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• Will you share your SQL Server configuration?

  - by Bill Graziano

  I regularly visit client sites and review their SQL Server configurations.  I come across all kinds of strange settings.  I’ve been thinking about a way to aggregate people’s configurations and see what’s common and what’s unique.  I used to do that with polls on SQLTeam.com.  I think we can find out more interesting things if we look at combinations of settings in relation to size and volume. I’ve been working on an application for another project that is similar.  It will be fairly easy to use that code for this.  I can have something up and running in a few days – if people are interested in it.  I admit that I often come up with ideas that just don’t make sense.  This may be one of them.  One of your biggest concerns has be how secure your data is.  My solution is not to store anything identifying.  The instance name and database names can both be “anonymized” and I don’t store the machine name or IP address or anything to do with logins. Some of the questions I’m curious about are: At what size database does the Enterprise Edition become prevalent? Given the total size of the databases how much RAM is common? How many people have multiple data files?  At what size does that become prevalent? How common is database mirroring?  Replication?  Log shipping? How common is full recovery mode?  At what data size does it become prevalent? I think those are all questions that are easy to answer -- with the right data.  The big question is whether or not people will share their SQL Server configurations.  I understand that organizations in regulated or high security environments can’t participate.  But I think that leaves many, many people that can.  Are you willing to share your configuration and learn about others?  I have a simple sign up form here.  It’s actually a mailing list signup that also captures your edition, number of servers and largest database.  The list will only be used for this project.  Is your SQL Server is configured correctly?  Do you wonder what the next step is as your data grows?  Take a second and sign up.

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• How are Reads Distributed in a Workload

  - by Bill Graziano

  People have uploaded nearly one millions rows of trace data to TraceTune.  That’s enough data to start to look at the results in aggregate.  The first thing I want to look at is logical reads.  This is the easiest metric to identify and fix. When you upload a trace, I rank each statement based on the total number of logical reads.  I also calculate each statement’s percentage of the total logical reads.  I do the same thing for CPU, duration and logical writes.  When you view a statement you can see all the details like this: This single statement consumed 61.4% of the total logical reads on the system while we were tracing it.  I also wanted to see the distribution of reads across statements.  That graph looks like this: On average, the highest ranked statement consumed just under 50% of the reads on the system.  When I tune a system, I’m usually starting in one of two modes: this “piece” is slow or the whole system is slow.  If a given piece (screen, report, query, etc.) is slow you can usually find the specific statements behind it and tune it.  You can make that individual piece faster but you may not affect the whole system. When you’re trying to speed up an entire server you need to identity those queries that are using the most disk resources in aggregate.  Fixing those will make them faster and it will leave more disk throughput for the rest of the queries. Here are some of the things I’ve learned querying this data: The highest ranked query averages just under 50% of the total reads on the system. The top 3 ranked queries average 73% of the total reads on the system. The top 10 ranked queries average 91% of the total reads on the system. Remember these are averages across all the traces that have been uploaded.  And I’m guessing that people mainly upload traces where there are performance problems so your mileage may vary. I also learned that slow queries aren’t the problem.  Before I wrote ClearTrace I used to identify queries by filtering on high logical reads using Profiler.  That picked out individual queries but those rarely ran often enough to put a large load on the system. If you look at the execution count by rank you’d see that the highest ranked queries also have the highest execution counts.  The graph would look very similar to the one above but flatter.  These queries don’t look that bad individually but run so often that they hog the disk capacity. The take away from all this is that you really should be tuning the top 10 queries if you want to make your system faster.  Tuning individually slow queries will help those specific queries but won’t have much impact on the system as a whole.

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• PASS: Budget Status

  - by Bill Graziano

  Our budget situation is a little different this year than in years past.  We were late getting an initial budget approved.  There are a number of different reasons this occurred.  We had different competing priorities and the budget got pushed down the list.  And that’s completely my fault for not making the budget a higher priority and getting it completed on time. That left us with initial budget approval in early August rather than prior to June 30th.  Even after that there were a number of small adjustments that needed to be made.  And one large glaring mistake that needed to be fixed.  We had a typo in the budget that made it through twelve versions of review.  In my defense I can only say that the cell was red so of course it had to be negative!  And that’s one more mistake I can add to my long and growing list of Mistakes I’ll Never Make Again. Last week we passed a revised budget (version 17) with this corrected.  This is the version we’re cleaning up and posting to the web site this week or next.

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• Digital HD Transition

  - by Bill Evjen

  The HD Experience Roughly 53% of the viewing public has HD capable devices in their home 24% think they are watching HD while they have no subscription to any HD content Today’s HD Considerations Choices abound: format resolution – 720p, 1080i/p frame rates compression and wrapping audio compression and delivery metadata packaging, delivery, and usage content delivery protocols Metadata is going to be a part of the overall experience With emerging technologies: Super Hi-Vision (SHV, UHDTV 4320p), 3D HEVC/H.265, WEBM/VP8 HDBaseT, P2PTV Dolby Pulse/HE-AAC Industry standardization Metadata registration, packaging, and delivery standards Improved picture and sound quality is a logical next step but we need to also think about the end to end viewing experience including; 3D video and audio content Mixed-mode viewing to bring interactive and immersive experiences Content Transportability both on-to and off-of the aircraft High Definition Standardization Analog switch off around the world DTV transition completed: 17 countries DTV transition in progress: 45 countries The EU has mandated the end of 2012 as the final date for Analog Switch Off D-Cinema was standardized by SMPTE in 2006 Airlines are installing HD displays today Passengers are bringing their own devices now HD TV on airlines are getting bigger and bigger – bigger than SD was – now up to 23” Gray scale data input for color – 6 to 8 bit Contrast – 400 to 700 Backlit – LED Encryption – can it be the same for HD? PPV in the cabin?

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• Update to SQL Server Configuration Scripting Utility

  - by Bill Graziano

  Last spring I released a utility to script SQL Server configuration information on CodePlex.  I’ve been making small changes in this application as my needs have changed.  The application is a .NET 2.0 console application.  This utility serves two needs for me.  First it helps with disaster recovery.  All server level objects (logins, jobs, linked servers, audits) are scripted to a single file per object type.  This enables the scripts to be easily run against a DR server.  If these are checked into source control you can view the history of the script and find out what changed and when. The second goal is to capture what changed inside a database.  Objects inside a database (tables, stored procedures, views, etc.) are each scripted to their own file.  This makes it easier to track the changes to an object over time.  This does include permissions and role membership so you can capture security changes.  My assumption is that a database backup is the primary method of disaster recovery for databases so this utility is designed to capture changes to objects.  You can find the full list of changes from the original on the Downloads page on CodePlex.

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• Experimenting with other search engines

  - by Bill Graziano

  I’ve been a Google user so long I can hardly remember what I used before it.  Alta Vista maybe?  Or Yahoo.  I’ve tried Bing off and on but it never really stuck.  I probably care more about search engines than your average user because of their impact on SQLTeam.com.  Lately I’ve been trying two other search engines and actually switched to one of them. I’ve played with Blekko a little in the past.  They have some interesting ways to “slice up” your results.  For example, searching on “SQL Server /blogs /date” should just search all the recently updated blogs.  Those two extra words on the search are slashtags.  The full list of slashtags runs from /forums to just see forums to /twitter to /nikon to /reviews and on and on and on.  I laughed when I saw they had slashtags for both liberal and conservative.  I’d hate to find any search results that don’t match my existing worldview :)  You can also create your own slashtags.  I created a mini-search engine for the SQL Server blogs that I read.  You can search it for “backup” at http://blekko.com/ws/backup+/billgraziano/sql-sites.  I uploaded my OPML and it limited the search to just those sites.  It seems like the site is focusing more on curating results and less on algorithms.  This is an interesting site for those power searchers.  There are some great ways to curate results using slashtags.  For 99% of my searches (type words, click on one of the first few links) slashtags are overkill.  They do have some good information on page and site ranking though so I’ll probably send some time looking through that. Blekko recently got my attention again when they said they were banning “content farms” - and that includes eHow and experts-exchange.  I always feel used when I click on a link to EE and find myself scrolling all the way to the bottom to see if I can find the answer.  Sometimes it’s there but sometimes it tells me I need to pay first.  I’ve longed for a way to always exclude certain sites.  Blekko might be taking a hammer to a problem that needs a scalpel but it’s an interesting choice.  (And some of the comments in the TechCrunch link are interesting if you’re a search nerd.) DuckDuckGo is an odd name for a search engine.  Their big hook is that they don’t have search history.  If you wade through your Google account you can probably find the page where it stores your search history.  It was pretty enlightening to find mine.  It was easy to disable but that got me started looking at other search engines.  DDG (or DukGo) just feels like Google used to in the old days.  The results are good enough and the site is fast. Searches will return a snippet from WikiPedia or other site (like StackOverflow) at the top.  I think the idea is to answer the question without needing to visit the site.  I’m not sure that’s a good thing for SQLTeam.com. The only thing I really miss is image search.  You can add a “!i” at the end of any search and it will search the images on Bing.  Bing doesn’t have a great image search but it works for most of what I need.  They call these exclamation marks “!bangs” and they are kinda, sorta like slashtags.  I’ve been using DuckDuckGo now for a few weeks and I’m pretty happy with it.  I use Chrome for my browser and it was an easy switch to make.  It’s still a little surprising seeing my search results come up in a different format.  I’m starting to get used to it though.

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• Generate MERGE statements from a table

  - by Bill Graziano

  We have a requirement to build a test environment where certain tables get reset from production every night.  These are mainly lookup tables.  I played around with all kinds of fancy solutions and finally settled on a series of MERGE statements.  And being lazy I didn’t want to write them myself.  The stored procedure below will generate a MERGE statement for the table you pass it.  If you have identity values it populates those properly.  You need to have primary keys on the table for the joins to be generated properly.  The only thing hard coded is the source database.  You’ll need to update that for your environment.  We actually used a linked server in our situation. CREATE PROC dba_GenerateMergeStatement (@table NVARCHAR(128) )ASset nocount on; declare @return int;PRINT '-- ' + @table + ' -------------------------------------------------------------'--PRINT 'SET NOCOUNT ON;--'-- Set the identity insert on for tables with identitiesselect @return = objectproperty(object_id(@table), 'TableHasIdentity')if @return = 1 PRINT 'SET IDENTITY_INSERT [dbo].[' + @table + '] ON; 'declare @sql varchar(max) = ''declare @list varchar(max) = '';SELECT @list = @list + [name] +', 'from sys.columnswhere object_id = object_id(@table)SELECT @list = @list + [name] +', 'from sys.columnswhere object_id = object_id(@table)SELECT @list = @list + 's.' + [name] +', 'from sys.columnswhere object_id = object_id(@table)-- --------------------------------------------------------------------------------PRINT 'MERGE [dbo].[' + @table + '] AS t'PRINT 'USING (SELECT * FROM [source_database].[dbo].[' + @table + ']) as s'-- Get the join columns ----------------------------------------------------------SET @list = ''select @list = @list + 't.[' + c.COLUMN_NAME + '] = s.[' + c.COLUMN_NAME + '] AND 'from INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLE_CONSTRAINTS pk , INFORMATION_SCHEMA.KEY_COLUMN_USAGE cwhere pk.TABLE_NAME = @tableand CONSTRAINT_TYPE = 'PRIMARY KEY'and c.TABLE_NAME = pk.TABLE_NAMEand c.CONSTRAINT_NAME = pk.CONSTRAINT_NAMESELECT @list = LEFT(@list, LEN(@list) -3)PRINT 'ON ( ' + @list + ')'-- WHEN MATCHED ------------------------------------------------------------------PRINT 'WHEN MATCHED THEN UPDATE SET'SELECT @list = '';SELECT @list = @list + ' [' + [name] + '] = s.[' + [name] +'],'from sys.columnswhere object_id = object_id(@table)-- don't update primary keysand [name] NOT IN (SELECT [column_name] from INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLE_CONSTRAINTS pk , INFORMATION_SCHEMA.KEY_COLUMN_USAGE c where pk.TABLE_NAME = @table and CONSTRAINT_TYPE = 'PRIMARY KEY' and c.TABLE_NAME = pk.TABLE_NAME and c.CONSTRAINT_NAME = pk.CONSTRAINT_NAME)-- and don't update identity columnsand columnproperty(object_id(@table), [name], 'IsIdentity ') = 0 --print @list PRINT left(@list, len(@list) -3 )-- WHEN NOT MATCHED BY TARGET ------------------------------------------------PRINT ' WHEN NOT MATCHED BY TARGET THEN';-- Get the insert listSET @list = ''SELECT @list = @list + '[' + [name] +'], 'from sys.columnswhere object_id = object_id(@table)SELECT @list = LEFT(@list, LEN(@list) - 1)PRINT ' INSERT(' + @list + ')'-- get the values listSET @list = ''SELECT @list = @list + 's.[' +[name] +'], 'from sys.columnswhere object_id = object_id(@table)SELECT @list = LEFT(@list, LEN(@list) - 1)PRINT ' VALUES(' + @list + ')'-- WHEN NOT MATCHED BY SOURCEprint 'WHEN NOT MATCHED BY SOURCE THEN DELETE; 'PRINT ''PRINT 'PRINT ''' + @table + ': '' + CAST(@@ROWCOUNT AS VARCHAR(100));';PRINT ''-- Set the identity insert OFF for tables with identitiesselect @return = objectproperty(object_id(@table), 'TableHasIdentity')if @return = 1 PRINT 'SET IDENTITY_INSERT [dbo].[' + @table + '] OFF; 'PRINT ''PRINT 'GO'PRINT '';

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• PASS: Total Registrations

  - by Bill Graziano

  At the Summit you’ll see PASS announce the total attendance and the “total registrations”.  The total registrations is the sum of the conference attendees and the pre-conference registrations.  A single person can be counted three times (conference plus two pre-cons) in the total registration count. When I was doing marketing for the Summit this drove me nuts.  I couldn’t figure out why anyone would use total registrations.  However, when I tried to stop reporting this number I got lots of pushback.  Apparently this is how conferences compare themselves to each other.  Vendors, sponsors and Microsoft all wanted to know our total registration number.  I was even asked why we weren’t doing more “things” that people could register for so that our number would be even larger.  This drove me nuts. I understand that many of you are very detail oriented.  I just want to make sure you understand what numbers you’re seeing when we include them in the keynote at the Summit.

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• TraceTune: Larger Files and History

  - by Bill Graziano

  I updated TraceTune over the weekend.  I increased the trace file upload size to 20MB.  We’ve processed over half a million rows of trace data so far and I’m confident this won’t kill the server. I added average CPU and average disk reads to the screen that lists the SQL statements in a trace file. I only added these two.  I’m pretty sure average writes isn’t that import.  I’m still thinking about average duration.  I’m trying to balance showing you what you need with a clean, simple interface.  Plus I have a way to see the averages that I describe further down. TraceTune now keeps the last 10 files that you’ve uploaded and will give you some basic details about each file. I think the last change I made is the most interesting. For each SQL statement, I show the history of that statement. You’ll see each trace file where this statement was found.  It will list the averages for CPU, reads, writes and duration.  This will quickly show you if you’re improving the performance of that query.  In my screen shot above you can that even though the execution counts are very different the averages are consistent. If you want to see what queries are consuming the most resources on your server give TraceTune a try.

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• C#&ndash;Using a delegate to raise an event from one class to another

  - by Bill Osuch

  Even though this may be a relatively common task for many people, I’ve had to show it to enough new developers that I figured I’d immortalize it… MSDN says “Events enable a class or object to notify other classes or objects when something of interest occurs. The class that sends (or raises) the event is called the publisher and the classes that receive (or handle) the event are called subscribers.” Any time you add a button to a Windows Form or Web app, you can subscribe to the OnClick event, and you can also create your own event handlers to pass events between classes. Here I’ll show you how to raise an event from a separate class to a console application (or Windows Form). First, create a console app project (you could create a Windows Form, but this is easier for this demo). Add a class file called MyEvent.cs (it doesn’t really need to be a separate file, this is just for clarity) with the following code: public delegate void MyHandler1(object sender, MyEvent e); public class MyEvent : EventArgs {     public string message; } Your event can have whatever public properties you like; here we’re just got a single string. Next, add a class file called WorkerDLL.cs; this will simulate the class that would be doing all the work in the project. Add the following code: class WorkerDLL {     public event MyHandler1 Event1;     public WorkerDLL()     {     }     public void DoWork()     {         FireEvent("From Worker: Step 1");         FireEvent("From Worker: Step 5");         FireEvent("From Worker: Step 10");     }     private void FireEvent(string message)     {         MyEvent e1 = new MyEvent();         e1.message = message;         if (Event1 != null)         {             Event1(this, e1);         }         e1 = null;     } } Notice that the FireEvent method creates an instance of the MyEvent class and passes it to the Event1 handler (which we’ll create in just a second). Finally, add the following code to Program.cs: static void Main(string[] args) {     Program p = new Program(args); } public Program(string[] args) {     Console.WriteLine("From Console: Creating DLL");     WorkerDLL wd = new WorkerDLL();     Console.WriteLine("From Console: Wiring up event handler");     WireEventHandlers(wd);     Console.WriteLine("From Console: Doing the work");     wd.DoWork();     Console.WriteLine("From Console: Done - press any key to finish.");     Console.ReadLine(); } private void WireEventHandlers(WorkerDLL wd) {     MyHandler1 handler = new MyHandler1(OnHandler1);     wd.Event1 += handler; } public void OnHandler1(object sender, MyEvent e) {     Console.WriteLine(e.message); } The OnHandler1 method is called any time the event handler “hears” an event matching the specified signature – you could have it log to a file, write to a database, etc. Run the app in debug mode and you should see output like this: You can distinctly see which lines were written by the console application itself (Program.cs) and which were written by the worker class (WorkerDLL.cs). Technorati Tags: Csharp

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• Windows Phone Camp Hands On Accelerator Lab in Dallas

  - by Bill Osuch

  Microsoft is hosting another Windows Phone Accelerator lab this December 13-15 in Dallas: Do you have the next million dollar idea that you just can’t find the time to finish?  Do you already have an app for Android and iPhone that you want to expand into new markets?    It’s time to turn your napkin sketches and leverage your hard work into real, sellable apps for Windows Phone in ONE WEEK!  Join us for a special Windows Phone event you don’t want to miss - Windows Phone Accelerator!    In this 3-day developer retreat, we will have experts on hand to help you build, test, pitch, and deploy your app into the Windows Phone Marketplace.  You will have hands on technical assistance, Marketplace subscriptions, and developer phones for testing.    It’s a great chance to get step-by-step advice from Microsoft and community experts and all you have to do is bring your existing app or app idea that you are ready to build.   Seating is limited and registration is not guaranteed.  Get your spot today!   Agenda: Tuesday, 9am-5pm Kick-off Open Lab; 1:1 Meetings   Wednesday, 8:30am-6pm Open Lab; 1:1 Meetings   Thursday, 8:30am-1pm Open Lab; 1:1 Meetings   Thursday, 1pm - 3pm App pitches & Giveaways Register at this link

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• PASS Summit 2011: Save Money Now

  - by Bill Graziano

  Register by March 31st and save $200.  On April 1st we increase the price.  On July 1st we increase it again.  We have regular price bumps all the way through to the Summit.  You can save yourself $200 if you register by Thursday. In two years of marketing for PASS and a year of finance I’ve learned a fair bit about our pricing, why we do this and how you react to it.  Let me help you save some money! Price bumps drive registrations.  We see big spikes in the two weeks prior to a price increase.  Having a deadline with a cost attached is a great motivator to get people to take action. Registering early helps you and it helps PASS.  You get the exact same Summit at a cheaper rate.  PASS gets smoother cash flow and a better idea of how many people to expect.  We also get people that are already registered that will tell their friends about the conference. This tiered pricing lets us serve those that are very price conscious.  They can register early and take advantage of these discounts.  I know there are people that pay for this conference out of their own pockets.  This is a great way for those people to reduce the cost of the conference.  (And remember for next year that our cheapest pricing starts right after the Summit and usually goes up around the first of the year.) We also get big price bumps after we announce the program and the pre-conference sessions.  If you wrote down the 50 or so best known speakers in the SQL Server community I’m guessing we’ll have nearly all of them at the conference.  We did last year.  I expect we will this year too.  We’re going to have good sessions.  Why wait?  Register today. If you want to attend a pre-conference session you can always add it to your registration later.  Pre-con prices don’t change.  It’s very easy to update your registration and add a pre-conference session later. I want as many people as possible to attend the Summit.  It’s been a great experience for me and I hope it will be for you.  And if you are going to go, do yourself a favor and save some money.  Register today!

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• Tracking "To Do" Items

  - by Bill Graziano

  One of the challenges I struggle with is keeping a good "to do" list of things I need to do on the various SQL Servers I support. I have servers that I don't visit on a regular basis so my situation may be different than many of you. Though I'm sure you all have servers that you only touch every few months. (And it's usually the accounting server!) It's difficult for me to remember what changes I made and what changes I need to make. I've tried Outlook, OneNote and various other to do list managers and haven't been happy with any of them. Many are close but just don't give me what I need. As a result I've started writing my own. It's web-based so you can use it from anywhere -- including on a server. It also knows just enough about SQL Server to help structure your to do items and your notes. It isn't agent based and doesn't do any monitoring. Think OneNote or Evernote but with some "SQL Servery" stuff built in. If you'd like to try this or take a survey I'm putting together, add your email address to my mailing list.  I should be ready in a week or so.  I'm only going to use this list for notifications about this service. I'd like to find a small group of people that feel the same pain I do and maybe we can build something interesting.

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• New Job Over Budget

  - by moneylotion

  I recently started a new job as a contract developer, and my non-developer boss of about two weeks ago gave me the task to re-create an app from another language and developer that he will reuse with multiple clients (replacing the front-end), that I estimated would take longer than his estimate of 12 hours. Two weeks later, I'm 230% over-budget. I admit this was my 2nd web app, I had been a wordpress developer in the past, so I am somewhat new to code igniter, but not shabby php by any means. My boss hired me knowing this and I was clear that it would take longer than his 12 hours. He's seen me in the office on task for 2 weeks, he should be somewhat prepared for this bill. Do I expect the full amount of hours, or do I filter against how much of learned? Can I bill for research as a developer?

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• building bittorrent client from scratch

  - by Bill

  I'm new to programming. I find reading introductory programming books boring. I think these doesn't teach enough of the problem solving skills that I need. So I decided to build a bitTorrent client. I think I understand to some point how the protocol works. I have also downloaded the source code of deluge bittorrent client. I have access to python documentation too. I need to know if there are some resources available that can help me build a bitTorrent client that are more detailed than the wikipedia article here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorrent

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• Mouse cursor lag after lock screen, 64 bit 12.04

  - by Bill Jones

  Recently I have noticed that when I return to my computer after it has been "locked" for a while, the mouse pointer has significant lag. The cursor position appears to only update a few times a second. Moving the mouse results in the pointer "following" the movement in a jerky kind of way, and then continuing for some fraction of a second after I have stopped using the mouse. Replacing the mouse has no effect. (I have two differently branded and constructed usb optical mice). Plugging either mouse into a different usb port has no effect. Once the problem was resolved by "suspending" the system, and then re-starting it with the power switch, but this does not work every time. So far, the only fool-proof fix is to shut the system down and re-start it (re-boot). I have tried this suggested fix. It had no effect.

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• TraceTune: Improved Comment View

  - by Bill Graziano

  I wanted an easier way to identify queries I’d already looked at so I could skip them.  I’ve been entering comments for each query as I review it.  These comments typically fall into three categories: a change I made, no easy fix available or something needs to be changed on the client.  TraceTune now highlights any statement with a comment in bold.  If you hover over the statement you’ll see the most recent comment for that statement. This gives me a quick way to see what’s new and identify those queries that still need work.  This is especially helpful when I come back to a server after weeks or months away.  These comments help jar my memory and remind me what I’ve worked on. I made the font slightly smaller in some of the tables.  It’s still readable but I’m able to get more of a SQL statement on the screen.  I also got to re-experience the pain of Internet Explorer, Chrome and FireFox all displaying text (and pop-up text) slightly different. Seeing the comments on a trace has been a big help to me.  I often do a round of tuning and then don’t come back to a server until months later.  Having the comments available helps me get back up to speed quickly.

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• Why did my Google links disappear after a redesign?

  - by Bill

  I recently did a complete redesign of my site. As soon as Google picked up the changes (I could tell because the excerpt in the search results was brought up to date), I noticed that my traffic slowed by about 30%. I started to investigate, ran a "link:" query on my site and saw only two links there. I know there are many more links to my site, mostly from reputable sources like magazines and large blogs. Why aren't these links showing up anymore? There's nothing even remotely spammy about my site, so I don't see why there would be weirdness going on.

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• Kansas City SQL Saturday 2012: BBQ Crawl

  - by Bill Graziano

  The next Kansas City SQL Saturday is coming up on August 4th.  We’ll have the usual SQL Saturday goodness: lots of technical sessions, great networking events and a fantastic speaker dinner.  And we’ll have the Third Annual Kansas City SQL Saturday BBQ Crawl.  On Friday afternoon we’ll visit a few BBQ places in town.  We tend to order big sampler plates and just share everything around.  It’s a great way to try a variety of styles.  This year we’ll be hitting an all new selection of BBQ joints. You don’t need to be a speaker to attend.  However the call for speakers is open until June 28th (hint, hint).  Locals and out-of-towners are all welcome. If you’re interested in attending send me an email and I’ll get you added to the list. We finish in plenty of time to get you to the speaker dinner – as if you could eat any more.

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• ClearTrace Performance on 170GB of Trace Files

  - by Bill Graziano

  I’ve always worked to make ClearTrace perform well.  That’s probably because I spend so much time watching it work.  I’m often going through two or three gigabytes of trace files but I rarely get the chance to run it on a really large set of files. One of my clients wanted to run a full trace for a week and then analyze the results.  At the end of that week we had 847 200MB trace files for a total of nearly 170GB. I regularly use 200MB trace files when I monitor production systems.  I usually get around 300,000 statements in a file that size if it’s mostly stored procedures.  So those 847 trace files contained roughly 250 million statements.  (That’s 730 bytes per statement if you’re keeping track.  Newer trace files have some compression in them but I’m not exactly sure what they’re doing.)  On a system running 1,000 statements per second I get a new file every five minutes or so. It took 27 hours to process these files on an older development box.  That works out to 1.77MB/second.  That means ClearTrace processed about 2,654 statements per second. You can query the data while you’re loading it but I’ve found it works better to use a second instance of ClearTrace to do this.  I’m not sure why yet but I think there’s still some dependency between the two processes. ClearTrace is almost always CPU bound.  It’s really just a huge, ugly collection of regular expressions.  It only writes a summary to its database at the end of each trace file so that usually isn’t a bottleneck.  At the end of this process, the executable was using roughly 435MB of RAM.  Certainly more than when it started but I think that’s acceptable. The database where all this is stored started out at 100MB.  After processing 170GB of trace files the database had grown to 203MB.  The space savings are due to the “datawarehouse-ish” design and only storing a summary of each trace file. You can download ClearTrace for SQL Server 2008 or test out the beta version for SQL Server 2012.  Happy Tuning!

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• PASS: FY10 Actuals Posted

  - by Bill Graziano

  Earlier this year we published preliminary fiscal year 2010 financials to the Governance page on the PASS web site.  Please remember that FY10 runs from July 1st, 2009 through June 30th, 2010 and includes the November 2009 Summit.  We do our fiscal year this way so that the Summit falls earlier in the fiscal year.  The financials we had posted were P&L numbers at the portfolio level.  Prior to this we had posted our detailed budget but only posted the auditors report at the end of each year.  Today we updated our published financials to include: Pre-audit actuals from FY10 at the same level as our budget.  The document has both actuals and budget for FY10 side by side.  This is over 20 pages of detailed financial information covering hundreds of line-items. A letter describing key differences between our budget and actuals.  I walked through each line item where the difference was greater than $25,000 and explained what happened and why. We updated the financial graph going back to 2003 to include FY10. This update should “close the loop” on our financials.  You can now start with the published budget and compare it to the finished financials at the same level of detail.  We also plan to publish the auditor’s report when that is completed -- as we do every year. Overall I’m very happy with how FY10 turned out.  Keep in mind that this was the November 2009 Summit so we were still facing economic challenges.  With all that we were roughly break-even showing a $15,000 profit on $3.9 million of revenue.  I didn’t find anything shocking in reviewing our actual vs. budget but there were a few things that needed explanation.  You can see those in the letter on the governance page. Please keep in mind that these are the actuals from our operating financials.  The auditor may have us make adjustments for depreciation or other financial transactions.  We may also account for certain transactions differently for tax purposes than we do for financial reporting purposes.  I feel these financial statements give you the clearest picture of how our organization spends its money. We were late publishing these this year.  We were working through some tax issues and that delayed our ability to file our final tax forms which delayed this process.  In hindsight I should have published these documents as soon as we had them and not waited for the tax issues.  We’ll do this better in the future. And on a final note, you don’t need to login to view these documents.  If you have any questions you can post them here.  If we get more than a few questions we may see about creating some forums for financial issues on the PASS web site.

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• TraceTune supports uploading Zip files

  - by Bill Graziano

  I’ve been using the online version of ClearTrace more and more lately.  When I get to a new client it’s just much easier to upload a trace file rather than install ClearTrace. That means I’ve finally been adding more features to it.  The two latest features are around ease of use. You can now upload a ZIP file that contains a trace file.  Trace files are already somewhat compressed.  Putting it in a ZIP file further compresses it by a factor of 8X or 9X in my testing. That means you can start with a 100MB trace and end up with a 10Mb-12MB ZIP file to upload.  I’m consistently able to get over 150,000 events in a 100MB ZIP file.  That gives me a pretty good look at a system. The second part of this is that files are now processed asynchronously.  After you upload a file you’ll be taken to a processing page that updates every few seconds with the number of rows processed.  It generally takes under a minute to process a 100MB trace file but I *hated* staring at a blank screen. Give TraceTune a try.  It’s getting easier to use every day.

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• ClearTrace for SQL Server 2012

  - by Bill Graziano

  I’ve updated the beta for ClearTrace that support SQL Server 2012.  This requires SQL Server 2012 to be installed on the computer where ClearTrace is running.  It will read traces from SQL Server 2008 R2, SQL Server 2008 and SQL Server 2005. It includes some minor improvements in performance and handling large SQL statements. It should also give better errors. If you do find any of those errors, please report them in the support forum.

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• SQL Saturday 300 BBQ Crawl

  - by Bill Graziano

  SQL Saturday #300 is coming up right here in Kansas City on September 13th, 2014.  This is our fifth SQL Saturday which means it's the fifth anniversary of our now infamous BBQ Crawl.  We get together on Friday afternoon before the event and visit a few local joints.  We've done nice places and we've done dives.  We haven’t picked the venues yet but I promise you’ll be well fed! And if you’re thinking about the BBQ crawl you should think about submitting a session.  Our call for speakers closes Tuesday, July 15th so you just have time!  If you’re going to be at the event, contact me and I’ll get you added to the list.

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• Gnome 3 freezes when switching workspaces

  - by Bill Cheatham

  I have found an odd problem with Gnome 3 on Ubuntu recently. Under certain circumstances, when switching between two workspaces the whole desktop and user interface will 'freeze' for anything up to 2 minutes; during this time I cannot click anything or interact using the keyboard. Often, the screen will show a 'half-completed' animation of the workspace swapper. This is on Ubuntu 12.04.1 running on a 2-year old Macbook Pro, and it only seems to occur when using an external monitor. This does not seem to be a processor or memory issue, and does not occur every time I switch workspaces. Is this a known problem? What can I do in the short or long term to fix it?

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