Making my list and checking it twice

Looking back at the test table I created for the T-SQL Tuesday post, I realized that I have definitely started to have a checklist of what I like to see when I initially create tables or review changes.

So what’s on my list?

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T-SQL Tuesday – June 2016: Temporal Tables

It’s T-SQL Tuesday. This month, the assignment is to write about SQL Server 2016. (A big thanks to Michael Swart (b|t) for hosting!) I have decided that I really do want to use SQL Server 2016 over SQL Server 2014 for my longer project. While I don’t have that set up just yet (more about that another time), I decided to test out the Virtual Labs with SQL 2016 for this.

One of the new features I’m excited to look into is the Temporal Table. It’s a table that where SQL Server creates a history of the records changes (inserts, updates and deletes) but will only display the “current” version by default, based on the criteria set up as designated upon creation. Here’s the more info about it: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn935015.aspx

I’ve worked with a project where we have separate activity tables to keep track of all types of changes. The application and any changes we’ve had to do in scripts for deployment had to define and execute that code separately. So I can see where something like this would be useful.

What’cha Making There?

As I’m still getting things set up (end of May\early June is always a crazy busy time of year for me so I need a little more time to get everything in place), I want to start think about what we’re about to design. More importantly, what type of database are we designing?

To answer this, we need to make sure we understand what this database would be used and how it would be used. Once that’s established, we can start to define the particulars of this project.