25Mar 2014 by Grant Fritchey 12 Comments

Save Money On Your Training Server

Azure, T-SQL
You can spend less money. Some of us are lucky. We work for very large corporations who can easily set aside a spare desktop or even space on a rack for a server on which we can train. Others of us are not as lucky. We work for smaller organizations that have to be more careful with their money. Not only do we not get the extra machine to train on, but our laptops could be weak things that can't run two or more VMs. In this case, how can you go about learning stuff? Spend your own money? Sure, it's an option. There are some very cheap servers available out there that won't cost you even $1000 dollars to set up. And for pretty cheap you can buy some…
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11Sep 2013 by Grant Fritchey 2 Comments

Execution Plan Cost Estimates

SQL Server, T-SQL
It's been emphasized over and over that the costs of operations within an execution plan, and the estimated costs of the plan themselves are, in fact, estimates. But it goes further than that. The estimated values are based on statistics, or the lack thereof. Statistics themselves are also estimates. This means that the costs you're seeing are extrapolations based on extrapolations. So, you should just ignore those values and move on, right? Wrong. In order to understand how the optimizer is choosing to put together an execution plan for your query so that you can use that understanding to then make intelligent choices as to modifying the query or the structure of your database, you must use the values you have at hand. However, you must also understand where and…
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18Apr 2011 by Grant Fritchey 7 Comments

SQL Azure Cost

Azure
We’ve all heard the scary stories. A developer starts testing Azure and then suddenly gets a thousand dollar bill on their credit card. The whole idea behind Azure works of the premise that you are not paying for the infrastructure. Instead of buying servers and disks and racks and switches and routers, you just pay for access and storage. It’s a great model. That model is  especially applicable to small businesses that just can’t  afford the outlay, or to a larger company that wants to perform cheap experiments, or any number of other places where purchasing and maintaining hardware just doesn’t make sense. But what are the costs? That’s a little tricky to answer, truth be told. SQL Azure is charged a monthly fee based on the size and number…
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