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by KKline via Kevin Kline on 6/23/2009 2:19:00 PM
It’s interesting to me that old and inaccurate performance tuning recommendations seem to have a life of their own. In some ways, old performance tuning recommendations are like the Undead from some kind of cheesy, 1970’s zombie movie – no matter how...(read more) ...
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by KKline via Kevin Kline on 6/9/2009 3:53:00 PM
Hello from Vancouver, BC! I'm enjoying the proceedings at the annual DevTeach conference and looking forward to some great sessions today. I was recently given the privilege to tech review a new book put out by Manning Publications, written by Rod Colledge, called SQL Server 2008 Administration in Action. I liked the book so much that I was thrilled to be given the chance to write the forward for the book. Let me assure you that this admin book is unlike any other admin book fo ...
by KKline via Kevin Kline on 5/13/2009 5:04:00 PM
You've probably heard by now that Microsoft just announced at TechEd 2009 the next release of SQL Server, called SQL Server 2008 R2, will have a focused set of features around BI self-service and some enhancements in multi-server management. SQLMag has a nice summary here: http://www.sqlmag.com/Article/ArticleID/102089/102089.html. These features implement some very nice increments in functionality across the board, while continuing to advance SQL Server's lead in the BI space. Howev ...
by KKline via Kevin Kline on 5/6/2009 6:24:00 PM
"A spokesperson for Microsoft said that the problem was not bandwidth but that its SQL Server database had reached excessive fragmentation levels caused by the tremendous surge of queries". Read about it here: http://www.itnews.com.au/News/102445,windows-7-rc-download-crashes.aspx and also here: http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=910 Why didn't anyone involved bother to think thru the fact that competitors and various elements of anti-Microsoft factions can make ...
by KKline via Kevin Kline on 4/30/2009 6:05:00 PM
My editor at O'Reilly & Associates sent me an email the other day. It read "I'm pleased to tell you that SQL in a Nutshell will be one of 19 titles submitted to Apple by early next week. It may take up to 3 weeks after that for them to appear." From what I understand, it might cost anywhere from a few cents to $4.99. That's an awesome price, considering the print edition is within spittin' distance of $50.00. And, in my humble opinion, it's a price that very nearly co ...
by KKline via Kevin Kline on 4/21/2009 8:13:00 PM
The root of this blog post is witnessing one too many DBAs, either through direct action or indirectly by failing to act, damage or destroy the very databases they are charged with protecting. In a sense, DBAs are the guardians of an extremely valuable corporate asset - its data. But a large number of DBAs, while responsible for databases, have no idea how to be a proactive guardian of that data. And, in my opinion, that is a moral and ethical breach more than it is a technical ...
by KKline via Kevin Kline on 4/7/2009 9:19:00 PM
I like to collect useful database administration queries that leverage the SQL Server 2005 and 2008 DMVs. Heck, I'm still interested in SQL Server 2000 queries too. I thought I'd make my search public so that a) you can share your favorite queries here or great reference queries written by others and publicly posted on the Internet, and b) everyone can benefit from this collaborative approach to DMV queries. If you're aware of collections of scripts, for example like ...
by KKline via Kevin Kline on 4/1/2009 3:18:00 AM
Looking to make some great, at-your-desk training even more affordable? Use my ViP code for the SSWUG vConference, SPVKKLSP09, to get an extra $10 off the conference on top of any other discounts given (such as early bird or alumni). Here's the conference URL: http://www.vconferenceonline.com/upcoming.asp?id=111. And here are 6 Reasons to Attend SSWUG's Ultimate vConference This Spring: 1. No planes, no trains and definitely no automobiles. 2. Thirteen simultaneous tracks (wh ...
by KKline via Kevin Kline on 3/13/2009 5:23:00 PM
Brent Ozar and I had an interview with Jeff James over at SQL Server Magazine. The topic was virtualization, where Brent and I were able to riff extensively on the topic. I encourage you to take a look here. And if you haven't already checked it out, look at Brent's excellent blog. Here's a good place to start: http://www.brentozar.com/archive/2009/02/sql-server-and-cloud-links-for-the-week-14/. Enjoy! -Kev Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | ...
by KKline via Kevin Kline on 3/10/2009 9:47:00 PM
I was recently tagged by Chris Shaw, in his blog post Things You Know Now, with the thread started by Michelle Ufford (aka the SQLFool), in her blog post also entitled Things You Know Now. In the original thread, Michelle asks "It doesn't have to be DBA skills, but what do you wish you knew when you were starting?" Of course, I wish I knew the top and bottom value of a lot of stocks years before anyone else did. That'd make Kevin a very wealthy dude. It would als ...
by KKline via Kevin Kline on 3/7/2009 8:54:00 PM
Check out my new interview conducted by Steven Wynkoop over at http://www.sswug.org/media/. We talk about a number of topics, such as some of the latest pains we’re seeing in the market and one of my biggest personal pet peeves on SQL Server. Enjoy! -Kevin P.S. For some reason, it looks like I’m striking a “Captain Morgan” pose. But I’m actually sitting on a bar stool with my right foot on the higher rung and left foot on the lower rung. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it ...
by KKline via Kevin Kline on 2/25/2009 3:28:00 AM
I had the pleasure of speaking with SQL Server MVP, Denis Gobo, about my newest book, SQL in a Nutshell 3rd Edition. In the interview, we discuss the state of database industry, ANSI SQL, and other related questions. Check out Denis' interview (and his fine blog) at http://tinyurl.com/bs5wea. Thanks, -Kevin Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it! ...
by KKline via Kevin Kline on 2/13/2009 4:36:00 PM
Just in case you have too much time in your day, why don't you make sure that you're following all of the best blogs out there in the ether. This list is all of the SQL Server MVPs that I'm aware of. If you know of other worthy blogs, perhaps by non-MVPs, I'd love to hear about them! Aaron Bertrand http://sqlblog.com/blogs/aaron_bertrand/default.aspx Adam Machanic http://sqlblog.com/blogs/adam_machanic Adrian Downes http://adriandownes.blogspot.com Alan Koo http:/ ...
by KKline via Kevin Kline on 2/3/2009 1:35:00 AM
Microsoft SQL Server has been advancing technologically on every front with each new release. Having spent five years as an Oracle professional (I wrote my first technical book about Oracle) before moving to SQL Server in 1995, I spent a lot of time explaining and sometimes apologizing for the technical limitations in SQL Server when compared to Oracle. With SQL Server 2005, Microsoft finally had a product that required no apologies. This was a product that could scale to multi ...
by KKline via Kevin Kline on 1/21/2009 5:10:00 PM
If you haven't started to pay attention to the social networking scene for SQL Server, you're missing out. So here's a very quick primer on how to get up to speed. First of all, the Professional Association for SQL Server has a new PASSport program that might be all you need or want, especially if you're not too interested in signing up with other social networks. The PASSport program enables you to build a nifty profile describing your interests and enabling connections with other S ...
by KKline via Kevin Kline on 12/23/2008 7:49:00 PM
There’s been a lot of positive press for LINQ, such as the article about LINQ by Mike Otey at http://www.sqlmag.com/Article/ArticleID/48759/sql_server_48759.html. You can also find lots of glowing reviews and info about LINQ by Troy Magennis at http://blog.aspiring-technology.com/. I've been trying to figure out exactly how I feel about LINQ, along with several other developer-oriented technologies that Microsoft has launched over the years, such as CLR. Ambivalence is the em ...
by KKline via Kevin Kline on 12/16/2008 8:50:00 PM
...Of course, the problem is my answers aren't always the best. Anyway, as I travel around and speak to SQL Server user groups, I always get a handful of questions to follow up. Here's a smattering of such questions and their answers. Q: Does NOLOCK affect lock escalation? A: Nope. Lock escalation is now hard-coded into engine. We used to be able to tune lock escalation ourselves back in the v7.0 and earlier days, but that's been taken away. Incidentally, the lock escalat ...
by KKline via Kevin Kline on 12/14/2008 11:16:00 PM
I recently had the enormous good fortune to broker a conversation between PSS uber-engineer, Robert “Bob” Dorr and Jose Fortuny. (If memory serves me, Bob is no longer in PSS and is now a member of the SQL Server development team. So I especially appreciate Bob’s willingness to help out on something that is outside of his core job.) Jose was finding that testing SQLIOSIM was pretty easy. The hard part was interpreting the results that you get from the tool. B ...
by KKline via Kevin Kline on 12/1/2008 6:22:00 PM
Reading up on my notes today, I found an interesting post by Cristian Lefter that I thought I'd share. Cristian originally found this on a CTP version of SQL2008, but it should still apply. In Cristian's words: I was playing with the new options to track deprecated features in SQL Server 2008. I launched a Profiler and I was about to run SELECT DATABASEPROPERTY('master','IsAutoShrink'); Before I had the time to press Run, an event from Profiler itself w ...
by KKline via Kevin Kline on 11/5/2008 7:12:00 PM
If you've been around a while, you tend to do things the way you first learned how to do them. This can turn you into an "old timer" whose oblivious to new and better ways to do things that have appeared in the newer releases of the technology. Take measuring log space, for example. If I wanted to find out how much log space has been utilized, I would dash off a DBCC SQLPERF(LOGSPACE) statement. But SQLPERF(LOGSPACE) only shows used/free space and not much more. I ...
by KKline via Kevin Kline on 10/20/2008 9:43:00 PM
Just representing for my crew on this blog posting. It’s a bit old, but it’s a very valuable bit of info that I liked a lot. Check out the half hour webcast, CS Techcast 18: Database Testing for the Developer's Soul, featuring Andy Leonard, Microsoft MVP and co-author of several books including Professional Software Testing with Visual Studio 2005 Team System: Tools for Software Developers and Test Engineers, and where they talk about the importance of database testing. They ...
by KKline via Kevin Kline on 10/14/2008 4:07:00 PM
It seems like questions always come up about how to monitor memory. But each time the question comes up, it’s slightly different. Here’s a sort of FAQ for memory questions: 1. How can I figure out memory and CPU consumption by database? a. In SQL Server 2005, DMVs are of course the way to go. Pre-SQL Server 2005, you will probably want to use PerfMon. b. Sys.dm_exec_query_stats with sys.dm_exec_sql_text will give per database object stats. Note that th ...
by KKline via Kevin Kline on 10/9/2008 4:53:00 PM
I received a question this morning about whether there are any ways to estimate the memory requirements of executing SSIS packages? In the case of the question, the emailer wanted to know how to do things like find out the data size at the source and at the destination of a data transformation, or how to reckon the memory consumption of a SSIS package of variable size. It turns out there are several good sources of information for this question and for others like it. Fi ...
by KKline via Kevin Kline on 10/9/2008 2:33:00 AM
For some reason, the concept of disk alignment partitioning is not widely known in the SQL Server world and yet it can easily yield between 30-40% better performance in most database applications and much higher performance improvements for ETL applications. (Also for some reason, Exchange people seem to know about this much better than SQL Server people do.) You can see imperical evidence of this performance hit at Linchi Shea's blog here. Now before you begin thinking that this has ...
by KKline via Kevin Kline on 9/23/2008 5:40:00 PM
I had a great time speaking with the large communities of SQL Server users as I traveled about Europe last week and much of this week. I'm always impressed by the skill, intelligence, and creativity of these professionals. And sometimes they raise questions that I think are worth sharing with everyone because they too might've heard the question before or asked it themselves. Here are a few examples. What are your thoughts on these questions? 1. To what extent does compatibilit ...
by KKline via Kevin Kline on 9/16/2008 4:26:00 PM
I always like to stay on top of new and useful websites. Here are a few URLs that were recently brought to my attention that are worth your time. First of all, Jimmy May is a friend of mine who serves as a Senior Performance Consultant for Microsoft on SQL Server projects. I’ve seen a lot of his private content on SQL Server and can testify that it is top-quality information. He’s started blogging, so I think that those private notes of his will start getting wider expos ...
by KKline via Kevin Kline on 9/11/2008 8:39:00 PM
New to Business Intelligence (BI) on the SQL Server platform? Learn about the value of adding BI to your skillset. From the registration page - "Join SQL Server expert Kevin Kline and Managing Director of Solid Quality Mentors, Douglas McDowell, in this webcast to learn what BI functionality is available on SQL Server." Find all the details and register at: http://www.quest.com/events/listdetails.aspx?contentid=7880 Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! ...
by KKline via Kevin Kline on 9/2/2008 9:54:00 PM
Context switching can be hard to understand and measure. As it turns out, you can use the PerfMon counter System >> Context switches/sec to count all of the switches occurring in and managed by SQLOS, regardless of the application(s) where it originated. Note that this counter tracks all context switches UNLESS you’re using lightweight pooling, in which case some context switching may not be counted. Here’s another couple quick PerfMon tips. Still like to look at B ...
by KKline via Kevin Kline on 8/29/2008 10:01:00 PM
Have you ever looked at the Windows Task Manager for a quick read on SQL Server 2005 memory consumption? You can get good information from the Windows Task Manager about SQL Server memory, but you have to know what to look for. When running with AWE memory enabled on a 32-bit system, you may see an unusually low amount of memory in the Windows Task Manager. If AWE is being used, you will probably get a much better idea of how much AWE memory is being consumed by check ...
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