Blogs with tips on SQL and Databases 231 SQL Programming 2012-02-09T06:39:07 Neal Pointer barry.david.adams@googlemail.com SQL Server Journey with SQL Authority 2012-02-09T01:30:29

I blog and engage with the community because it gives me satisfaction when someone resolves an issue. A few days ago, I blogged about a DBA who began his first day at a new company and could not find out where the installation summary file was. He was very happy when I featured his story [...]

0b934a1e83d560d9383584603f9e0cf7 SQLblog.com - The SQL Server blog spot on the web 2012-02-08T18:09:00

Beginning a transaction only when @@TRANCOUNT=0 might not improve performance at all. At least, I did not notice any difference whatsoever. No matter if I use this pattern: BEGIN TRAN ; -- (snip) COMMIT ; or a more complex one: DECLARE @trancount INT ; SET @trancount = @@TRANCOUNT ; IF @trancount = 0 BEGIN ; BEGIN TRAN ; END ; --(snip) IF @trancount = 0 BEGIN ; COMMIT ; END ; the performance stays the same: I was not able to notice any difference. Here are my benchmarks. Prerequisites All we need...(read more)

0b3dd9c8b6f8c66dd0cfd2e736690707 SQLblog.com - The SQL Server blog spot on the web 2012-02-08T17:34:00

THE SQL Server Blog Spot on the Web Welcome to SQLblog.com The SQL Server blog spot on the web Sign in Join Help in Argenis Fernandez Entire Site Search Home Blogs Forums Downloads Opml Argenis Fernandez Shameless Plug Can We Have Your Vote Robert Davis a.k.a . SQLSoldier and yours truly have submitted a Pre-Conference for SQL Rally 2012 in Dallas , TX called Demystifying Database Administration Best Practices” . We think it’s going to be an epic session with just loads and loads of tips and best practices on multiple aspects of Database Administration , from Windows AD setup to Daily Operations to Code . Reviews While our session wasn’t chosen by the committee in the first round , it made it to the community voting round so this post is to kindly ask for your vote . We promise we’ll

34cb36649af761e5df601759b76d58b8 SQLblog.com - The SQL Server blog spot on the web 2012-02-08T08:36:00

THE SQL Server Blog Spot on the Web Welcome to SQLblog.com The SQL Server blog spot on the web Sign in Join Help in SSIS Junkie Entire Site Search Home Blogs Forums Downloads Opml SSIS Junkie Freelance SQL Server developer in London SQLBits now publishing all SQLBits agendas as an iCalendar Three weeks ago I published a blog post Get the SQLBits agenda in your phone's calendar where I : said If you want to get the SQLBits calendar onto your smartphone then the easiest way to do it is add my calendar containing all SQLBits sessions to whichever calendar service i.e . Hotmail or Google you have got synced to your phone and let technology do its . thing I will keep the calendar updated with any changes to the agenda so , assuming you have subscribed , changes will just propogate to you

0bed424708305bb67022b1653095ca21 SQL Server Journey with SQL Authority 2012-02-08T01:30:58

SQL Server is an ocean of information. I believe if one starts learning today, after 60 years he/she may still be learning the subject (there are always a few exceptions)! Recently, I published the SQL Server Questions and Answers video tutorial, and since the course came out, I have been receiving lots of request to [...]

1b8cc07fe8e7f06535f92643bade23ca SQLblog.com - The SQL Server blog spot on the web 2012-02-08T00:00:00

Although there are some audio issues, the recording and code for the Linchpin People microTraining session on SSIS Package Configurations is now live! :{>...(read more)

1ecb7db872d49ed408f145a7511856ca The Code Project Latest Articles 2012-02-07T15:41:00

Run database updates and selects in a separate thread

1c730727dea2e9e132637957cd515038 SQLblog.com - The SQL Server blog spot on the web 2012-02-07T14:58:39

THE SQL Server Blog Spot on the Web Welcome to SQLblog.com The SQL Server blog spot on the web Sign in Join Help in Buck Woody Entire Site Search Home Blogs Forums Downloads Opml Buck Woody Carpe Datum Application Lifecycle Management Overview for Windows Azure Developing in Windows Azure is at once not that much different from what you’re familiar with in on-premises systems , and different in significant ways . Because of these differences , developers often ask about the specific process to develop and deploy a Windows Azure application more formally called an Application Lifecycle Management , or ALM . There are specific resources you can use to learn more about various parts of ALM I’ve referenced those at the end of this post . But ALM has multiple definitions , from the governance

cf0fcb36f070a1010de5bd9970638069 SQL Server Journey with SQL Authority 2012-02-07T01:30:41

Here is email received from user: “Pinal, I am new DBA in my organization and I have to manage SQL Server 2005, 2008 and 2008 R2. Today is my first day at job and my manager has asked me to install all these different edition on our test environment. I have finished installing them. Later [...]

a6acacfba5e86de25d6856143cf1791b SQLblog.com - The SQL Server blog spot on the web 2012-02-06T21:57:07

We are going very close to the release of SQL Server 2012 and after using Analysis Services 2012 for almost one year in a relatively small number of scenarios, I’m really curios to see the questions and the issues that will emerge when its adoption will go mainstream. I expect that many will consider a Tabular instance of Analysis Services similar to a Multidimensional one, also from a system engineer perspective, whereas there are many important differences. For example, the hardware required to...(read more)

3441b15b0048e1eb98052b57d5ae6dab SQLblog.com - The SQL Server blog spot on the web 2012-02-06T20:36:00

During SQL Server 2012 RC0 setup (specifically when upgrading), you may have noticed upgrade rules regarding Lock Pages in Memory (LPIM): However, for most folks, these rules always pass, whether or not they are actually using LPIM. I wanted to run a few tests to demonstrate why this is - or at least in which situations the rule checks will fail. So I created two virtual machines running SQL Server 2008 R2 SP1 CU3 - one running Windows Server 2008 SP2 (x86), the other running Windows Server 2008...(read more)

182177bfc76c853b0f418a47a08fab06 SQL Server Journey with SQL Authority 2012-02-06T01:30:16

Recently one of my friend sent me email that he is having some problem with his very small database. We talked for few minutes and we agreed that to further investigation I will need access to the whole database. As the database was very big he dropped it in common location (you can use livemesh [...]

5d23536909a8a69869902070ccf5033f SQLblog.com - The SQL Server blog spot on the web 2012-02-06T00:00:00

Introduction This post is the fifty-first part of a ramble-rant about the software business. The current posts in this series can be found on the series landing page . This post is about communication. On Being Clever I enjoy listening to a good comedian and reading the works of humorous writers. Life is too short to waste on misery and a hearty laugh is good for the soul. Some humor is educational, thought-provoking and surprising. Some humor, though, can be hurtful. Some jokes and comments build...(read more)

b0d68f5ee0c7c10445309d8c20808647 SQL Server Journey with SQL Authority 2012-02-05T01:30:33

SQL Server 2012 is has very exciting new feature of SQL Server AlwaysOn. This new feature reduces planned and unplanned downtime and maximize application available. Additionally it provides data protection keeping database always available. Microsoft has released a whitepaper on this subject where it discusses common context business stakeholders, technical decision makers, system architects, infrastructure [...]

a974998b549cc01baa0f2ae7bccc451a SQL Server Journey with SQL Authority 2012-02-04T01:30:03

I recently received email from one of my very close friend from California. His question was very interesting. He wanted to know how many virtual processors are there available for SQL Server. He already had script for SQL Server 2008 but was mainly looking for SQL Server 2000. He made me go to my past. [...]

3f13520e606dff3f12527e315b578da9 SQL Server Journey with SQL Authority 2012-02-03T01:30:20

We have recently wrapped up our most recent event, SQL Saturday #116, and I am I am sure I am not alone in reporting that it was a huge success!  We had a full crowd – every seat taken, plus standing-room-only in the back.  We also had a lot of good feedback and the crowd [...]

9e44af4f1f920811023a5d1f855f87cc Simple Talk RSS Feed 2012-02-03T00:00:00

In the first of a series of articles on automating the process of building, modifying and copying SQL Server databases, Phil Factor demonstrates how one can generate TSQL scripts for databases, selected database objects, or table contents from PowerShell and SMO.

faf8c53cfa58b974456a5f3e03f0c61e SQL Server Journey with SQL Authority 2012-02-02T01:30:36

Nov 3, 2011 – Visit to Grandma When our SQL Server Interview Questions and Answers book got published I ran to my grandma with a copy of the book for her blessings. Well, just like every grandma, she loves me, her grandson, unconditionally. She is not into the technology domain (obviously), but she loved the book. She read the [...]

3f1688fa891bc2b94245afb9ffa55781 Simple Talk RSS Feed 2012-02-02T00:00:00

With database applications, the process of test and integration can be frustratingly slow because so much of it is based on manual processes. Everyone seems to agree that automation of the process provides the answer to accomodating shorter development cycles, but how, exactly? Dave Green describes a successful process that integrates third-party tools.

59fb9ab6263c05c8244cdb87bd05e83c SQLblog.com - The SQL Server blog spot on the web 2012-02-01T22:28:00

I've been working on a team with Roger Doherty building parts of what's now become the SQL Server 2012 Early Adoption Cook Book . So, if you work on the bleeding edge of SQL Server and are keen to get your head around what's coming, this is a seriously good resource. Time to go and get it. The material is constructed as a large number of bite-sized pieces. Each presentation is about 15 minutes in length, and each demo is about 5 minutes. And there are lots of them. Look for recordings of these by...(read more)

8d72ed1bb2f6e095b397dad3d0d16f86 SQLblog.com - The SQL Server blog spot on the web 2012-02-01T22:25:00

To ensure atomicity of transactions, we can use XACT_ABORT ON or wrap the transaction in TRY block and rollback in CATCH block. In some cases, the XACT_ABORT ON approach uses noticeably less CPU. I am posting repro scripts. Please run them, tweak them, and post your findings. Environment I've run my scripts on 2008 R2 Dev Edition. Snapshot isolation is enabled, READ_COMMITTED_SNAPSHOT is not enabled. Test data We are using the same test data as in my previous post: CREATE TABLE dbo.Toggle1 ( id INT...(read more)

8c384204e241f86309fbf7a618353d01 SQLblog.com - The SQL Server blog spot on the web 2012-02-01T22:02:00

Wrapping related changes in a transaction is a good way to ensure data integrity. Besides, in some cases it just runs noticeably faster, using less CPU. As usual, I am posting repro scripts, which you can run, tweak, and see for yourself. Environment I've run my scripts on 2008 R2 Dev Edition. Snapshot isolation is enabled, READ_COMMITTED_SNAPSHOT is not enabled. Test data After applying Occum's razor, all we need is two tables with one row in each: CREATE TABLE dbo.Toggle1 ( id INT NOT NULL PRIMARY...(read more)

85442acd61f8abd244886c6fef38b9f7 SQLblog.com - The SQL Server blog spot on the web 2012-02-01T17:15:44

THE SQL Server Blog Spot on the Web Welcome to SQLblog.com The SQL Server blog spot on the web Sign in Join Help in Davide Mauri Entire Site Search Home Blogs Forums Downloads Opml Davide Mauri A place for my thoughts and experiences on SQL Server , Business Intelligence and NET DTLoggedExec 1.1.2008.4 SP2 released I’ve released couple of hours ago the SP2 of my DTLoggedExec . tool For those who don’t know it , it’s a DTEXEC replacement , useful to execute SSIS and having logging provided right from the engine and not from the package . itself More info can be found : here http : dtloggedexec.codeplex.com This SP2 release add an important feature to the CSV Log Provider . It's now possible to store a personalized label into each log , in order to make it easy to identify or group . logs

abbe0a3f16614b1a6fc24bd09cc471a9 SQL Server Journey with SQL Authority 2012-02-01T01:30:23

Year 2011 was a year of learning and opportunity for me. My recent book, SQL Server Interview Questions and Answers, has received such overwhelming love and support from all of you. While writing the book, I had two simple goals: (1) Master the Basics and (2) Ignite Learning. There was a constant request from the Community to take the learning of these books to [...]

843a71609a653628ff71d5ddd80548b6 Simple Talk RSS Feed 2012-02-01T00:00:00

We all appreciate that, in general, XML documents or fragments are held in strings as text markup. In SQL Server, XML variables and columns are instead tokenised to allow rapid access to the data within. This is fine, but can cause some odd problems, auch as 'entitization'. What, also, do you do if you need to preserve the formatting? As usual Rob Sheldon comes to our aid.

e5adae00c0b75cb638c9340a7296c1c0 SQLblog.com - The SQL Server blog spot on the web 2012-02-01T00:00:00

I will be delivering another free, online MicroTraining on SSIS Package Configurations Tuesday, 7 Feb 2012, at 10:00 AM EST. Join Andy Leonard as he demonstrates uses of SSIS Package Configurations for externalizing SSIS package variable values. Register here ! :{>...(read more)

f8d65dbe20bb33ab774de7bbacf375ad SQL Server Journey with SQL Authority 2012-01-31T01:30:43

Year 2011 was a year of learning and opportunity for me. My recent book, SQL Server Interview Questions and Answers, has received such overwhelming love and support from all of you. While writing the book, I had two simple goals: (1) Master the Basics and (2) Ignite Learning. There was a constant request from the Community to take the learning of these books to [...]

3fef1f6b9a3c70f9ab368ac71945b0c7 SQLblog.com - The SQL Server blog spot on the web 2012-01-30T23:17:20

These days if you get a new server-class machine to run SQL Server, you can almost be 100% sure that it’ll be running on NUMA hardware. The recent AMD Opteron and Intel Nehalem-based processors are all built on some form of NUMA architecture. The current consensus is that as the number of processors grows, their shared memory bus can easily get congested and becomes a major impediment to scalability. NUMA hardware solves this scalability challenge by dividing the processors into groups, with each...(read more)

d85bb7e83023af022ee06c51fee0cbb8 SQLblog.com - The SQL Server blog spot on the web 2012-01-30T08:41:46

My 4yo son keeps asking me why I should leave home so often to attend SQL conferences around the world and today, after a couple of days of snow, he discovered a good reason, along with the best place for the SQLBits scarf....(read more)

70bdbaf59b311e784b1a5123a5e31d10 SQL Server Journey with SQL Authority 2012-01-30T01:30:02

Year 2011 was a year of learning and opportunity for me. My recent book, SQL Server Interview Questions and Answers, has received such overwhelming love and support from all of you. While writing the book, I had two simple goals: (1) Master the Basics and (2) Ignite Learning. There was a constant request from the Community to take the learning of these books to [...]

8d063205d3b0861bef12231351f2590e Simple Talk RSS Feed 2012-01-30T00:00:00

Occasionally, when you install identical databases on two different SQL Server instances, they will behave in surprisingly different ways. Why? Most likely, it is down to different configuration settings. There are around seventy of these settings and the DBA needs to be aware of the effect that many of them have. Brad McGehee explains them all in enough detail to help with most common configuration problems, and suggests some best practices.

6cf5bf61490762f7a81684fdad731473 Simple Talk RSS Feed 2012-01-30T00:00:00

The arrival of the (MAX) data types in SQL Server 2005 were one of the most popular feature for the database developer. At the time, there was a lot of discussion as to whether this freedom from having to specify string length came at a cost. Rob attempts to give a final answer as to any down-side.

9c0561d085c131984bd0dd22912c4032 SQLblog.com - The SQL Server blog spot on the web 2012-01-29T18:08:53

THE SQL Server Blog Spot on the Web Welcome to SQLblog.com The SQL Server blog spot on the web Sign in Join Help in SSIS Junkie Entire Site Search Home Blogs Forums Downloads Opml SSIS Junkie Freelance SQL Server developer in London Suggested Best Practises and naming conventions Once upon a time I blogged at http : consultingblogs.emc.com jamiethomson but that ended in August 2009 when I left EMC . There is a lot of arguably valuable content over there however certain events in the past leave me concerned that that content is not well cared for and I don't have any confidence that it will still exist in the long term . Hence , I have taken the decision to re-publish some of that content here at SQLBlog so over the coming weeks and months you may find re-published content popping up here

fa3f50ccdae07e6bc26a671aa316ae57 SQL Server Journey with SQL Authority 2012-01-29T01:30:36

Year 2011 was a year of learning and opportunity for me. My recent book, SQL Server Interview Questions and Answers, has received such overwhelming love and support from all of you. While writing the book, I had two simple goals: (1) Master the Basics and (2) Ignite Learning. There was a constant request from the Community to take the learning of these books to [...]

18fb4a1d02f37ddb245b245b2a181c01 SQLblog.com - The SQL Server blog spot on the web 2012-01-28T05:32:51

What happens when NUMA affinity meets query parallelism? It gets no respect! SQL Server allows you to affinitize a TCP port to a specific NUMA node or a group of NUMA nodes. Books Online has an article on How to: Map TCP/IP ports to NUMA Nodes . And this BOL article discusses various NUMA affinity scenarios. Recently, I have been playing with NUMA affinity on various servers with hardware NUMA, such as those with Intel X5690 and Intel E7-4870, running SQL Server 2008 R2 RTM (10.50.1600) and SQL Server...(read more)

d78169ec16b8e0cb60299a61b5689e55 SQL Server Journey with SQL Authority 2012-01-28T01:30:43

Year 2011 was a year of learning and opportunity for me. My recent book, SQL Server Interview Questions and Answers, has received such overwhelming love and support from all of you. While writing the book, I had two simple goals: (1) Master the Basics and (2) Ignite Learning. There was a constant request from the Community to take the learning of these books to [...]

3487df92d65beabffb1e97517eece494 SQLblog.com - The SQL Server blog spot on the web 2012-01-27T05:33:11

I know people have been doing all sorts of things with T-SQL, and I have absolutely no issue with people trying to push the limit of what T-SQL can do, or what you can use it to accomplish, especially when it’s for demonstration or pedagogical purposes, or as an intellectual exercise. But then I bumped into an article on writing a T-SQL stored procedure to find and replace strings in a text file. That really unsettled me! Sure, when you are in a hurry, you need to grab a tool--any tool--to get the...(read more)

079fecb04b24c6225e66347b537c8d84 SQL Server Journey with SQL Authority 2012-01-27T01:30:27

Year 2011 was a year of learning and opportunity for me. My recent book, SQL Server Interview Questions and Answers, has received such overwhelming love and support from all of you. While writing the book, I had two simple goals: (1) Master the Basics and (2) Ignite Learning. There was a constant request from the Community to take the learning of these books to [...]

bf80a578efcc79b37ebeb11d4c347a50 SQLblog.com - The SQL Server blog spot on the web 2012-01-26T21:50:00

I see a lot of people suggest while loops instead of cursors in situations where row-based processing is required (or, at least, where folks think that row-based processing is required). Sometimes the justification is that constructing a while loop is simpler and more straightforward than constructing a cursor. Others suggest that a while loop is faster than a cursor because, well, it isn't a cursor. Of course the underlying mechanics still represent a cursor, it's just not explicitly stated that...(read more)

b579af949ba04d160c9c1996cba17ce3 SQLblog.com - The SQL Server blog spot on the web 2012-01-26T20:54:36

When you create a PowerPivot workbook or a BISM Tabular model (new in Analysis Services 2012), you store data by using the VertiPaq engine, which is an in-memory columnar database. Instead of considering the row of a table as the main unit of storage, it considers every column as a separate entity and stores data for every column in a separate way. This makes it very fast to query data for a single column, but requires a higher computational effort in order to retrieve data for several columns of...(read more)

837bc0f470881ca94f41bd7852611aee SQL Server Journey with SQL Authority 2012-01-26T01:30:39

Community is the most motivating force for me. I have often found situations where I have done more and better things because there was community around me. My latest book SQL Server Interview Questions and Answers is the result of the community’s support and love. Without the wide acceptance of the community I would have [...]

3e1fbf21cdccff1ded263a2f97413e59 SQL Server Journey with SQL Authority 2012-01-26T01:30:33

Year 2011 was a year of learning and opportunity for me. My recent book, SQL Server Interview Questions and Answers, has received such overwhelming love and support from all of you. While writing the book, I had two simple goals: (1) Master the Basics and (2) Ignite Learning. There was a constant request from the Community to take the learning of these books to [...]

71f872194fe4000d88264b0f2b36011c SQLblog.com - The SQL Server blog spot on the web 2012-01-25T22:09:00

Be careful: unlike most other languages, T-SQL does not limit variables' scope to the block where the variable has been defined. For example, the following snippet compiles and runs: -- @to is not in scope yet -- the line below would not compile --SET @to = @to + 3 ; IF DATEPART ( weekday , GETDATE ()) = 3 BEGIN ; -- the scope of this DECLARE does not end when the block ends DECLARE @from INT , @to INT ; SELECT @from = 5 , @to = 7 ; SELECT Number FROM data.Numbers WHERE Number BETWEEN @from AND @to...(read more)

0ab60e64783f5db710fc44db08bd763a SQLblog.com - The SQL Server blog spot on the web 2012-01-25T09:46:00

THE SQL Server Blog Spot on the Web Welcome to SQLblog.com The SQL Server blog spot on the web Sign in Join Help in SSIS Junkie Entire Site Search Home Blogs Forums Downloads Opml SSIS Junkie Freelance SQL Server developer in London Whatever happened to Twitter Annotations In April 2010 Twitter announced a new feature that they would soon be introducing Twitter Annotations . Put simply Twitter Annotations can be described as the ability to attach metadata to a tweet think hashtags on steroids . Lots of people were quite excited about : it I love to sit on the beach . One of the coolest things about the beach is the number of layers of visual depth . Look at the sand and it's beautiful , but zoom your eyes in closer and you'll see a whole layer of life running around on the sand that you

d4835f5caf2187f0e5ba365c031b9812 SQL Server Journey with SQL Authority 2012-01-25T01:30:45

Year 2011 was a year of learning and opportunity for me. My recent book, SQL Server Interview Questions and Answers, has received such overwhelming love and support from all of you. While writing the book, I had two simple goals: (1) Master the Basics and (2) Ignite Learning. There was a constant request from the Community to take the learning of these books to [...]

8fc5b726907f8b25ae2d42a23bb97d5e SQLblog.com - The SQL Server blog spot on the web 2012-01-25T00:00:00

A new personal blog post: Discerning Between Noisy and Important...(read more)

5230fe1c5980d872ac440d3881563ee9 SQL Server Journey with SQL Authority 2012-01-24T01:30:41

Year 2011 was a year of learning and opportunity for me. My recent book, SQL Server Interview Questions and Answers, has received such overwhelming love and support from all of you. While writing the book, I had two simple goals: (1) Master the Basics and (2) Ignite Learning. There was a constant request from the Community to take the learning of these books to [...]

dffcac6b4d7c89ffdfcf901b51462aae Bob Beauchemin's Blog 2012-01-23T20:49:00

: Home Syndication Log in XEvents in SQL Server 2012 : No more lazy XML in event harvesting scripts I've said before how thrilled I am will the new extended event UI in SSMS for SQL Server 2012. However , you might be one of the early adopters who made up their own scripts to define extended event sessions , and use hardcoded scripts to harvest the results . So , you may run into this problem if you're using what I call lazy XML in the event harvesting script . Take , as an example , an extended event session defined as follows with 3 actions : create event session errorsession on server add event sqlserver.error_reported action package0.callstack , nbsp sqlserver.session_id , nbsp sqlserver.sql_text where error 547 and package0.counter add target package0.ring_buffer with

8b06a7cbe7461c4646851966a103ec6b SQL Server Journey with SQL Authority 2012-01-23T01:30:49

Year 2011 was a year of learning and opportunity for me. My recent book, SQL Server Interview Questions and Answers, has received such overwhelming love and support from all of you. While writing the book, I had two simple goals: (1) Master the Basics and (2) Ignite Learning. There was a constant request from the Community to take the learning of these books to [...]

e11f848dedcad67b377eb71686c2a60f SQL Server Journey with SQL Authority 2012-01-22T01:30:58

Year 2011 was a year of learning and opportunity for me. My recent book, SQL Server Interview Questions and Answers, has received such overwhelming love and support from all of you. While writing the book, I had two simple goals: (1) Master the Basics and (2) Ignite Learning. There was a constant request from the Community to take the learning of these books to [...]

0750d14058b38be4c96e0ab4d2470c1c SQL Server Journey with SQL Authority 2012-01-21T01:30:15

Year 2011 was a year of learning and opportunity for me. My recent book, SQL Server Interview Questions and Answers, has received such overwhelming love and support from all of you. While writing the book, I had two simple goals: (1) Master the Basics and (2) Ignite Learning. There was a constant request from the Community to take the learning of these books to [...]

d4905a80b4fa3d3c2fe23ad306fc043d SQL Server Journey with SQL Authority 2012-01-20T01:30:31

Year 2011 was a year of learning and opportunity for me. My recent book, SQL Server Interview Questions and Answers, has received such overwhelming love and support from all of you. While writing the book, I had two simple goals: (1) Master the Basics and (2) Ignite Learning. There was a constant request from the Community to take the learning of these books to [...]

4cae47639c6d4c614fa97e93b677832c SQL Server Journey with SQL Authority 2012-01-19T01:30:20

Year 2011 was a year of learning and opportunity for me. My recent book, SQL Server Interview Questions and Answers, has received such overwhelming love and support from all of you. While writing the book, I had two simple goals: (1) Master the Basics and (2) Ignite Learning. There was a constant request from the Community to take the learning of these books to [...]

aa7db97f25dbb5eaa8ff9c0177015581 Simple Talk RSS Feed 2012-01-19T00:00:00

Static code analysis is used a lot by application programmers, but there have been surprisingly few tools for SQL development that perform a function analogous to Resharper, dotTest, or CodeRush. Wouldn't it be great to have something that can indicate where there are code-smells, lapses from best practice and so on, in your Database code? Now there is.

37b3ba7c6af6e014b7b7699a34282faa SQL Server Journey with SQL Authority 2012-01-18T01:30:27

Year 2011 was a year of learning and opportunity for me. My recent book, SQL Server Interview Questions and Answers, has received such overwhelming love and support from all of you. While writing the book, I had two simple goals: (1) Master the Basics and (2) Ignite Learning. There was a constant request from the Community to take the learning of these books to [...]

4e51cf18f02b37c7a16feafa4b652a01 Simple Talk RSS Feed 2012-01-18T00:00:00

One of the more popular counters used by DBAs to monitor the performance, the Buffer Cache Hit Ratio, is useless as a predictor of imminent performance problems. Worse, it can be misleading. Jonathan Kehayias demonstrates this convincingly with some simple tests.

7f507bdd723676613bb2cd88cad53fd0 Bob Beauchemin's Blog 2012-01-17T20:01:00

Home Syndication Log in SQL Server 2012 FileTable and T-SQL on AlwaysOn secondary replicas OK , back to PathName( with AlwaysOn , which I started on in the previous blog post PathName( in SQL Server 2012 doesn't return the computer name by default AlwaysOn1 or AlwaysOn2 in my example but returns the VNN name virtual network name That is , it returns the availability group listener share name . In my case , the PathName( would start with AlwaysOnAG1 There's an additional option in SQL Server 2012 PathName( that allows you to return the current replica name . So , when AlwaysOn1 is the current primary replica , it returns that when we fail over to AlwaysOn2 that's what name is returned . In addition , GetFileNamespacePath( and FileTableRootPath( always return the availability group listener

8a4f922f4182291a804965a830656401 Bob Beauchemin's Blog 2012-01-17T18:03:00

Home Syndication Log in SQL Server 2012 FileTable and T-SQL on AlwaysOn secondary replicas SQL Server 2012 FileTables AlwaysOn support and PathName( When I was covering the FileTable-specific functions and methods , I didn't mention PathName( a filestream-related function , that naturally can be used with FileTables . This posting is about PathName( but , mostly about what happens with FileTable in an AlwaysOn availability group configuration . There were some surprises there . None of the FileTable-specific functions and methods mention AlwaysOn , but PathName( mentions it . There is an additional parameter you can specify that matters if you use PathName( in an AlwaysOn availability group environment . Remember that , in addition to FileTable , there have been enhancements to filestream

fcd3c685193cef58db2b7c08041015b8 SQL Server Journey with SQL Authority 2012-01-17T01:30:24

Year 2011 was a year of learning and opportunity for me. My recent book, SQL Server Interview Questions and Answers, has received such overwhelming love and support from all of you. While writing the book, I had two simple goals: (1) Master the Basics and (2) Ignite Learning. There was a constant request from the Community to take the learning of these books to [...]

dcdd9ec3be5141a032f46e544e6c5856 Simple Talk RSS Feed 2012-01-17T00:00:00

The relational model was devised long before computer hardware was able to deliver an RDBMS that could deliver a fully normalized database with no performance deficit. Now, with reliable SSDs falling in price, we can reap the benefits, instead of getting distracted by NOSQL with its doubtful compromise of 'eventual consistency'.

707561b46fa8ff9847238faea1fb6403 Bob Beauchemin's Blog 2012-01-16T21:06:00

: Home Syndication Log in SQL Server 2012 FileTables in T-SQL part 3 : hierarchyid methods So finally , we get to using FileTable's path_locator column with the methods of hierarchyid . To pick up where we left off remember that hierarchyid has a method named GetLevel( Given the following directory structure in the FileTable's share : File1.txt File2.txt SQLFiles SubdirFile1.txt SubdirFile2.txt I have a few more levels of subdirectory here , but hopefully , you get the idea . Issuing the query SELECT path_locator.GetLevel( as Level , Name FROM dbo.Documents show , unsurprisingly , File1.txt , File2.txt , and SQLFiles directory at level 1, and the subdirectory files at level 2. So to be sure we're getting the right SQLFiles directory , we could change that query in the previous blog entry

2ae25b26f9f7732922c172cd8808df3e Bob Beauchemin's Blog 2012-01-16T16:00:00

: Home Syndication Log in SQL Server 2012 FileTables in T-SQL part 2 : new rows So the functions methods that I wrote about in previous post are needed because FileTables don't store the UNC path name of the file , they store the path_locator as a hierarchyid data type . Wonder what encoding scheme they're using . Let's see , by doing SELECT path_locator.ToString( Name FROM dbo.Documents We get hierarchyid strings that look like this : 192992825631153.73945086322524.2119705196 Turns out that the encoding scheme involves newid( as you can see by looking at the definition for the default constraint for the path_locator column . It looks like this : convert(hierarchyid , convert(varchar(20 convert(bigint , substring(convert(binary(16 newid( 1, 6 convert(varchar(20 convert(bigint ,

7b06c6d140e906374fcf497529a6eb7b Bob Beauchemin's Blog 2012-01-16T06:17:00

: Home Syndication Log in SQL Server 2012 FileTables in T-SQL part 1 : functions and methods I've been working with the SQL Server 2012 FileTable feature lately . Besides learning to appreciate the esoteric features of the NTFS file system and SMB protocol , only some of which are supported by FileTables , I've been trying to work with FileTables in SQL Server using T-SQL . This turns out to be an interesting exercise , especially if you're trying to brush up on your skills with the hierarchyid data type . It turns out that a FileTable is just like a normal SQL Server table with a filestream varbinary(max column named , unsurprisingly , file_stream It uses computed columns and constraints rather extensively . Behind the scenes , SQL Server functions as a Win32 namespace owner and exposes a

16a427c9067a3bb83322606c6102f403 Bob Beauchemin's Blog 2012-01-12T07:17:00

Just confirmed that I'll be speaking at TechDays 2012 NL in Den Haag. I'll be speaking n Feb 16th and 17th, and 'm really looking forward to it. I'll be doing some talks on SQL Server 2012 and SQL Azure Database features including T-SQL improvements, filetable/filestream, SQL Azure Federations, and others. It will be nice to catch up with friends, and I hope to see you'all there. Stop by and say hi. @bobbeauch

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