05Oct 2011 by Grant Fritchey 1 Comment

Extended Events and Performance Tuning Knowledge

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I’m working on updating my book, Query Performance Tuning Distilled, so that it reflects the new things available in SQL Server vNext:Denali. I’m going through the first chapters that are all about gathering information about your systems. Performance tuning is all about building up knowledge of how the system is working in order to understand what you need to change in order to improve it. I’m surprised by how much hasn’t changed. But some of the changes are fundamental and huge. Let’s talk huge. Extended Events is huge. Extended Events came out in SQL Server 2008, but very few people, myself included, paid much attention. Those who did found the implementation awkward and confusing. Only a few people persevered enough to discover just how powerful and amazing these things are.…
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10Aug 2011 by Grant Fritchey 1 Comment

Denali & CTP 3

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I have Denali installed on a virtual machine on my laptop and I’m working through evaluating it. Actually, I’m working on writing two books using it as the source for the books. But it’s something of a slog, figuring out what’s new, finding out how the new stuff works, seeing if the old stuff broke. Microsoft just released a new guide for doing Denali evals. It’s worth checking out. It might help you short-circuit that discovery process just a little.
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15Nov 2010 by Grant Fritchey 4 Comments

Switching Off Parameter Sniffing

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Or, another way to put it, in most cases, shooting yourself in the foot. I was not aware that the cumulative update for SQL Server 2008 back in June included a switch that allows you to turn parameter sniffing off within SQL Server. Thanks to Kendra Little (blog|twitter) for letting me know about it (although she let me know by "stumping the chump" during my lightening talk at the Summit, thanks Kendra!). When I first saw the switch, I thought about the places where switching off parameter sniffing could be helpful. But, as I thought about it, the more I realized that this was an extremely dangerous switch. Why? Because, most people only ever hear about parameter sniffing when they run into a problem. Someone says "Parameter sniffing" and you see people cringe.…
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03Nov 2010 by Grant Fritchey 1 Comment

SQLServerPedia Award Votes

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This is just another reminder to please vote for my blog post on using PowerShell Remoting with SQL Server. It's a post I'm proud of. Also, I think that Gail Shaw (blog|twitter) is one heck of a great blogger. She has multiple posts in several categories. She's extremely deserving of your vote. She might even get the most votes overall, another thing I think she deserves. I've learned tons and tons from all the information she puts out there. The least she deserves is a little chunk of plexiglass for all that hard work. So vote for all her posts.
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01Nov 2010 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

SQLServerPedia Awards

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Right, I said I wouldn't compete, but I can't help pointing out that I'm pretty proud of this particular blog post that is in the Management and Automation category.  I thinki the number one tool for automation of administration of SQL Server, and pretty much all of Microsoft's server technologies, is PowerShell. Knowing how to execute scripts on multiple servers, asynchronously, is extremely important to a successful administration automation effort. So, please, despite what I said before, consider voting for PowerShell Remoting with SQL Server.
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01Nov 2010 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

More Voting

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As if the US Election and SQL Rally voting were not enough (and have you voted yet for the SQL Rally Pre cons? Polls close tomorrow at 8PM), I just found out that SQLServerPedia is holding an awards vote. You only have a week, so get on over there and vote. There are a ton of categories and some really excellent blog posts to choose from. Yes, I have a post in there, but in this instance, I am not asking for your vote and won't provide a link. All of those bloggers, many of whom I know personally, put in extra work to get that information out to you. They all deserve your vote. That is a collection of extremely hard working, smart people, that I learn a lot…
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28Oct 2010 by Grant Fritchey 2 Comments

Writing Opportunities

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Are you looking for opportunities to show off your elite writing skills and consumate SQL Server knowledge? Want a chance to build up the resume a bit? Are you like me and you have a hard time thinking of ideas to write about? I've got a solution for you. There's a new forum over on SQL Server Central that is all about requests for articles. It's mostly small stuff, easy one-page articles, a bit more than a blog post but a bit less than a full blown multi-page drill down. Also, if you have ideas for articles that you'd like to see someone write up, you can post them there. You should read the rules about the forum, which aren't complicated, and then dive in.
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26Oct 2010 by Grant Fritchey 1 Comment

SQL Rally: One Day on Query Performance Tuning

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The SQLRally, a new PASS initiative taking place in the spring, is going to be a community driven event. This includes selection of the pre-convention (precon) paid presentations through a voting process. I have a session called Query Performance Tuning, Start to Finish. It's a one day session on everything about tuning queries. I won't republish the abstract and bore the heck out of you, but I will list the 5 skills I think you'll take away with you if you attend (after voting for me): The ability to collect performance metrics on your servers as part of an overall query tuning methodology The ability to generate, read, and understand execution plans from multiple sources in support of troubleshooting poorly performance queries An understanding of how the optimizer works in support…
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