Throughout December, Simple-Talk and SQLServerCentral hosted the second annual Tribal Awards.  With these awards, we let the technical community choose members who they felt deserved recognition by opening up both nominations and voting to the public. The voting is over, and the videos recorded, so we’re very pleased to be able to announce the winners for each category in the video below. The winners were decided by sheer number of votes, some won by a landslide and others by the smallest of margins. We’d like to thank the 839 (more than last year!) voters who got involved to make the Tribal Awards something special, and congratulations to our victors!

Tribal Awards - Voting OPEN

The Salesforce Platform: The Return of the Citizen Programmer

The Simple-Talk Magazine - now available on GitHub and as a downloadable PDF. 

t is easy to import Excel data into database tables via TSQL, using OLEDB, either by the OPENROWSET function or linking to the spreadsheet as a server. The problem is that there are certain things that aren't obvious that you need to know about, and you feel awkward about asking such simple questions.

SQL Compare is the industry standard for comparing and deploying SQL Server database schemas, and is used by 71% of Fortune 100 companies. Like all mature products, however, its code base has been growing for years, with new features added, others updated. The end result? A piece of software described by one developer at Red Gate as: “Middle aged, overweight, lazy and heading for trouble”. To resolve the issue, a team was put together with a single mission. Fix the damn thing. Jeff Foster, Head of Software Engineering, told the story about what happened next to technology writer, Matt Hilbert. It makes a compelling tale.

Conrad Wolfram: Geek of the Week

Last day to nominate someone for the Tribal Awards. Get those nominations in!

Getting Feedback
It can be hard to do when working on or finishing projects, but it's important. What's the best way to go about getting it?

Whereabouts in the application should the business logic of data-validation checks be made? The advantages of a layered approach to validation that includes database constraints, would seem to outweigh the disadvantages. William Sisson explains some interesting issues.

It is not just the rapid and painless testing, deployment and update of databases that requires care in the retention and management of configuration information. Configuration information is also essential for audit, resilience, and support. The range of documentation varies widely with the database and its setting, but the underlying principles remain the same. Without appropriate  configuration management, automation is likely to be futile.

Although many of the important tasks a DBA has to perform should be done 'by hand', keying in commands or using SSMS, the canny DBA with a heavy workload will always have an eye to automating routine tasks wherever possible, or using a tool. Although the likely candidates for automation are often obvious, it is not always so. Time can often be saved in surprising ways.