03Aug 2009 by Grant Fritchey 5 Comments

24 Hours of PASS

PASS
I'm fairly certain Jack Bauer isn't involved with this new initiative from PASS. Just as I'm also certain I won't be the only person to invoke 24 while referring to 24 Hours of PASS. But even without Jack Bauer, I'm on the edge of my seat. 24 different sessions by top names in the industry from all around the world. I wonder if I can do this without sleep? Probably not. I'll still being trying to attend as many of these as I can work in. I'm really looking forward to it.  People you want to hear are going to be there. Jessica Moss is going to talk about Reporting Services. Adam Machanic is going to introduce CLR. Gail Shaw will be presenting (at something like 2:oh my flipping god…
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01Aug 2009 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

Active August #1

Misc
I like to blog about technical topics and community, not personal stuff. However, this is a community post. A number of active SQL Server DBA's & Developers on Twitter have decided to make August a self-help, support-group month for eating well and being active, Active August. I'm taking part. I'll be posting updates on my weight and general activity once a week. Today, I start with a weight of 194.5.  I went to sword class this morning and spent almost three hours outside splitting wood (with a splitter, I don't have to use the maul these days).
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31Jul 2009 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

PASS & SQL Bloggers

PASS
PASS is trying to find better ways to reach out to SQL Bloggers. They're going to experiment with taking advantage of the new subgroup features offered by LinkedIn. Membership to the subgroup will come fromthose currently listed in the PASS blog directory. If you're looking to get into a tighter, more direct, communication with the PASS organization, be sure you've got a LinkedIn account and that you get your blog listed on the PASS web site (requirements are pretty simple, blog regularly about SQL Server topics).
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31Jul 2009 by Grant Fritchey 13 Comments

No really. When did this statement start?

SQL Server
I thought I had an interesting answer to the question. Unfortunately Adam Machanic, who has been working in this specific area quite a bit longer than I have, and, let's face it, is a bit smarter, pointed out (in the comments) the possibility that I didn't have this quite right. I ran all his tests and sure enough, it wasn't working the same way that I saw it work. First, I tried modifying his query so that it ran the SELECT statements from the DMV's between the operations, but this didn't change the results, start_time and last_request_start_time were the same. From a scientific stand-point, if no one can replicate your results, the experiment failed. So I went back and tried again. To be sure I got things right and wasn't, somehow,…
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28Jul 2009 by Grant Fritchey 7 Comments

When did this statement start?

SQL Server, T-SQL
UPDATE: This post is incorrect. Adam nailed it in the comments. I explain my mistake here. A question came up over at SQL Server Central where someone was wondering if it was possible to know when a given statement within a batch started. Immediately I thought, oh yeah, that's easy, use the sys.dm_exec_requests dynamic management view (DMV). Done. Wrong. The original poster pointed out that I had assumed that the values present in the DMV represented statement level values, but they show the batch. While the DMV shows a start_time, that time is the start of the current batch, not the statement within the batch. Now the question was, where else might I get this data? I next tried sys.dm_exec_sessions because it has the last_request_start_time value. Sure enough this worked. Don't…
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24Jul 2009 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

Attache/Brief Case Review

Misc
Steve Jones, through a series of comments, emails, blackmail, back-alley deals & tons of whining, agreed to let me review a brief case, the Maxpedition Hard Use Gear Aggressor Attache. The review is up over at SQL Server Central and a video I made of the bag should be up shortly. I love Maxpedition products, even if the names (Agressor, come on) can be a bit off-putting. The products are very well designed and extremely well built. They're worth your time & money.
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21Jul 2009 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

Conversations

PASS
Do you know how to start a conversation or how to join one? I usually wait for a pause and then blurt out whatever point I thought was missed, missing, or insufficiently covered. In other words, don't come to me for advice. The fact of the matter is, while the legend of misanthropic, barely washed, hardly lucid, but frighteningly competent IT personnel is alive and strong, in reality, we need to speak to each other, our peers, and worse yet, the business people. Developing social skills is a must. Further, with the economy being what it is (and looks to be for some time to come) you probably need to put those social skills to work building up a network, people you can help and, hopefully never needed, can help…
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20Jul 2009 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

MS Field Engineer’s on Performance Troubleshooting

SQL Server, T-SQL
Do you want to get a glimpse into how the Microsoft Field Engineers would go about troubleshooting performance issues on your server? Then go and read this blog entry by Denzil Ribeiro. Not only is this an excellent how-to on troubleshooting performance problems, but Mr. Ribeiro provides multiple links that describe the concepts he's dealing with further, making it a great piece of documentation. The MS Field Engineer blog is not terribly active, but what gets posted there is worth reading. If you don't have it on your feed list, you should.
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17Jul 2009 by Grant Fritchey 15 Comments

Execution Plan Compile Termination

SQL Server, T-SQL
Recently I've been seeing a lot of people with bad execution plans, desperately trying to tune them, but they were unable to explain why they had such bad plans. More often than no these were larger queries, with a number of derived tables, CTE's, CROSS APPLY, etc. In most cases the statistics appeared to be fine (this is usually checked by comparing estimated & actual rows within the operations in the execution plan) and the plans themselves didn't look crazy, but the execution plans were flat out, not good. If you're looking at a plan and it doesn't make much sense, one option that most people don't check... SQL Server didn't have enough time to complete optimization. The optimizer is a pretty amazing bit of code. The scary volume of…
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