03Sep 2009 by Grant Fritchey 1 Comment

Debuting: Beginning SQL Server 2008 Administration

Uncategorized
The new book is up on Amazon. I only worked on three chapters of Rob Walter's new book and that was after begging to only work on two, so I can't take much credit for the effort that went into this book. However, thanks to our editor Jonathan Gennick, I was privileged to work with Rob & Carmen, if pretty indirectly. I know I mentioned the book before when it was put up on the Apress web site, but this is Amazon. Once it's up on Amazon, it's real.
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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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18Dec 2008 by Grant Fritchey 15 Comments

Profiler Research

SQL Server
A question came up on SQL Server Central as to why or how Profiler could bring down the production server.  I was aware of the fact that Profiler caused problems and that's why you should always use a server-side trace on production systems. Duh! Of course.... But why? I didn't have an answer. I just "knew" what everyone told me. So I set out to do some research. Initially I hit my favorite source of information on SQL Server (and it should be yours too) the Books Online. Here is what I was reading on the architecture of Profiler. Good, but not enough. I still want more information, so I've gone out a'wanderin' through the interwebs. First, Linchi Shea has this great set of tests comparing Profiler to server side…
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