09Jan 2013 by Grant Fritchey 5 Comments

Plans for 2013

Professional Development
I have lists. Lots of lists. I even have them in different locations sometimes. Some of them are carefully written down in my notebook, others are typed into OneNote and I've been experimenting with Remember the Milk and Trello (Trello is winning). These lists include ideas for presentations, blogs, articles. Notes from sessions I've attended or meetings. Lots and lots of plans and ideas and all that sort of stuff. I try to keep it organized, but sometimes it runs away from me. However, I find writing things down helps me to keep things organized. Between very carefully scheduling out my calendar and all these notes, I only occasionally completely drop the ball. One ball I dropped was coming up with some goals, some plans, for 2012. I just plowed…
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07Jan 2013 by Grant Fritchey 1 Comment

Statistics Update Clarification

T-SQL
By default statistics are created automatically within SQL Server. And, by default, these stats are updated automatically based on a set of triggers. The triggers are defined as If 0 rows - Any data added leads to a statistics update If < 500 rows - 500 rows added causes a stats update If > 500 rows - 500 rows + 20% of the number of rows causes a stats update (unless you enable a traceflag in 2012 in which case you get a proportional value instead of 20%). There are some exceptions for temporary tables and some variations for filtered statistics and filtered indexes, but you get the idea. I was writing an article on statistics in preparation for another Oracle/SQL Server discussion (on, you guessed it, statistics) and I…
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03Jan 2013 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

SQLBits Public Sessions

SQL Server
If you're over in the UK, or close to it, you've probably heard of SQL Bits even if you haven't attended. If you're across the pond here in the US or somewhere else you may have heard of SQL Bits, but few of you have gone. Well, let me tell you, from everything I've heard, this is a community event you want to find your way to. So, I'm trying. This is my first time submitting to this outstanding event and I really want to go. But, in order to make the cut, I need your help. They base who presents on community feedback. This means you go over and vote. You'll have to have a SQL Bits login, but if you're even thinking about attending you're going to have…
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12Dec 2012 by Grant Fritchey 2 Comments

The Surface Meta-App

Surface
Just a quick little blog post about one more app you're going to want to track down for your Surface. Great Windows Apps. Why do you need this? Well, how to put this, the Store, looks nice. But it doesn't work terribly well. Trying to see the top rated apps, or looking for new apps, you can get different results at different times and I find it quite frustrating. But, Great Windows Apps is running some sort of queries or something against the Store and displaying the information in a much more meaningful, and quite accurate, representation of the apps. It's just good.
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06Dec 2012 by Grant Fritchey 9 Comments

Microsoft Surface: Top Apps… So Far

Surface
After living with the Surface for a month and trying hard to make it work as a tool for production, not just consumption, I feel like I've got a handle on this thing. There are several that are built in that I'm using all the time like Word, Mail, Internet Explorer, OneNote, Music and Video. But there are a few others that you need to know about if you're looking to get more functionality out of your Surface. One note, I tried to find links to the Windows Store for all the apps, but I can't seem to do that, or at least I couldn't find how to do it. Here's the list: Tweetro: This is the single best Twitter app that I've tried so far. It functions as I…
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05Dec 2012 by Grant Fritchey 11 Comments

Experimenting with Social Media

Professional Development
After multiple talks with Jason Strate (blog|twitter) and Denny Cherry (blog|twitter) about how they are working on automating more of their blogging and social media interactions, I'm going down that road... a little ways. The first thing that I'm trying out is Pocket. It's a way to capture web sites that you want to read later. You don't want to have to try to manage book marks in your browser. They all suck (and Google Chrome on the Mac sucks even worse) in this task. So this app lets you quickly mark a site and tag it for reading later. Further, you have an account that you can access from multiple devices. I'm already trying out two different readers that will work with Pocket on the Surface and I already…
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03Dec 2012 by Grant Fritchey 6 Comments

HDInsight, Finally

Azure, HDInsight
See this: That's right. The install worked. All I had to do was get a completely clean server set up. No domain controller. Now to get my learn on. Microsoft has a web site with a number of introductory samples. I'll start there and work through them. The very first example gets me set up with some data that it builds by running a Powershell script, importdata.ps1. But I'm not going to just blindly follow along. I want to see what the heck is happening so I can start understanding this stuff. By the way, thank you Microsoft for making the samples in PowerShell and not forcing me to relearn Python or something else. That would have been frustrating. The script is really simple. It has two scenarios you can…
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30Nov 2012 by Grant Fritchey 2 Comments

Sharing the Love

SQL Server, T-SQL
Just a few blog posts that you ought to go and read. First up, Tom LaRock maintains a listing of SQL bloggers split up into various cleverly named groups to show you where to go to get good information. This really is an excellent collection of bloggers. It's the people I go to when I need information. Some of them are better resources than the Books Online when they post something. Personally, I've made the list for the last several years, but Tom has decided that I'm worth of elevation, so I've gone from the Model database to the Master database. Thanks Tom. One blog that's not on Tom's list is Tom's blog. You should be reading that regularly too. And congratulations to Tom again on making MCM. Next, one…
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29Nov 2012 by Grant Fritchey 4 Comments

HDInsight: Trying again

Misc
And I thought this would be so easy. Latest attempt. I just did an uninstall of HDInsight. Then I found all the Hadoop folders on the drive and removed them. I validated that there were no services left running or anything else that might interfere with a fresh install. Then, I rebooted the server (have you tried turning it off and on again?). After all that, I tried rerunning the HDInsight Community Preview. This time I ran it as an administrator on the system, even though I already am logged in as one. Paranoia at every step is my new approach since there have been no errors until I try to turn the silly thing on. And the install went perfectly. I can see two folders, Hadoop and HadoopFeaturePackSetup. Last…
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28Nov 2012 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

HDInsight: First Pass

Azure
I installed HDInsight with no errors. The install is so brain-dead, I couldn't see how there could be errors. But, I decided to fire up the service to start playing with it. That's when I hit the errors. First up, I was getting logon errors for the Hadoop service itself. I tried resolving them manually, but was digging a hole. So, I uninstalled, and reinstalled, figuring I had missed an error message somewhere along the line. After this install, I didn't get logon errors. Instead I got internal errors. Some more investigation and it appears that the service was marked for deletion. The uninstall worked, but somehow wasn't complete. Yay! So, I did another uninstall after rebooting the server. Install #4 coming up.  And we're back to logon errors. Specifically:…
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