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  • Hill International Wins Oracle Eco-Enterprise Innovation Award

    - by Evelyn Neumayr
    In my last blog entry, I discussed Oracle’s Eco-Enterprise Innovation Award, part of the Oracle Excellence awards. Nominations for this year’s awards are due July 17. These awards are presented to organizations that use Oracle products to reduce their environmental footprint while improving their operational efficiency. One of last year’s winners was Hill International. Engineering News-Record magazine recently ranked Hill as the eighth-largest construction management firm in the United States. Hill International was able to streamline its forecasting and improve its visibility into its construction projects’ productivity and profitability using Oracle Primavera. They also implemented Oracle Hyperion Financial Management to standardize its financial reporting and forecasting processes and support its decision-making. With Oracle, Hill gained visibility into the true productivity of each project and cut its financial reporting cycle time from two weeks to one. The company also used the data generated to support new construction project proposals and determine the profitability of potential projects. Hill International realized significant cost savings and reduced its environmental impact on its US$400 million Comcast Center construction project in Philadelphia by centralizing its data storage, reducing paper usage, and maximizing project efficiency. It also leveraged the increased visibility offered by the Oracle solutions to make more environmentally-sound business decisions regarding on-site demolition, re-use of previous structures, green design of new facilities, procurement, and materials usage. See more about Hill International and the other Eco-Enterprise Innovation award winners here.  

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  • Why hill climbing is called anytime algorithm?

    - by crucified soul
    From wikipedia, Anytime algorithm In computer science an anytime algorithm is an algorithm that can return a valid solution to a problem even if it's interrupted at any time before it ends. The algorithm is expected to find better and better solutions the more time it keeps running. Hill climbing Hill climbing can often produce a better result than other algorithms when the amount of time available to perform a search is limited, such as with real-time systems. It is an anytime algorithm: it can return a valid solution even if it's interrupted at any time before it ends. Hill climbing algorithm can stuck into local optima or ridge, after that even if it runs infinite time, the result won't be any better. Then, why hill climbing is called anytime algorithm?

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  • Storing and analyzing rock climbing difficulty

    - by Zonedabone
    I'm working on a WordPress plugin to manage rock climbing data, and I need to think of a way to store rock climbing grades from all of the different systems in a unified way. There are many different systems, all of which have some numerical system. A comparison of all the systems: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grade_(climbing)#Comparison_tables Is there some unified way that I can store and analyze these, or do I just need to assign numbers to them all and call it a day? My current plan is to save the score type and then assign each score a numerical value, which I can then use to compare and graph them.

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  • Awesome Back to the Future – Hill Valley Mod for Grand Theft Auto IV [Video]

    - by Asian Angel
    What could be better than playing a good round of Grand Theft Auto IV? Playing with a working Delorean time machine with Marty McFly as the driver! Watch as this Delorean tears up the roads in this video from YouTube user Seedyrom34. You can read more about the mod at the YouTube link provided below… Grand Theft Auto IV: Hill Valley – [Back to the Future Mod Showcase] [via Neatorama] HTG Explains: Why Do Hard Drives Show the Wrong Capacity in Windows? Java is Insecure and Awful, It’s Time to Disable It, and Here’s How What Are the Windows A: and B: Drives Used For?

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  • Climbing boxes in box2D

    - by Rothens
    I've just stepped into the world of Box2D with libgdx. I've already made a stack of boxes: They are dropped randomly ontop of each other. What I'd like to achieve is to make a character, that could freely climb on the boxes, (He can grip on the boxes anywhere, not just on the side/top of a box) but his weight affects the stack as well, so the boxes could fall down. My google-fu failed me... Is there any way to make this possible?

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  • Climbing the hacker ladder

    - by cobie
    This is not a question in which I am asking for opinions rather I am asking for first hand experience. I have been programming in python for quite a while and I feel solid enough in python programming. I can come up with algorithms for problems and implement them but I somehow feel I am stuck with remaining an apprentice. What are some first hand experiences on how to climb up the ladder and become better at programming as in learning about browsers security, compilers etc. Personal experiences would be valued in responses.

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  • Windows 7 Climbing the Charts, Fights for Market Share

    Microsoft has to fight with competitors in various industries for market share whether it be in computing video games or portable media devices just to name a few. The story is no different within the cell phone industry either. Within this particular mobile arena the main enemies for Microsoft are RIM Apple and Google Android. Microsoft is lagging a bit among the competition as things currently stand but they hope that will change in the near future.... Transportation Design - AutoCAD Civil 3D Design Road Projects 75% Faster with Automatic Documentation Updates!

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  • Artificial Inteligence library in python

    - by João Portela
    I was wondering if there are any python AI libraries similar to aima-python but for a more recent version of python... and how they are in comparison to aima-python. I was particularly interested in search algorithms such as hill-climbing, simulated annealing, tabu search and genetic algorithms. edit: made the question more clear.

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  • Travelling Salesman Problem

    - by Arjun Vasudevan
    I'm trying to solve the travelling salesman problem using the following algorithms - DFS, Hill Climbing and A*. I could write up a code for solving it using DFS. Can I have some help in solving it using the other 2 algorithms? I searched for it a lot, on the web.

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  • How do I implement collision detection with a sprite walking up a rocky-terrain hill?

    - by detectivecalcite
    I'm working in SDL and have bounding rectangles for collisions set up for each frame of the sprite's animation. However, I recently stumbled upon the issue of putting together collisions for characters walking up and down hills/slopes with irregularly curved or rocky terrain - what's a good way to do collisions for that type of situation? Per-pixel? Loading up the points of the incline and doing player-line collision checking? Should I use bounding rectangles in general or circle collision detection?

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  • Sign of a Good Game

    - by Matt Christian
    (Warning: This post contains spoilers about SILENT HILL 2.  If you haven't played this game, you are dumb) What is one sign of a great game? One of the signs I realized recently is when a game continues to stun and surprise you years and years after you've played and beaten it.  As a major Silent Hill fan, I recently was reminded of Silent Hill 2 and even though see it as one of my favorite Silent Hill games, there are still things I'm learning about it that are neat little additions that add to the atmosphere (atmosphere also makes a great game!). For instance, when you start the game you are given a letter by your wife who has been deceased for years and years.  You are directed to Silent Hill and start treking through hell all by your lonesome (with the exception of a few psychos).  As you continue through the game, pieces of the letter begin to fade and disappear until eventually it is completely non-existent, thus implying the letter was never real and the letter was a delusion you created. Another example is the game's use of imagery the player knows about but might not notice at first.  For me, the most apparent of these was the dress you find near the start when you find the flashlight, which is the same dress you see Mary (your wife) wearing in the flashback sequences.  However, one thing I didn't know was that several deceased bodies you encounter laying around Silent Hill are actually the body of the main character (James) which invokes an idea you've seen that body before but can't pinpoint where... It's amazing to see a game go to such unique lengths to provide a psychological horror game.  Sure, all the dead bodies could be randomly modelled and the dress could be any ol' dress, but just the idea of your brain knowing something deep down but you can't pinpoint it is a really unique idea.  In my opinion, it ties less into subconscious and more into natural tendencies, it taps into the fear hidden inside us all.

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  • Your Day-by-Day Guide to Agile PLM at Oracle OpenWorld 2012

    - by Kerrie Foy
    This year’s Oracle OpenWorld conference is nearly here, and we’re all excited about what we have planned! With five days of activities and customer presenters from market leaders and top innovators like The Coca-Cola Company, Starbucks, JDSU, Facebook, GlobalFoundries, and more, this is an event you don't want to miss. I've compiled this day-by-day guide to help anyone keep track of all the “Product Lifecycle Management and Product Value Chain” sessions and activities at OpenWorld 2012, September 30 – October 4 in San Francisco, California.  Monday, October 1 There are great networking activities on Sunday September 30, but PLM specific sessions start after general conference keynotes on Monday, October 1 at 10:45 a.m. at the InterContinental Hotel in room Telegraph Hill. In fact, most of our sessions this year will be held in this room, which is still close to the conference keynotes in Moscone, but just far enough away to allow some focused networking and discussions.   This first session, 10:45 – 11:45 a.m. is a joint session with the Agile and AutoVue teams, entitled “Streamline PLM Design-to-Manufacturing Processes with AutoVue Visualization Soltuions” featuring presenters from Oracle as well as joint AutoVue and Agile PLM customer GlobalFoundries. In the following 12:15 – 1:15 p.m. slot, there are two sessions to choose from, so if you have a team of representatives attending OpenWorld, you may consider splitting up to catch both of these: a) Our General Session will be held in the InterContinental Hotel Ballroom C, which will cover our complete enterprise PLM strategy, product updates, and roadmaps. It’s our pleasure to feature a customer keynote presentation from Chris Bedi, CIO, and Rajeev Sethi, Director IT Business Engagement, of JDSU. b) A focused session on integrating PLM with Engineering and Supply Chain Systems will be held on the second floor of Moscone West (next to the InterContinental) in room 2022. Join to discover how these types of integrations help companies manage common and integrated design information across all MCAD, ECAD, and software components. After a lunch break and perhaps a visit to the Demogrounds in Moscone West, select from two product roadmap sessions in the next time slot (3:15 – 4:15 p.m.): an Agile 9.3.x session located in the InterContinental’s Ballroom C, and an Agile PLM for Process session located back in the InterContinental’s Telegraph Room. Both sessions will have strong content around each product line’s latest releases, vision, and customer examples. We are very pleased to feature Daniel Soosai of Facebook in the A9 session and Vinnie D’Agostino of The Coca-Cola Company in the PLM for Process session. Afterwards, hang in there for one last session of the day from 4:45 – 5:45 p.m.; it’s an insightful discussion on leveraging Agile PLM as the Foundation for Enterprise Quality Management, and it’s sure to be one of the best. In the Telegraph Room, this session will feature Oracle experts, partner co-presenter David Bartlett from CPG Solutions, and customer co-presenter Thomas Crowe, CIO of PL Developments. Hear their experience around implementing collaborative, integrated solutions to ensure effective knowledge transfer throughout an organization, and how to perform analysis in real time to resolve product quality issues swiftly and efficiently. On Monday evening there will be plenty of industry, product, and partner dinners, so take advantage of all the networking opportunities and catch some great tunes at the 5 day Oracle OpenWorld Music Festival! Tuesday, October 2 Tuesday starts early with a special PLM Networking Brunch, sponsored by several partners, from 8:30 a.m. – 10:30 a.m. at the B Restaurant that sits atop Yerba Buena Gardens. You’ll have the unique opportunity to meet with like-minded industry peers and a PLM partner to discuss a topic of your choosing while enjoying a delicious meal. Registration is required, so to inquire about attending this brunch, please email Terri.Hiskey-AT-oracle.com. After wrapping up your conversations over brunch, head over to the Marriott Marquis in the Nob Hill CD room for a chance to experience the Oracle Product Lifecycle Analytics solution in a Hands-On Lab, open from 10:15 a.m. – 12:45 p.m. Experts will be there to answer your questions. Back in the InterContinental Hotel’s Telegraph room, the session on “Ideation and Requirements Management: Capturing the Voice of the Customer” begins at 11:45 a.m. – 12:45 p.m. This may be the session for you if you’re struggling with challenges like too many repositories of customer needs, requests, and ideas; limited visibility into which ideas are being advanced by customers and field resources; or if you’re unable to leverage internal expertise to expose effort and potential risks. This session will discuss how Agile PLM can help you overcome ideation challenges to deliver the right products to their targeted markets and fulfill customer desires. Next, from 1:15 – 2:15 p.m. join us for a session on Managing Profitable Innovation with Oracle Product Lifecycle Analytics. If you missed the Hands-on Lab, have more questions, or simply want to be inspired by the product’s forward-thinking vision and capabilities, this is a great opportunity to meet the progressive-minded executives behind the application. After this session, it may be a good opportunity to swing by the Demogrounds in Moscone West and visit the Agile PLM demos at exhibit booths #81 for Agile PLM for Discrete Manufacturing, #70 for Agile PLM for Process, and #82 for AutoVue and Agile PLM Enterprise Visualization. Check out the related Supply Chain Management booths close by if you’re interested - here's the map. There’s always lots to see and do around the exhibit area. But don’t forget the last session of the day from 5:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m. in Telegraph Hill on Managing Product Innovation and Compliance in Life Science Companies, a “must-see” if you’re in this industry. Launching innovative products quickly is already a high-stakes challenge, but companies in the life sciences industry face uniquely severe consequences when new products don’t perform or comply as required. In recent years, more and more regulations have become mandatory, and new ones, such as REACH, are currently going into effect for several companies. Customer presenters from pharmaceutical leader Eli Lilly will share how they’ve leveraged Agile PLM to deliver high-quality, innovative products in a fast-paced, heavily regulated market environment. Tuesday evening unwind at the Supply Chain Management Reception from 6:00 – 8:00 p.m. at the premier boutique Roe Nightclub and Lounge, which is located about three blocks down on Howard Street (on the other side of Moscone from the InterContinental Hotel). Registration is required. Click here for the details.   Wednesday, October 3 We have another full line-up on Wednesday, so be ready for an action-packed day. We start with a session at 10:15 – 11:15 a.m. in the Telegraph Room where we have a session on “PLM for Consumer Products: Building an Engine for Quality and Innovation” with featured presenters from Starbucks and partner Kalypso. This is a rare opportunity to learn directly from Starbucks how they instill quality and innovation throughout their organization, products, and processes, leveraging PLM disciplines with strong support from their partner.  If you’re not in the consumer products industry, we recommend attending another session at 10:15 – 11:15 a.m. in Moscone West room 3005: “Eco-Enterprise Innovation Awards and the Business Case for Sustainability” featuring Jeff Henley, Oracle’s Chairman of the Board and Jon Chorley, Chief Sustainability Officer. Oracle will honor select customers with Oracle’s Eco-Enterprise Innovation award, which recognizes customers and their respective partners who rely on Oracle products to support their green business practices to reduce their environmental impact while improving business efficiencies and reducing costs. The awards presentation is followed by a panel discussion with customers and Oracle executives, who describe how these award-winning organizations are embracing environmental initiatives as a central part of their business strategy and how information technology plays a pivotal role. Next at 11:45 a.m. – 12:45 p.m. in Telegraph Hill attend our session devoted to exploring Product Lifecycle Management’s role in Software Lifecycle Management. This is a thought leadership session with Oracle experts in the field on the importance of change management, and we’ll discuss how Oracle has for years leveraged Agile PLM to develop Agile PLM. If software lifecycle management doesn’t apply to your business or you’d rather engage in some lively one-on-one discussions, we also have a “Supply Chain Meet the Experts” session in Moscone West Room 2001A. Product experts, thought leaders and executives will be on hand to discuss your questions/topics, so come prepared. This session tends to fill up fast so try to get in early. At 1:15 – 2:15 p.m. join us back in Telegraph Hill for a session focused on leveraging the Agile Product Portfolio Management application as the Product Development Master Schedule to improve efficiencies, optimize resources, and gain visibility across projects enterprise-wide to improve portfolio profitability. Customer presenters from Broadcom will explain how they’ve leveraged the product to enable a master schedule with enterprise-level, phase-gate program and project collaboration and resource optimization. Again in Telegraph Hill from 3:30 – 4:30 p.m. we have an interesting session with leading semiconductor customer LSI and partner Kalypso on how LSI leveraged Agile PLM to advance from homegrown applications to complete Product Value Chain Management. That type of transition can be challenging, and LSI details how they were able to achieve their goals and the value they gained along the journey – a fascinating account for any company interested in leveraging best practices to innovate their business processes and even end products. Lastly, we’ll wrap up in Telegraph Hill from 5:00 – 6:00 p.m. with a session on “Ensuring New Product Success by Achieving Excellence in New Product Introduction.” This is a cross-industry session, guaranteed to deliver insight in the often elusive practice of creating winning products, and we’re very excited about. According to IDC Manufacturing Insights analyst Joe Barkai, “Product Failures are not necessarily a result of bad ideas…they are a result of suboptimal decisions.” We’ll show you how to wire your business processes to enhance decision-making and maximize product potential. Now, quickly hit your hotel room to freshen up and then catch one of the many complimentary shuttles to the much-anticipated Oracle Customer Appreciation Event on Treasure Island. We have a very exciting show planned – check out what’s in store here. Thursday, October 4 PLM has a light schedule on Thursday this year with just one session, but this again is one of our best sessions on managing the Product Value Chain: at 11:15 a.m – 12:15 p.m.in Telegraph Hill, it’s a customer and partner driven session with Sonoco Products and Deloitte telling their story about how to achieve integrated change control by interfacing Agile PLM with Oracle E-Business Suite. Sonoco Products, a global manufacturer of consumer and industrial packaging materials, with its systems integrator, Deloitte, is doing this by implementing prebuilt integration (Oracle Design-to-Release Integration Pack for Agile Product Lifecycle Management for Process and Oracle Process) to integrate Agile with Oracle Product Hub/Oracle Product Information Management and Oracle E-Business Suite. This session presents a case study of how Sonoco is leveraging this solution to improve data quality and build a framework for stronger master data governance. Even though that ends our PLM line-up at OpenWorld, there will still be many sessions and activities at the conference, so visit the Oracle OpenWorld website to review agendas and build your schedule. And of course, download and bring this guide and the latest version of the Agile PLM Focus-On Document (available soon!). San Francisco is a wonderful city to explore, and we’re glad you’re considering joining the Agile PLM team at Oracle OpenWorld!  I hope to see you there! Follow me before the conference and on site for real-time updates about #OOW12 on Twitter @Kerrie_Foy or @AgilePLM.

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  • how to escape white space in bash loop list

    - by MCS
    I have a bash shell script that loops through all child directories (but not files) of a certain directory. The problem is that some of the directory names contain spaces. Here are the contents of my test directory: $ls -F test Baltimore/ Cherry Hill/ Edison/ New York City/ Philadelphia/ cities.txt And the code that loops through the directories: for f in `find test/* -type d`; do echo $f done Here's the output: test/Baltimore test/Cherry Hill test/Edison test/New York City test/Philadelphia Cherry Hill and New York City are treated as 2 or 3 separate entries. I tried quoting the filenames, like so: for f in `find test/* -type d | sed -e 's/^/\"/' | sed -e 's/$/\"/'`; do echo $f done but to no avail. There's got to be a simple way to do this. Any ideas? The answers below are great. But to make this more complicated - I don't always want to use the directories listed in my test directory. Sometimes I want to pass in the directory names as command-line parameters instead. I took Charles' suggestion of setting the IFS and came up with the following: dirlist="${@}" ( [[ -z "$dirlist" ]] && dirlist=`find test -mindepth 1 -type d` && IFS=$'\n' for d in $dirlist; do echo $d done ) and this works just fine unless there are spaces in the command line arguments (even if those arguments are quoted). For example, calling the script like this: test.sh "Cherry Hill" "New York City" produces the following output: Cherry Hill New York City Again, I know there must be a way to do this - I just don't know what it is...

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  • July, the 31 Days of SQL Server DMO’s – Day 2 (sys.dm_exec_sessions)

    - by Tamarick Hill
      This sys.dm_exec_sessions DMV is another Server-Scoped DMV which returns information for each authenticated session that is running on your SQL Server box. Lets take a look at some of the information that this DMV returns. SELECT * FROM sys.dm_exec_sessions This DMV is very similar to the DMV we reviewed yesterday, sys.dm_exec_requests, and returns some of the same information such as reads, writes, and status for a given session_id (SPID). But this DMV returns additional information such as the Host name of the machine that owns the SPID, the program that is being used to connect to SQL Server, and the Client interface name. In addition to this information, this DMV also provides useful information on session level settings that may be on or off such as quoted identifier, arithabort, ansi padding, ansi nulls, etc. This DMV will also provide information about what specific isolation level the session is executing under and if the default deadlock priority for your SPID has been changed from the default. Lastly, this DMV provides you with an Original Login Name, which comes in handy whenever you have some type of context switching taking place due to an ‘EXECUTE AS’ statement being used and you need to identify the original login that started a session. For more information on this DMV, please see the below Books Online link: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms176013.aspx

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  • July, the 31 Days of SQL Server DMO’s – Day 22 (sys.dm_db_index_physical_stats)

    - by Tamarick Hill
    The sys.dm_db_index_physical_stats Dynamic Management Function is used to return information about the fragmentation levels, page counts, depth, number of levels, record counts, etc. about the indexes on your database instance. One row is returned for each level in a given index, which we will discuss more later. The function takes a total of 5 input parameters which are (1) database_id, (2) object_id, (3) index_id, (4) partition_number, and (5) the mode of the scan level that you would like to run. Let’s use this function with our AdventureWorks2012 database to better illustrate the information it provides. SELECT * FROM sys.dm_db_index_physical_stats(db_id('AdventureWorks2012'), NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL) As you can see from the result set, there is a lot of beneficial information returned from this DMF. The first couple of columns in the result set (database_id, object_id, index_id, partition_number, index_type_desc, alloc_unit_type_desc) are either self-explanatory or have been explained in our previous blog sessions so I will not go into detail about these at this time. The next column in the result set is the index_depth which represents how deep the index goes. For example, If we have a large index that contains 1 root page, 3 intermediate levels, and 1 leaf level, our index depth would be 5. The next column is the index_level which refers to what level (of the depth) a particular row is referring to. Next is probably one of the most beneficial columns in this result set, which is the avg_fragmentation_in_percent. This column shows you how fragmented a particular level of an index may be. Many people use this column within their index maintenance jobs to dynamically determine whether they should do REORG’s or full REBUILD’s of a given index. The fragment count represents the number of fragments in a leaf level while the avg_fragment_size_in_pages represents the number of pages in a fragment. The page_count column tells you how many pages are in a particular index level. From my result set above, you see the the remaining columns all have NULL values. This is because I did not specify a ‘mode’ in my query and as a result it used the ‘LIMITED’ mode by default. The LIMITED mode is meant to be lightweight so it does collect information for every column in the result set. I will re-run my query again using the ‘DETAILED’ mode and you will see we now have results for these rows. SELECT * FROM sys.dm_db_index_physical_stats(db_id('AdventureWorks2012'), NULL, NULL, NULL, ‘DETAILED’)   From the remaining columns, you see we get even more detailed information such as how many records are in a particular index level (record_count). We have a column for ghost_record_count which represents the number of records that have been marked for deletion, but have not physically been removed by the background ghost cleanup process. We later see information on the MIN, MAX, and AVG record size in bytes. The forwarded_record_count column refers to records that have been updated and now no longer fit within the row on the page anymore and thus have to be moved. A forwarded record is left in the original location with a pointer to the new location. The last column in the result set is the compressed_page_count column which tells you how many pages in your index have been compressed. This is a very powerful DMF that returns good information about the current indexes in your system. However, based on the mode you select, it could be a very resource intensive function so be careful with how you use it. For more information on this Dynamic Management Function, please see the below Books Online link: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms188917.aspx Follow me on Twitter @PrimeTimeDBA

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  • July, the 31 Days of SQL Server DMO’s – Day 23 (sys.dm_db_index_usage_stats)

    - by Tamarick Hill
    The sys.dm_db_index_usage_stats Dynamic Management View is used to return usage information about the various indexes on your SQL Server instance. Let’s have a look at this DMV against our AdventureWorks2012 database so we can examine the information returned. SELECT * FROM sys.dm_db_index_usage_stats WHERE database_id = db_id('AdventureWorks2012') The first three columns in the result set represent the database_id, object_id, and index_id of a given row. You can join these columns back to other system tables to extract the actual database, object, and index names. The next four columns are probably the most beneficial columns within this DMV. First, the user_seeks column represents the number of times that a user query caused a seek operation against a particular index. The user_scans column represents how many times a user query caused a scan operation on a particular index. The user_lookups column represents how many times an index was used to perform a lookup operation. The user_updates column refers to how many times an index had to be updated due to a write operation that effected a particular index. The last_user_seek, last_user_scan, last_user_lookup, and last_user_update columns provide you with DATETIME information about when the last user scan, seek, lookup, or update operation was performed. The remaining columns in the result set are the same as the ones we previously discussed, except instead of the various operations being generated from user requests, they are generated from system background requests. This is an extremely useful DMV and one of my favorites when it comes to Index Maintenance. As we all know, indexes are extremely beneficial with improving the performance of your read operations. But indexes do have a downside as well. Indexes slow down the performance of your write operations, and they also require additional resources for storage. For this reason, in my opinion, it is important to regularly analyze the indexes on your system to make sure the indexes you have are being used efficiently. My AdventureWorks2012 database is only used for demonstrating or testing things, so I dont have a lot of meaningful information here, but for a Production system, if you see an index that is never getting any seeks, scans, or lookups, but is constantly getting a ton of updates, it more than likely would be a good candidate for you to consider removing. You would not be getting much benefit from the index, but yet it is incurring a cost on your system due to it constantly having to be updated for your write operations, not to mention the additional storage it is consuming. You should regularly analyze your indexes to ensure you keep your database systems as efficient and lean as possible. One thing to note is that these DMV statistics are reset every time SQL Server is restarted. Therefore it would not be a wise idea to make decisions about removing indexes after a Server Reboot or a cluster roll. If you restart your SQL Server instances frequently, for example if you schedule weekly/monthly cluster rolls, then you may not capture indexes that are being used for weekly/monthly reports that run for business users. And if you remove them, you may have some upset people at your desk on Monday morning. If you would like to begin analyzing your indexes to possibly remove the ones that your system is not using, I would recommend building a process to load this DMV information into a table on scheduled basis, depending on how frequently you perform an operation that would reset these statistics, then you can analyze the data over a period of time to get a more accurate view of what indexes are really being used and which ones or not. For more information about this DMV, please see the below Books Online link: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms188755.aspx Follow me on Twitter @PrimeTimeDBA

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  • July, the 31 Days of SQL Server DMO’s – Day 1 (sys.dm_exec_requests)

    - by Tamarick Hill
    The first DMO that I would like to introduce you to is one of the most common and basic DMV’s out there. I use the term DMV because this DMO is actually a view as opposed to a function. This DMV is server-scoped and it returns information about all requests that are currently executing on your SQL Server instance. To illustrate what this DMV returns, lets take a look at the results. As you can see, this DMV returns a wealth of information about requests occurring on your server. You are able to see the SPID, the start time of a request, current status, and the command the SPID is executing. In addition to this you see columns for sql_handle and plan_handle. These columns (when combined with other DMO’s we will discuss later) can return the actual sql text that is being executed on your server as well as the actual execution plan that is cached and being used. This DMV also returns information about various wait types that may be occurring for your spid. The percent_complete column displays a percentage to completion for certain database actions such as DBCC CheckDB, Database Restores, Rollback’s, etc. In addition to these, you are also able to see the amount of reads, writes, and cpu that the SPID has consumed. You will find this DMV to be one of the primary DMV’s that you use when looking for information about what is occurring on your server.

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  • July, the 31 Days of SQL Server DMO’s - Intro

    - by Tamarick Hill
    DMO’s burst onto the SQL Server scene in 2005 and when they did they unlocked a wealth of information. I’ve became a major fan of DMO’s as they tend to simplify my troubleshooting as well as provide me with valuable information about what is going on within the SQL Server engine. I would recommend that those of you who are not familiar with DMO’s, take the time to really learn more about them. For those of you who may not be familiar with DMO’s, for the month of July, I will be writing about one DMO per day. Don’t get me wrong, I’m no DMO expert or anything like that, but I’ve worked with them enough to feel that I can give you some good information about DMO’s to help you get started with using them. During these blog sessions, I will not be providing you with any complicated queries to solve all of your SQL Server problems that you may or may not have. I will be simply introducing you to various DMO’s and illustrating what type of information they provide. After you learn more about these individually, then you will be able to join whatever DMO’s you need to pull back the information you are seeking. I hope that you all benefit in some form or fashion from my next 31 DMO postings!!! Enjoy!

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  • July, the 31 Days of SQL Server DMO’s – Day 20 (sys.dm_tran_locks)

    - by Tamarick Hill
    The sys.dm_tran_locks DMV is used to return active lock resources on your server. Locking is a mechanism used by SQL Server to protect the integrity of data when you have multiple users that may potentially access the same data at the same time. Let’s run a query against this DMV so we can analyze the results. SELECT * FROM sys.dm_tran_locks As we can see, its a lot of lock information returned from this DMV. I will not go into detail about each of the columns returned, but I will touch on the ones that I feel are the most important. The first column in the output is the resource_type column which tells you the type of lock a particular row represents. It could be a PAGE lock, RID, OBJECT, DATABASE, or several other lock types. The resource_database_id represents the id of the database for a particular lock resource. The resource_lock_partition column represents the ID of a lock partition. When you have a table that is partitioned, locks can be escalated to the partition level before going to a table level lock. The request_mode column gives us information about the type of lock that is being requested. From the screenshots above we see RangeS-S locks which represent a share range lock and IS locks which represent Intent Shared locks. The request_status column displays whether the lock has been granted or whether the lock is waiting to be acquired. The request_session_id  shows the session_id that is requesting the lock. This DMV is the best place to go when you need to identify the exact locks that are being held or pending for individual requests. You might need this information when you are troubleshooting severe blocking or deadlocking problems on your server. For more information on this DMV, please see the below Books Online link: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms190345.aspx Follow me on Twitter @PrimeTimeDBA

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  • July, the 31 Days of SQL Server DMO’s – Day 19 (sys.dm_exec_query_stats)

    - by Tamarick Hill
    The sys.dm_exec_query_stats DMV is one of the most useful DMV’s out there when it comes to performance tuning. If you have been keeping up with this blog series this month, you know that I started out on Day 1 reviewing many of the DMV’s within the ‘exec’ namespace. I’m not sure how I missed this one considering how valuable it is, but hey, they say it’s better late than never right?? On Day 7 and Day 8 we reviewed the sys.dm_exec_procedure_stats and sys.dm_exec_trigger_stats respectively. This sys.dm_exec_query_stats DMV is very similar to these two. As a matter of fact, this DMV will return all of the information you saw in the other two DMV’s, but in addition to that, you can see stats for all queries that have cached execution plans on your server. You can even see stats for statements that are ran Ad-Hoc as long as they are still cached in the buffer pool. To better illustrate this DMV, let have a quick look at it: SELECT * FROM sys.dm_exec_query_stats As you can see, there is a lot of information returned from this DMV. I wont go into detail about each and every one of these columns, but I will touch on a few of them briefly. The first column is the ‘sql_handle’, which if you remember from Day 4 of our blog series, I explained how you can use this column to extract the actual SQL text that was executed. The next columns statement_start_offset and statement_end_offset provide you a way of extracting the exact SQL statement that was executed as part of a batch. The plan_handle column is used to extract the Execution plan that was used, which we talked about during Day 5 of this blog series. Later in the result set, you have columns to identify how many times a particular statement was executed, how much CPU time it used, how many reads/writes it performed, the duration, how many rows were returned, etc. These columns provide you with a solid avenue to begin your performance optimization. The last column I will touch on is the query_plan_hash column. A lot of times when you have Dynamic SQL running on your server, you have similar statements with different parameter values being passed in. Many times these types of statements will get similar execution plans and then a Binary hash value can be generated based on these similar plans. This query plan hash can be used to find the cost of all queries that have similar execution plans and then you can tune based on that plan to improve the performance of all of the individual queries. This is a very powerful way of identifying and tuning Ad-hoc statements that run on your server. As I stated earlier, this sys.dm_exec_query_stats DMV is a very powerful and recommended DMV for performance tuning. You are able to quickly identify statements that are running on your server and analyze their impact on system resources. Using this DMV to track down the biggest performance killers on your server will allow you to make the biggest gains once you focus your tuning efforts on those top offenders. For more information about this DMV, please see the below Books Online link: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms189741.aspx Follow me on Twitter @PrimeTimeDBA

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  • July, the 31 Days of SQL Server DMO’s – Day 27 (sys.dm_db_file_space_usage)

    - by Tamarick Hill
    The sys.dm_db_file_space usage DMV returns information about database file space usage.  This DMV was enhanced for the 2012 version to include 3 additional columns. Let’s query this DMV against our AdventureWorks2012 database and view the results. SELECT * FROM sys.dm_db_file_space_usage The column returned from this DMV are really self-explanatory, but I will give you a description, paraphrased from books online, below. The first three columns returned from this DMV represent the Database, File, and Filegroup for the current database context that executed the DMV query. The next column is the total_page_count which represents the total number of pages in the file. The allocated_extent_page_count represents the total number of pages in all extents that have been allocated. The unallocated_extent_page_count represents the number of pages in the unallocated extents within the file. The version_store_reserved_page_count column represents the number of pages that are allocated to the version store. The user_object_reserved_page_count represents the number of pages allocated for user objects. The internal_object_reserved_page_count represents the number of pages allocated for internal objects.  Lastly is the mixed_extent_page_count which represents the total number of pages that are part of mixed extents. This is a great DMV for retrieving usage space information from your database files. For more information about this DMV, please see the below Books Online link: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms174412.aspx Follow me on Twitter @PrimeTimeDBA

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  • July, the 31 Days of SQL Server DMO’s – Day 21 (sys.dm_db_partition_stats)

    - by Tamarick Hill
    The sys.dm_db_partition_stats DMV returns page count and row count information for each table or index within your database. Lets have a quick look at this DMV so we can review some of the results. **NOTE: I am going to create an ‘ObjectName’ column in our result set so that we can more easily identify tables. SELECT object_name(object_id) ObjectName, * FROM sys.dm_db_partition_stats As stated above, the first column in our result set is an Object name based on the object_id column of this result set. The partition_id column refers to the partition_id of the index in question. Each index will have at least 1 unique partition_id and will have more depending on if the object has been partitioned. The index_id column relates back to the sys.indexes table and uniquely identifies an index on a given object. A value of 0 (zero) in this column would indicate the object is a HEAP and a value of 1 (one) would signify the Clustered Index. Next is the partition_number which would signify the number of the partition for a particular object_id. Since none of my tables in my result set have been partitioned, they all display 1 for the partition_number. Next we have the in_row_data_page_count which tells us the number of data pages used to store in-row data for a given index. The in_row_used_page_count is the number of pages used to store and manage the in-row data. If we look at the first row in the result set, we will see we have 700 for this column and 680 for the previous. This means that just to manage the data (not store it) is requiring 20 pages. The next column in_row_reserved_page_count is how many pages have been reserved, regardless if they are being used or not. The next 2 columns are used for storing LOB (Large Object) data which could be text, image, varchar(max), or varbinary(max) columns. The next two columns, row_overflow, represent pages used for data that exceed the 8,060 byte row size limit for the in-row data pages. The next columns used_page_count and reserved_page_count represent the sum of the in_row, lob, and row_overflow columns discussed earlier. Lastly is a row_count column which displays the number of rows that are in a particular index. This DMV is a very powerful resource for identifying page and row count information. By knowing the page counts for indexes within your database, you are able to easily calculate the size of indexes. For more information on this DMV, please see the below Books Online link: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms187737.aspx Follow me on Twitter @PrimeTimeDBA

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  • July, the 31 Days of SQL Server DMO’s – Day 18 (sys.dm_io_virtual_file_stats)

    - by Tamarick Hill
    The sys.dm_io_virtual_file_stats Dynamic Management Function is used to return IO statistic information about each of your database files on your server. As input parameters, this function takes a database_id and a file_id. If you want to return IO statistic information for all files, you can simply pass in NULL values for both of these. Let’s have a look at this function  and examine its results: SELECT db_name(database_id) DatabaseName, * FROM sys.dm_io_virtual_file_stats(NULL, NULL) The first column in the result set is the DatabaseName which is just a column I created using the db_name() system function and the database_id column from this function. Next we have a file_id which represent the ID for the file, whether it be a data file or transaction log file. The ‘sample_ms’ column represents the total time in milliseconds that the instance has been up and running. Next we have the ‘num_of_reads’, ‘num_of_bytes_read’, and later ‘num_of_writes’, and ‘num_of_bytes_written’. These columns represent the number of reads or writes and number of bytes read or written against a particular file. These columns are beneficial when determining how often a particular file is being accessed. The ‘io_stall_read_ms’ and io_stall_write_ms’ columns each represent the the total time in milliseconds that users have had to wait for reads or writes against a file respectively. The ‘io_stall’ column is the sum of both read and write io stalls. The ‘size_on_disk_bytes’ column represents the size of the respective file on your disk subsystem. Lastly the ‘file_handle’ column is simply the Windows File handle. This Dynamic Management Function is useful when you are needing to analyze your database files for the purposes of segregating high IO databases. This DMF gives you a good view of which of your database files are being accessed the most and which ones may be generating the largest IO stalls. These could be your best candidates for moving into separate IO channels. For more information about this DMF, please see the below Books Online link: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms190326.aspx Follow me on Twitter @PrimeTimeDBA

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  • July, the 31 Days of SQL Server DMO’s – Day 24 (sys.dm_db_index_operational_stats)

    - by Tamarick Hill
    The sys.dm_db_index_operational_stats Dynamic Management Function returns information about the IO, locking, and access methods for the indexes that you currently have on your SQL Server Instance. This function takes four input parameters which are (1) database_id, (2) object_id, (3) index_id, and (4) partition_number. Let’s have a look at the results from this function against our AdventureWorks2012 database. This function returns a ton of columns, so not only will I not attempt to describe each of the columns, I wont even attempt to display all of them here. My query below will give you a subset of the columns returned from this function. SELECT database_id, object_id, index_id, partition_number, leaf_insert_count, leaf_delete_count, leaf_update_count, leaf_ghost_count, nonleaf_insert_count, nonleaf_delete_count, nonleaf_update_count, range_scan_count, forwarded_fetch_count, row_lock_count, row_lock_wait_count, page_lock_count, page_lock_wait_count, Index_lock_promotion_attempt_count, index_lock_promotion_count, page_compression_attempt_count, page_compression_success_count FROM sys.dm_db_index_operational_stats(db_id('AdventureWorks2012'), NULL, NULL, NULL) The first four columns in the result set represent the values that we passed in as our input parameters. If you use NULL’s as I did, then you will see results for every index on your system. I specified a database_id so my result set only shows those records pertaining to my AdventureWorks2012 database. The next columns in the result set provide you with information on how may inserts, deletes, or updates that have taken place on your leaf and nonleaf index levels. The nonleaf levels would refer to the intermediate and root index levels. In the middle of these you see a leaf_ghost_count column, which represents the number of records that have been logically deleted and marked as “ghosted”  and are waiting on the background ghost cleanup process to physically remove them. The range_scan_count column represents the number of range or table scans that have been performed against an index. The forwarded_fetch_count column represents the number of rows that were returned from a forwarding row pointer. The row_lock_count and row_lock_wait_count represent the number of row locks that have been requested for an index and the number of times SQL has had to wait on a row lock respectively. The page_lock_count and page_lock_wait_count represent the number of page locks that have been requested for an index and the number of times SQL has had to wait on a page lock respectively. The index_lock_promotion_attempt_count represents the number of times the database engine has attempted to promote a lock to the index level. The index_lock_promotion_count column displays how many times that index lock promotion was successful. Lastly the page_compression_attempt_count and page_compression_success_count represents how many times a page was attempted to be compressed and how many times the attempt was successful. As you can see there is a ton of information returned from this DMV. The DMV we reviewed on yesterday (sys.dm_db_index_usage_stats) provided you with good information on when and how indexes have been used, but this DMF takes an even deeper dive into these statistics. If you are interested in performing a very detailed analysis on the operational stats of your indexes, this is not only a good place to start, but more than likely the best place. For more information on this Dynamic Management Function, please see the below Books Online link: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms174281.aspx Follow me on Twitter @PrimeTimeDBA

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