I want to say a few things about database backups that you need to know. Wait a minute, haven’t you written about backups before? Why, yes. Yes I have. Aaand… you’re doing it again because? Have you noticed the shocking number of questions that come up on SQL Server Central and #sqlhelp regarding backups? Have you noticed the incredibly huge number of people who don’t have backups at all? That’s why. To get the word out. Oh, good point. Carry on. Because backups are so easy, people tend to discount them. That is, until they need them. Then, suddenly, they become extremely important. Here’s a suggestion: Make databases important now. Learn how SQL Server backup works. Make sure you have backups on your systems. Make sure you have the appropriate…
And we’re off. We opened with a video of people saying “Connect, Share, Learn†and “This, is Community†Rob Farley & Buck Woody came out with a song about long running queries. [8:20]Wayne Snyder has been working with the PASS organization since 1999. He spoke at the first PASS Summit and he’s been on the board forever. He has finally hit the point as immediate-past president where he has to leave the board. We’ve got a great little thank you for him from all sorts of people. Wayne is a magnificent guy, seriously. If you see him, thank him for his service. [8:28]We have a new executive committee, Bill Graziano as President, WHOOP, Douglas McDowell is Executive Vice-President and Thomas LaRock is VP of Marketing and finally, Rushabh Mehta is…
I’ve put in several abstracts for the 2011 Summit. This year we’re voting for preferred sessions. If you’re interested in any of the ones I’ve listed below, please consider giving me a vote.I was very kindly invited to submit for a spotlight session (for which I am very grateful and humbled, again) so I put two in for that. I also put in for two regular sessions. This year, for the first time I put in not one, but two abstracts for all day pre/post-conference sessions. One of them was put together as a partnership between Gail Shaw (blog|twitter) and myself. I’m excited by that one. I love speaking and I really hope I make the cut. In the interest of sharing, these are the abstracts I’ve submitted: Spotlight: DMOs…
Greetings. Welcome once more to the Miskatonic University branch of SQL University. Does anyone know where to buy some camping equipment, cheap? I’ve been tagged to go an expedition to Antarctica and I need some cold weather gear a bit more substantial than my LL Bean boots. Evidently the last expedition found some caves in some mountains down there. Sounds like the perfect place to get away from all the crazy stuff that goes on here at Miskatonic. I mean, what could happen? Anyway, our last several talks have all been about indexes and indexing. One of the things that we haven’t talked about is how to tell if, how or when your indexes are being used. Starting with SQL Server 2005, and continuing to 2008 and R2, there has…
Welcome, SQL University Students to another extension class here at Miskatonic University, home to the Fighting Cephalopods (GO PODS!). Never mind the stains on the floor, or the walls…or those really nasty ones on the ceiling. There was a… oh what did the dean call it… an incident last week when one of the students had a little accident after reading Die Vermiss Mysteriis one too many times. But we’re not here to talk about arcane tomes and unspeakable horrors today. No, today we’re here to talk about clustered indexes. SQL Server storage is really predicated around the idea of clustered indexes. Don’t believe me? Let’s list a few places that require a clustered index: Partitioning. A table in SQL Azure In order to create XML indexes What about the…
It’s reasonably well known that you can get different execution plans if you change the ANSI connection settings. But the question comes up, fairly often, how do you know what the settings are. It’s actually surprisingly simple. They’re stored right inside the execution plan, but they’re in one of the operators that most people ignore. Heck, I used to ignore this operator. Which operator is it you ask? Let’s find out. Let’s use AdventureWorks2008R2 (because I’m lazy). We’ll call one of the stored procedures there like so: EXEC dbo.uspGetBillOfMaterials @StartProductID = 0, -- int    @CheckDate = '2011-03-10 02:31:39' – datetime If you execute this with “Include Actual Execution Plan†enabled you’re likely to end up with the following execution plan: Don’t worry about the fact that you can’t really…
Ever wonder what you can see in the performance oriented DMOs when stored procedures were encrypted? Me neither. But, I did get that question during my DMO presentation at the PASS Summit. I did not have an answer. I did get an answer from Johan Bijnens (twitter) from the audience, which I repeated without entirely knowing what I was saying. I decided that I ought to actually know the answer to that question, so here’s a little experiment. I'm going to create a simple stored procedure: CREATE PROCEDURE dbo.GetSalesDetails (@SalesOrderId INT) AS SELECT soh.AccountNumber, sod.LineTotal FROM Sales.SalesOrderHeader AS soh JOIN Sales.SalesOrderDetail AS sod ON soh.SalesOrderID = sod.SalesOrderID WHERE soh.SalesOrderID = @SalesOrderID When I create this procedure and run it, you can see the general performance of the query being run…
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.…
Today is Dr. Dewitt. The ballroom, where the keynotes are held, is filled with extra chairs. The Summit organizers expect extra attendance today, and well they should. Dr. Dewitt was amazing last year. I suspect this year will be more of the same. Rick Heiges is introducing the day (waiting for Dr. Dewitt). Lynda Rab is leaving the board. Sad. I started volunteering for the PASS organization working for Lynda. She's great. The new board members are Douglas McDowell, Andy Warren and Allen Kinsel. The spring SQL Rally event was announced. I'll be presenting a full day session on query performance, Query Performance Tuning, Start to Finish. Look for (a lot) more blog posts on this. The Summit next year has been moved to mid-October. WHOOP! This is great because…
Ted Kummert is still talking. For the cloud, of course, they're talking about SQL Azure. Microsoft really is throwing themselves into the cloud, completely. The emphasis is that they offer both a cloud and an on-premises solution. I don't mind saying, I'm still trying to get the full business proposition for an old school, fat, business like the one I work for. What should we be doing with the cloud. I just haven't seen the magic. I see where smaller businesses, or start-ups, or temporary surge capacity for businesses that may have that type of thing can use the cloud, but... traditional work, it just doesn't seem to jive yet. We're going to see some made-up scenarios for how Azure can manage Contoso Bikes. He shows how the report can…