future rework and clashes between both sides (in case the table structure changes), and to make easier to deal with security.

Now that you´re aware of the context let´s see what I had come up with... I could simply write 50 views with all the fields, but it would take a long time, so I created a quick script that will generate the code I need.

To create that I used a temporary table with N records containing schema and existing tables names, besides a column with the name of the view I´ll create. Using this table in a CTE, I leveraged the CROSS APPLY operator to generate a string based on sys.schemas, sys.columns and sys.objects, creating a comma delimited enumeration of columns based on a XML trick.

Here is the T-SQL code using AdventureWorks2008 for you to play, and maybe, it will be useful in the future.

USE AdventureWorks2008
go

WITH TableView AS
(SELECT UsrSchema, UsrTable, UsrView
FROM ( VALUES
('Sales', 'SalesOrderHeader', 'SalesTemp'),
('Sales', 'SalesOrderDetail', 'SalesDetailsTemp'),
('Production', 'Product', 'ProductTemp'))
AS T(UsrSchema, UsrTable, UsrView))
SELECT
ViewsCode.Instruction
FROM TableView
CROSS APPLY
(SELECT
'
IF OBJECT_ID(''vw_'+ TableView.UsrView +''') IS NOT NULL
DROP VIEW dbo.[vw_'+ TableView.UsrView +']
go

CREATE VIEW dbo.vw_' + TableView.UsrView + '
WITH SCHEMABINDING
AS
SELECT ' +
STUFF(
(SELECT N', ' + QUOTENAME(SC.name) AS [text()]
FROM SYS.columns AS SC
INNER JOIN sys.objects AS SO
ON SO.object_id = SC.object_id
INNER JOIN sys.schemas AS SS
ON SO.schema_id = SS.schema_id
WHERE SO.type = 'U'
AND SO.name = TableView.UsrTable
AND SS.name = TableView.UsrSchema
FOR XML PATH('')), 1, 2, N'') + '
FROM ' + TableView.UsrSchema + '.' + TableView.UsrTable + '
go'
AS Instruction) AS ViewsCode
go

Here is the code generated by running the query...

IF OBJECT_ID('vw_SalesTemp') IS NOT NULL
DROP VIEW dbo.[vw_SalesTemp]
go

CREATE VIEW dbo.vw_SalesTemp
WITH SCHEMABINDING
AS
SELECT [SalesOrderID], [RevisionNumber], [OrderDate], [DueDate], [ShipDate], [Status], [OnlineOrderFlag], [SalesOrderNumber], [PurchaseOrderNumber], [AccountNumber], [CustomerID], [SalesPersonID], [TerritoryID], [BillToAddressID], [ShipToAddressID], [ShipMethodID], [CreditCardID], [CreditCardApprovalCode], [CurrencyRateID], [SubTotal], [TaxAmt], [Freight], [TotalDue], [Comment], [rowguid], [ModifiedDate]
FROM Sales.SalesOrderHeader
go

IF OBJECT_ID('vw_SalesDetailsTemp') IS NOT NULL
DROP VIEW dbo.[vw_SalesDetailsTemp]
go

CREATE VIEW dbo.vw_SalesDetailsTemp
WITH SCHEMABINDING
AS
SELECT [SalesOrderID], [SalesOrderDetailID], [CarrierTrackingNumber], [OrderQty], [ProductID], [SpecialOfferID], [UnitPrice], [UnitPriceDiscount], [LineTotal], [rowguid], [ModifiedDate]
FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail
go

IF OBJECT_ID('vw_ProductTemp') IS NOT NULL
DROP VIEW dbo.[vw_ProductTemp]
go

CREATE VIEW dbo.vw_ProductTemp
WITH SCHEMABINDING
AS
SELECT [ProductID], [Name], [ProductNumber], [MakeFlag], [FinishedGoodsFlag], [Color], [SafetyStockLevel], [ReorderPoint], [StandardCost], [ListPrice], [Size], [SizeUnitMeasureCode], [WeightUnitMeasureCode], [Weight], [DaysToManufacture], [ProductLine], [Class], [Style], [ProductSubcategoryID], [ProductModelID], [SellStartDate], [SellEndDate], [DiscontinuedDate], [rowguid], [ModifiedDate]
FROM Production.Product
go

Note that this T-SQL is easy and simple to be changed, so If I need to filter out uniqueidentifier columns or those that names start with 'Id%', adding where clauses would do the trick.

This is a quick post, but I hope it became useful for someone, or at least the idea behind it...
You can download the source code here. (Please note that the file contains content in Portuguese and English).

See ya.
Luti