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• USB hard drive not recognized

  - by user318772

  Until recently I was using the portable USB hard drive in my win 7 laptop and ubuntu laptop. Suddenly now none of the laptops recognize it. This is the message i get by doing lsusb... Bus 001 Device 004: ID 1058:1010 Western Digital Technologies, Inc. Elements External HDD Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 003 Device 003: ID 0b97:7762 O2 Micro, Inc. Oz776 SmartCard Reader Bus 003 Device 002: ID 0b97:7761 O2 Micro, Inc. Oz776 1.1 Hub Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 002 Device 002: ID 413c:a005 Dell Computer Corp. Internal 2.0 Hub Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub fdisk doesn't show the external hard drive Disk /dev/sda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders, total 156301488 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x0004a743 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 * 2048 152111103 76054528 83 Linux /dev/sda2 152113150 156301311 2094081 5 Extended /dev/sda5 152113152 156301311 2094080 82 Linux swap / Solaris when i do testdisk TestDisk 6.14, Data Recovery Utility, July 2013 Christophe GRENIER <[email protected]> http://www.cgsecurity.org TestDisk is free software, and comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY. Select a media (use Arrow keys, then press Enter): >Disk /dev/sda - 80 GB / 74 GiB - ST980825AS Disk /dev/sdb - 2199 GB / 2048 GiB testdisk-> Intel->analyse I get partition error Disk /dev/sdb - 2199 GB / 2048 GiB - CHS 2097152 64 32 Current partition structure: Partition Start End Size in sectors Partition: Read error Here is the output of dmesg [11948.549171] Add. Sense: Invalid command operation code [11948.549177] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] CDB: [11948.549181] Read(16): 88 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 08 00 00 [11948.550489] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Invalid command failure [11948.550495] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] [11948.550499] Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE [11948.550505] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] [11948.550508] Sense Key : Illegal Request [current] [11948.550514] Info fld=0x0 [11948.550519] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] [11948.550525] Add. Sense: Invalid command operation code [11948.550531] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] CDB: [11948.550534] Read(16): 88 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 08 00 00 [11948.551870] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Invalid command failure [11948.551876] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] [11948.551880] Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE [11948.551885] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] [11948.551888] Sense Key : Illegal Request [current] [11948.551895] Info fld=0x0 [11948.551900] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] [11948.551905] Add. Sense: Invalid command operation code [11948.551911] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] CDB: [11948.551914] Read(16): 88 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 08 00 00 If possible i want to retrive at least some data from this hard drive. If thats not possible I would like to format it and use it. Any help will be greatly appreciated Thanks

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• Possible HDD malfunction. Need help in diagnosing

  - by Protheus

  Today when using my PC as I did for almost 4 years I experienced the following: during opening new tab in Opera browser screen froze. Music (AIMP 3) continued to play for about 5 minutes and then stopped too. I tried Ctrl+Alt+Del, but win7 lock screen didn't appear. Caps\Scroll or Num locks didn't switch diodes on keyboard. I rebooted my PC and saw that BIOS suggests me to enter it's settings or load by default. I chose default. It don't see proper boot device (old faitful "insert proper boot" something). After second reboot it said that there is no ExpressGate installed (which i turned off in BIOS years ago). I went into BIOS setting to turn off ExpressGate and see configs: time was not set off, all hard drives present, temp and O.C. settings are nominal (no O.C.) I've inserted my Win7 install disk to try recovery. It did load awfully long (about few minutes) and didn't see current installation. PC was utilized in 24/7 mode for almost all these years. Hardware configuration: ASUS P5Q WS Core 2 Quad Q9300 (2.5GHz no O.C.) MSI geForce GTX 460 4x2 Gb GeIL EVO 2 (AFAIR) Seagate something 750Gb (4 years as system HDD 24/7) WD 1Tb (for random stuff, 5 y.o.) Hitachi 500Gb (for even more random stuff, 6 y.o.) NEC DVDRW (ALL DISKS ARE SATA) Cooler Master Silent Pro 700W Software: Windows 7 AND Kubuntu on the same drive with GRUB loader. Sorry I can't remember HDDs and can't see them right now, but I think their models aren't relevant anyway. My idea is that due to some system error or hard drive glitch i've wrecked my primary HDD's MBR. Nevertheless I don't exclude the possibility of other failure. May it's be that motherboard or it's SATA controller? Doubt it, because all drives are seen in BIOS and I could load from DVD. Maybe GRUB got bugged somehow, although I don't see how it's possible from Windows. But I did install KUbuntu from Windows (i wasn't myself then), maybe GRUB did write itself in some windows partition and got rewriteen in process? Right now I am at work with my flash drive with me and I need some advice how to fix MBR or to hear if it's not MBR. I'm going to buy new HDD (Hitachi 7k2000) because I think that my current HDD is compromised and it's unsafe to use it as system drive, especially 24/7.

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• How to move partition with Users to a new SATA controller?

  - by Al Kepp

  Our current situation: X79 chipset. Windows 7 installed on SATA SSD running on Marvell controller. C:\Users contains just Public and computer-name folders, all the other users are created in E:\Users. That partition is on two HDD's running on an Intel RAID controller. (The motherboard has got two SATA/RAID onboard controllers.) The goal is: Without reinstallation, I want to move SSD to a standard SATA controller. Then I want to get rid of RAID1, and move one HDD to the same internal Intel SATA controller and the current E:\Users move to that new place. I want it to stay as E:\users, but I need to reinstall the HDD to let it work in SATA mode without RAID. So I face several problems. I am sure all are solvable with free software utilities, but I don't know how exactly to do it. I can see the particular problems: I have got all users at E:\Users. When I turn off that E:\ disk, I won't be able to login to Windows. I need at least one admin account to be placed back at C:\users. The current C: runs on standard 120 GB SSD, but it is connected to a Marvell SATA/RAID controller. I am affraid the Windows won't let me put it to Intel SATA controller due to hardware/licence check, and I won't be able to use standard W7 recovery disk either, because there probably isn't marvel SATA/RAID driver on it. I haven't tried anything yet, because I am affraid I can end up with computer not working at all. (I want to move it to a standard ICH10 Intel SATA controller to let us have no problems in future with it. I think it is not very safe when we use any nonstandard hardware to boot the computer.) I need to somehow backup current E:\ disk and restore it to a new E:. I hope this will be the easy part (as long as the admin account will reside on C:). The E: RAID array is very large, but it is almost empty (less than 100 GB of data.) So I can make the partition smaller so it can easily fit to a single SATA HDD.

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• SQL Express 2008 R2 on Amazon EC2 instance: tons of free memory, poor performance

  - by gravyface

  The old SQL Express 2005 was running on a low-end single Xeon CPU Dell server, RAID 5 7200 disks, 2 GB RAM (SBS 2003). I have not done any baseline measurements on the old physical server, but the Web app is used by half a dozen people (maybe 2 concurrently), so I figured "how bad can an Amazon EC2 instance be?". It's pretty horrible: a difference of 8 seconds of load time on one screen. First of all, I'm not a SQL guru, but here's what I've tried: Had a Small Instance, now running a c1.medium (High Cpu Medium) Windows 2008 32-bit R2 EBS-backed instance running IIS 7.5 and SQL Express 2008 R2. No noticeable improvement. Changed Page File from fixed 256 to Automatic. Setup a Striped Mirror from within Disk Management with two attached 1 GB EBS volumes. Moved database and transaction log, left everything else on the boot EBS volume. No noticeable change. Looked at memory, ~1000 MB of physical memory free (1.7 GB total). Changed SQL instance to use a minimum of 1024 RAM; restarted server, no change in memory usage. SQL still only using ~28MB of RAM(!). So I'm thinking: this database is tiny (28MB), why isn't the whole thing cached in RAM? Surely that would speed up performance. The transaction log is 241 MB. Seems kind of large in comparison -- has this not been committed? Is it a cause of performance degradation? I recall something about Recovery Models and log sizes somewhere in my travels, but not positive. Another thing: the old server was running SQL Express 2005. Not sure if that has any impact, but I tried changing the compatibility level from SQL 2000 to 2008, but that had no effect. Anyways, what else can I try here? Seems ridiculous to throw more virtual hardware at this thing. I know I/O is going to be rough on EBS volumes, but surely others are successfully running small .NET/SQL apps on reasonably priced instances?

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• HP ProLiant DL380 G3 Running Windows Server 2000 has crashed between 6-7:30am for the past 5 days

  - by user109717

  I have a HP ProLiant DL380 G3 running Windows Server 2000 that has been crashing everyday between 6-730am. This started when I changed out a failing hard drive 6 days ago. I have looked at the scheduled tasks which does not have anything pertaining to this issue. Below are the only things I see in the system log and some of the dump files. Can this be a hardware issue if this happens at a certain time frame everyday? Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks The previous system shutdown at 6:07:55 AM on 2/7/2012 was unexpected. System Information Agent: Health: The server is operational again. The server has previously been shutdown by the Automatic Server Recovery (ASR) feature and has just become operational again. [SNMP TRAP: 6025 in CPQHLTH.MIB] BugCheck 7A, {3, c0000005, 3400028, 0} Probably caused by : memory_corruption ( nt!MiMakeSystemAddressValidPfn+42 ) Followup: MachineOwner 0: kd !analyze -v * Bugcheck Analysis * * KERNEL_DATA_INPAGE_ERROR (7a) The requested page of kernel data could not be read in. Typically caused by a bad block in the paging file or disk controller error. Also see KERNEL_STACK_INPAGE_ERROR. If the error status is 0xC000000E, 0xC000009C, 0xC000009D or 0xC0000185, it means the disk subsystem has experienced a failure. If the error status is 0xC000009A, then it means the request failed because a filesystem failed to make forward progress. Arguments: Arg1: 00000003, lock type that was held (value 1,2,3, or PTE address) Arg2: c0000005, error status (normally i/o status code) Arg3: 03400028, current process (virtual address for lock type 3, or PTE) Arg4: 00000000, virtual address that could not be in-paged (or PTE contents if arg1 is a PTE address) MODULE_NAME: nt IMAGE_NAME: memory_corruption BugCheck A, {0, 2, 1, 804137d6} Probably caused by : ntkrnlmp.exe ( nt!CcGetVirtualAddress+ba ) * Bugcheck Analysis * * IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL (a) An attempt was made to access a pageable (or completely invalid) address at an interrupt request level (IRQL) that is too high. This is usually caused by drivers using improper addresses. If a kernel debugger is available get the stack backtrace. Arguments: Arg1: 00000000, memory referenced Arg2: 00000002, IRQL Arg3: 00000001, bitfield : bit 0 : value 0 = read operation, 1 = write operation bit 3 : value 0 = not an execute operation, 1 = execute operation (only on chips which support this level of status) Arg4: 804137d6, address which referenced memory MODULE_NAME: nt IMAGE_NAME: ntkrnlmp.exe

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• SQL SERVER – Retrieve and Explore Database Backup without Restoring Database – Idera virtual databas

  - by pinaldave

  I recently downloaded Idera’s SQL virtual database, and tested it. There are a few things about this tool which caught my attention. My Scenario It is quite common in real life that sometimes observing or retrieving older data is necessary; however, it had changed as time passed by. The full database backup was 40 GB in size, and, to restore it on our production server, it usually takes around 16 to 22 minutes, depending on the load server that is usually present. This range in time varies from one server to another as per the configuration of the computer. Some other issues we used to have are the following: When we try to restore a large 40-GB database, we needed at least that much space on our production server. Once in a while, we even had to make changes in the restored database, and use the said changed and restored database for our purpose, making it more time-consuming. My Solution I have heard a lot about the Idera’s SQL virtual database tool.. Well, right after we started to test this tool, we found out that it really delivers what it promises. Using this software was very easy and we were able to restore our database from backup in less than 2 minutes, sparing us from the usual longer time of 16–22 minutes. The needful was finished in a total of 10 minutes. Another interesting observation is that there is no need to have an additional space for restoring the database. For complete database restoration, the single additional MB on the drive is not required anymore. We can use the database in the same way as our regular database, and there is no need for any additional configuration and setup. Let us look at the most relevant points of this product based on my initial experience: Quick restoration of the database backup No additional space required for database restoration virtual database has no physical .MDF or .LDF The database which is restored is, in fact, the backup file converted in the virtual database. DDL and DML queries can be executed against this virtually restored database. Regular backup operation can be implemented against virtual database, creating a physical .bak file that can be used for future use. There was no observed degradation in performance on the original database as well the restored virtual database. Additional T-SQL queries can be let off on the virtual database. Well, this summarizes my quick review. And, as I was saying, I am very impressed with the product and I plan to explore it more. There are many features that I have noticed in this tool, which I think can be very useful if properly understood. I had taken a few screenshots using my demo database afterwards. Let us see what other things this tool can do besides the mentioned activities. I am surprised with its performance so I want to know how exactly this feature works, specifically in the matter of why it does not create any additional files and yet, it still allows update on the virtually restored database. I guess I will have to send an e-mail to the developers of Idera and try to figure this out from them. I think this tool is very useful, and it delivers a high level of performance way more than what I expected. Soon, I will write a review for additional uses of SQL virtual database.. If you are using SQL virtual database in your production environment, I am eager to learn more about it and your experience while using it. The ‘Virtual’ Part of virtual database When I set out to test this software, I thought virtual database had something to do with Hyper-V or visualization. In fact, the virtual database is a kind of database which shows up in your SQL Server Management Studio without actually restoring or even creating it. This tool creates a database in SSMS from the backup of the same database. The backup, however, works virtually the same way as original database. Potential Usage of virtual database: As soon as I described this tool to my teammate, I think his very first reaction was, “hey, if we have this then there is no need for log shipping.” I find his comment very interesting as log shipping is something where logs are moved to another server. In fact, there are no updates on the database from log; I would rather compare it with Snapshot Replication. In fact, whatever we use, snapshot replicated database can be similarly used and configured with virtual database. I totally believe that we can use it for reporting purpose. In fact, after this database was configured, I think the uses of this tool are unlimited. I will have to spend some more time studying it and will get back to you. Click on images to see larger images. virtual database Console Harddrive Space before virtual database Setup Attach Full Backup Screen Backup on Harddrive Attach Full Backup Screen with Settings virtual database Setup – less than 60 sec virtual database Setup – Online Harddrive Space after virtual database Setup Point in Time Recovery Option – Timeline View virtual database Summary No Performance Difference between Regular DB vs Virtual DB Please note that all SQL Server MVP gets free license of this software. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com), Idera (virtual database) Filed under: Database, Pinal Dave, SQL, SQL Add-On, SQL Authority, SQL Backup and Restore, SQL Data Storage, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Utility, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology Tagged: Idera

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• Secure wipe of a hard drive using WinPE.

  - by Derek Meier

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} The wiping of a hard drive is typically seen as fairly trivial.  There are tons of applications out there that will do it for you.  Point àClickàGlobal-Thermo Nuclear War. However, these applications are typically expensive or unreliable.  Plus, if you have a laptop or lack a secondary computer to put the hard drive into – how on earth do you wipe it quickly and easily while still conforming to a 7 pass rule (this means that every possible bit on the hard drive is set to 0 and then to 1 seven times in a row)?  Yes, one pass should be enough – as turning every bit from a 1 to a zero will wipe the data from existence.  But, we’re dealing with tinfoil hat wearing types here people.  DOD standards dictate at least 3 passes, and typically 7 is the preferred amount.  I’m not going to argue about data recovery.  I have been told to use 7 passes, and so I will.  So say we all! Quite some time ago I used to make a BartPE XP-based boot cd for the original purpose of securely wiping data.  I loved BartPE and integrated so many plugins into my builds that I could do pretty much anything directly from CD.  Reset passwords, uninstall security updates, wipe drives, chkdsk, remove spyware, install Windows, etc.  However, with the newer multi-core systems and new chipsets coming out from vendors, I found that BartPE was rather difficult to keep up to date.  I have since switched to WinPE 3.0 (Windows Preinstallation Environment). http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc748933(WS.10).aspx  It is fairly simple to create your own CD, and I have made a few helpful scripts to easily integrate drivers and rebuild the ISO file for you.  I’ll cover making your own boot CD utilizing WinPE 3.0 in a later post – I can talk about WinPE forever and need to collect my thoughts!!  My wife loves talking about WinPE almost as much as talking about Doctor Who.  Wait, did I say loves?  Hmmmm, I may have meant loathes. The topic at hand?  Right. Wiping a drive! I must have drunk too much coffee this morning.  I like to use a simple batch script that calls a combination of diskpart.exe from Microsoft® and Sdelete.exe created by our friend Mark Russinovich. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897443.aspx All of the following files are located within the same directory on my WinPE boot CD. Here are the contents of wipe_me.bat, script.txt and sdelete.reg. Wipe_me.bat:   @echo off echo. echo     I will completely wipe the local hard drives using echo     7 individual wipes. The data will NOT echo     be recoverable.  I will begin after you pause echo. echo Preparing to partition and format disk. Diskpart.exe /s "script.txt" REM I was annoyed by not having a completely automated script – and Sdelete wants you to accept the license agreement. So, I added a registry file to skip doing that. regedit /S sdelete.reg rem sdelete options selected are: -p (passes) -c (zero free space) -s (recurse through subdirectories, if any) -z (clean free space) [drive letter] sdelete.exe -p 7 -c -s -z c: echo. echo Pass seven complete. echo. echo Wiping complete. Pause exit script.txt: list disk select disk 0 clean create partition primary select partition 1 active format FS=NTFS LABEL="New Volume" QUICK assign letter=c exit *Notes: This script assumes one local hard drive – change the script as you see fit for your environment.  The clean command will overwrite the master boot record and any hidden sector information – so be careful!   sdelete.reg: Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Sysinternals\SDelete] "EulaAccepted"=dword:00000001   With a combination of WinPE, sdelete.exe and your friendly neighborhood text editor you can begin wiping drives as quickly and easily as possible!  I hope this helps, I get asked this a lot in my line of work. Best of luck, Derek

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• New Product: Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2 – Small, Smart, Connected

  - by terrencebarr

  The Internet of Things (IoT) is coming. And, with todays launch of the Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2 product, Java is going to play an even greater role in it. Java in the Internet of Things By all accounts, intelligent embedded devices are penetrating the world around us – driving industrial processes, monitoring environmental conditions, providing better health care, analyzing and processing data, and much more. And these devices are becoming increasingly connected, adding another dimension of utility. Welcome to the Internet of Things. As I blogged yesterday, this is a huge opportunity for the Java technology and ecosystem. To enable and utilize these billions of devices effectively you need a programming model, tools, and protocols which provide a feature-rich, consistent, scalable, manageable, and interoperable platform.  Java technology is ideally suited to address these technical and business problems, enabling you eliminate many of the typical challenges in designing embedded solutions. By using Java you can focus on building smarter, more valuable embedded solutions faster. To wit, Java technology is already powering around 10 billion devices worldwide. Delivering on this vision and accelerating the growth of embedded Java solutions, Oracle is today announcing a brand-new product: Oracle Java Micro Edition (ME) Embedded 3.2, accompanied by an update release of the Java ME Software Development Kit (SDK) to version 3.2. What is Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2? Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2 is a complete Java runtime client, optimized for ARM architecture connected microcontrollers and other resource-constrained systems. The product provides dedicated embedded functionality and is targeted for low-power, limited memory devices requiring support for a range of network services and I/O interfaces.  What features and APIs are provided by Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2? Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2 is a Java ME runtime based on CLDC 1.1 (JSR-139) and IMP-NG (JSR-228). The runtime and virtual machine (VM) are highly optimized for embedded use. Also included in the product are the following optional JSRs and Oracle APIs: File I/O API’s (JSR-75)  Wireless Messaging API’s (JSR-120) Web Services (JSR-172) Security and Trust Services subset (JSR-177) Location API’s (JSR-179) XML API’s (JSR-280)  Device Access API Application Management System (AMS) API AccessPoint API Logging API Additional embedded features are: Remote application management system Support for continuous 24×7 operation Application monitoring, auto-start, and system recovery Application access to peripheral interfaces such as GPIO, I2C, SPIO, memory mapped I/O Application level logging framework, including option for remote logging Headless on-device debugging – source level Java application debugging over IP Connection Remote configuration of the Java VM What type of platforms are targeted by Oracle Java ME 3.2 Embedded? The product is designed for embedded, always-on, resource-constrained, headless (no graphics/no UI), connected (wired or wireless) devices with a variety of peripheral I/O.  The high-level system requirements are as follows: System based on ARM architecture SOCs Memory footprint (approximate) from 130 KB RAM/350KB ROM (for a minimal, customized configuration) to 700 KB RAM/1500 KB ROM (for the full, standard configuration)  Very simple embedded kernel, or a more capable embedded OS/RTOS At least one type of network connection (wired or wireless) The initial release of the product is delivered as a device emulation environment for x86/Windows desktop computers, integrated with the Java ME SDK 3.2. A standard binary of Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2 for ARM KEIL development boards based on ARM Cortex M-3/4 (KEIL MCBSTM32F200 using ST Micro SOC STM32F207IG) will soon be available for download from the Oracle Technology Network (OTN).  What types of applications can I develop with Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2? The Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2 product is a full-featured embedded Java runtime supporting applications based on the IMP-NG application model, which is derived from the well-known MIDP 2 application model. The runtime supports execution of multiple concurrent applications, remote application management, versatile connectivity, and a rich set of APIs and features relevant for embedded use cases, including the ability to interact with peripheral I/O directly from Java applications. This rich feature set, coupled with familiar and best-in class software development tools, allows developers to quickly build and deploy sophisticated embedded solutions for a wide range of use cases. Target markets well supported by Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2 include wireless modules for M2M, industrial and building control, smart grid infrastructure, home automation, and environmental sensors and tracking. What tools are available for embedded application development for Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2? Along with the release of Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2, Oracle is also making available an updated version of the Java ME Software Development Kit (SDK), together with plug-ins for the NetBeans and Eclipse IDEs, to deliver a complete development environment for embedded application development.  OK – sounds great! Where can I find out more? And how do I get started? There is a complete set of information, data sheet, API documentation, “Getting Started Guide”, FAQ, and download links available: For an overview of Oracle Embeddable Java, see here. For the Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2 press release, see here. For the Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2 data sheet, see here. For the Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2 landing page, see here. For the Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2 documentation page, including a “Getting Started Guide” and FAQ, see here. For the Oracle Java ME SDK 3.2 landing and download page, see here. Finally, to ask more questions, please see the OTN “Java ME Embedded” forum To get started, grab the “Getting Started Guide” and download the Java ME SDK 3.2, which includes the Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2 device emulation.  Can I learn more about Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2 at JavaOne and/or Java Embedded @ JavaOne? Glad you asked Both conferences, JavaOne and Java Embedded @ JavaOne, will feature a host of content and information around the new Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2 product, from technical and business sessions, to hands-on tutorials, and demos. Stay tuned, I will post details shortly. Cheers, – Terrence Filed under: Mobile & Embedded Tagged: "Oracle Java ME Embedded", Connected, embedded, Embedded Java, Java Embedded @ JavaOne, JavaOne, Smart

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• Ich bin jetzt Oracle Certified Associate!

  - by britta.wolf

  Jan Peuker, Absolvent der Hochschule Augsburg und University of Melbourne, hat vor kurzem das Zertifikat Oracle Database 10g Administrator Certified Associate erworben. Er hat uns netterweise mit diesem kleinen Text versorgt: "Die Oracle Zertifizierung beginnt üblicherweise mit dem Oracle Certified Associate. Für diese Zertifizierung ist noch keine tiefgehende Praxiserfahrung notwendig. Um den Titel des Oracle Database 11g Administrator Certified Associate zu erlangen, muss man eine Prüfung zu SQL (z.B. 1Z0-051) sowie eine Prüfung zur Administration (1Z0-045) ablegen. Beide Prüfungen dauern 2 Stunden und haben ca. 80 Fragen von denen etwa drei Viertel richtig beantwortet werden müssen, um zu bestehen. Eine Note gibt es nicht. Die Prüfungen finden immer elektronisch statt, die Software erlaubt das Überspringen und Markieren von Fragen. Während meiner Arbeitszeit nach meinem ersten Studium hatte ich häufig mit dem Oracle Datenbanksystem zu tun. Als ich mein Aufbaustudium an der University of Melbourne absolvierte, wurde mir von der Studienberaterin vorgeschlagen, den Kurs „Advanced Database Administration" zu belegen. Dieser beruht vollständig auf den offiziellen Oracle Trainings-Unterlagen zur Prüfung in Oracle Administration und erlaubt daher die Teilnahme an der offiziellen Zertifizierung. Im Gegensatz zur SQL Prüfung, deren Inhalt man sich gut selbst aneignen kann, hilft bei der Administrator-Zertifizierung ein echter Kurs mit Seminar ungemein. Viele Konzepte lassen sich schwer aus einem Buch lernen. Die Bestandteile der SGA oder das Anlegen von Benutzern mögen leicht zugänglich sein, Redo- und Undo-Management sowie Backup und Recovery kann man nur verstehen, wenn man Beispiele hat und diese an einem Testsystem (keine "kleine" XE-Datenbank, sondern eine "richtige" Datenbank mit Enterprise Manager) ausprobieren kann. Übermäßig viel Zeit habe ich keinesfalls investiert, weil das Grundsystem sehr logisch ist. Für die weniger nachvollziehbaren Bereiche, besonders die neuen Features, habe ich mir Fachbegriffe auf Lernkarten geschrieben und die Trainingsunterlagen am System durchgespielt. Die Prüfung war für mich überraschend schwer, weil das einfache "Tagesgeschäft" deutlich unterrepräsentiert ist. In den Multiple-Choice-Fragen werden viele Besonderheiten und Use-Cases abgefragt (online findet man viele Beispielfragen). Da beide Tests in Englisch sind, sollte man nicht nur in der Terminologie des Oracle Datenbanksystems sondern auch in Fachbegriffen der Datenbankwelt allgemein bewandert sein. Oft machen einzelne Wörter (z.B. redundant oder synchronized, redo log oder redo log buffer) die richtige Antwort aus, ein signifikanter Anteil der Fragen beruht auf Zeichnungen oder Diagrammen, die beschrieben werden müssen. So muss man z.B. anhand eines Log-Auszugs beurteilen, warum die Datenbank nicht sauber geschlossen wurde. Allgemeines Wissen über Datenbanksysteme hilft leider nicht viel, da überproportional viele Fragen zu Oracle-spezifischen Themen gestellt werden, wie z.B. Optimierungs-Dienste (ADDM), Flashback, SQL Loader und ein wenig PL/SQL. Die SQL Prüfung ist dagegen sehr geradlinig - was aber nicht einfacher heißt. Hier kommt es mehr auf Auswendiglernen von Syntax an, was mir persönlich nicht liegt. Vor allem als Anwendungsprogrammierer kennt man oft proprietäre SQL-Funktionen nicht, es fällt schwer, sich einzelne Datumsberechnungsfunktionen, Typkonvertierungen, Namespaces oder krude Join-Methoden zu merken. Auf all dies wird in der Prüfung aber sehr viel Wert gelegt. Auch hier wird man wieder mit zweideutigen Multiple-Choice Fragen konfrontiert, bei denen sich z.B. nur die Reihenfolge der Parameter unterscheidet. Zudem sind die Parameter auch nicht ausgeschrieben, sondern in einem Entity-Relationship-Diagramm gegeben, wobei man auf die richtigen Datentypen achten muss. Mir persönlich war die Zeit fast zu knapp bemessen, weil man bei vielen Fragen erst ein Diagramm, einen Datenauszug oder einen längeren Text lesen muss, um dann die richtigen Statements zu finden. Hier helfen Lernkarten also nur bedingt - stattdessen üben, üben, üben. Durch den relativ niedrigen Pass-Score von 70% kann man es sich leisten, unsichere Fragen zuerst zu überspringen und erst nachdem alle sicheren beantwortet sind, zu überdenken. Die Prüfung ist auf jeden Fall fair. Ich habe durch das Oracle-Zertifizierungsprogramm viel gelernt. Die Datenbanken unter meiner Aufsicht laufen deutlich performanter und liefern höhere Verfügbarkeit, weil ich Probleme eliminieren konnte, die mir vorher nicht klar waren. Eine klassische Misskonfiguration, volle Archive Logs, weil diese mit zu lange gehaltenem Flashback-Speicher kollidieren, konnte ich bereits in einer der ersten Stunden meines Kurses an der Uni Melbourne mit Hilfe meines Professors klären. Beide Prüfungen waren problemlos parallel zu anderen Prüfungen zu absolvieren. Empfehlen kann ich eine gründliche Online-Recherche aber auch die Oracle Press-Bücher, welche mit Prüfungsfragen am Ende jedes Kapitels aufwarten. So spart man sich Zeit und ist trotzdem gut vorbereitet. Auch wenn ich keine Laufbahn als Administrator einschlagen werde, bin ich froh die zugrundeliegende Technologie vieler Anwendungen besser zu verstehen. Für meine tägliche Arbeit als Anwendungsentwickler hat es mir vor allem geholfen, Oracle-Konzepte z.B. im Bereich der Transaktionssteuerung und Wiederherstellung zu verstehen und damit viele Open Source Produkte jetzt sinnvoller bewerten und empfehlen zu können." Eine Übersicht der Zertifizierungspfade finden Sie auf der Oracle University Webseite (dann einfach "Deutschland""auswählen und anschließend auf den Punkt "Zertifizierungen" klicken).

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• Kaiden and the Arachnoid Cyst

  - by Martin Hinshelwood

  Some of you may remember when my son Kaiden was born I posted pictures of him and his sister. Kaiden is now 15 months old and is progressing perfectly in every area except that and we had been worried that he was not walking yet. We were only really concerned as his sister was walking at 8 months. Figure: Kai as his usual self   Jadie and I were concerned over that and that he had a rather large head (noggin) so we talked to various GP’s and our health visitor who immediately dismissed our concerns every time. That was until about two months ago when we happened to get a GP whose daughter had Hyper Mobility and she recognised the symptoms immediately. We were referred to the Southbank clinic who were lovely and the paediatrician confirmed that he had Hyper Mobility after testing all of his faculties. This just means that his joints are overly mobile and would need a little physiotherapy to help him out. At the end the paediatrician remarked offhand that he has a rather large head and wanted to measure it. Sure enough he was a good margin above the highest percentile mark for his height and weight. The paediatrician showed the measurements to a paediatric consultant who, as a precautionary measure, referred us for an MRI at Yorkhill Children's hospital. Now, Yorkhill has always been fantastic to us, and this was no exception. You know we have NEVER had a correct diagnosis for the kids (with the exception of the above) from a GP and indeed twice have been proscribed incorrect medication that made the kids sicker! We now always go strait to Yorkhill to save them having to fix GP mistakes as well. Monday 24th May, 7pm The scan went fantastically, with Kaiden sleeping in the MRI machine for all but 5 minutes at the end where he waited patiently for it to finish. We were not expecting anything to be wrong as this was just a precautionary scan to make sure that nothing in his head was affecting his gross motor skills. After the scan we were told to expect a call towards the end of the week… Tuesday 25th May, 12pm The very next day we got a call from Southbank who said that they has found an Arachnoid Cyst and could we come in the next day to see a Consultant and that Kai would need an operation. Wednesday 26th May, 12:30pm We went into the Southbank clinic and spoke to the paediatric consultant who assured us that it was operable but that it was taking up considerable space in Kai’s head. Cerebrospinal fluid is building up as a cyst is blocking the channels it uses to drain. Thankfully they told us that prospects were good and that Kai would expect to make a full recovery before showing us the MRI pictures. Figure: Normal brain MRI cross section. This normal scan shows the spaces in the middle of the brain that contain and produce the Cerebrospinal fluid. Figure: Normal Cerebrospinal Flow This fluid is needed by the brain but is drained in the middle down the spinal column. Figure: Kai’s cyst blocking the four channels. I do not think that I need to explain the difference between the healthy picture and Kai’s picture. However you can see in this first picture the faint outline of the cyst in the middle that is blocking the four channels from draining. After seeing the scans a Neurosurgeon has decided that he is not acute, but needs an operation to unblock the flow. Figure: OMFG! You can see in the second picture the effect of the build up of fluid. If I was not horrified by the first picture I was seriously horrified by this one. What next? Kai is not presenting the symptoms of vomiting or listlessness that would show an immediate problem and as such we will get an appointment to see the Paediatric Neurosurgeon at the Southern General hospital in about 4 weeks. This timescale is based on the Neurosurgeon seeing the scans. After that Kai will need an operation to release the pressure and either remove the cyst completely or put in a permanent shunt (tube from brain to stomach) to bypass the blockage. We have updated his notes for the referral with additional recent information on top of the scan that the consultant things will help improve the timescales, but that is just a guess.   All we can do now is wait and see, and be watchful for tell tail signs of listlessness, eye problems and vomiting that would signify a worsening of his condition.   Technorati Tags: Personal

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• Tykie

  - by Brian

  Here’s the obituary my mother wrote for Tykie, I still miss the little guy quite a bit. Anyone who’s interested in further information on hearing dogs should check out the IHDI website. I cannot begin to express how helpful a hearing dog can be for the hearing impaired. If you feel so inclined, please make a donation. In Memoriam, Tykie 1993-2010 The American Legion Post 401, South Wichita, KS, supported one of its members and commander by sponsoring a service dog for him. Unlike most service dogs this one was for the hearing impaired. Both Ocie and Betty Sims had hearing loss – Ocie more than Betty. The Post and Auxilliary had garage sales, auctions and other fund-raising endeavors to get donations for the dog. Betty made Teddy bears with growlers that were auctioned for donations to bring a hearing dog from International Hearing Dog, Henderson, Colorado. Tykie, a small wiry, salt and pepper terrier, arrived September 1, 1994 to begin his work that included attending Post 401 meetings and celebrations as well as raising more money to be donated to IHD to help others have hearing dogs. Tykie was a young dog less than a year old when he came to Wichita. He was always anxious to please and seldom barked, though he did put out a kind of cry when he was giving his urgent announcement that someone was at the door or the telephone was ringing. He also enjoyed chasing squirrels in the backyard garden that Ocie prized. In 1995, Betty almost died of a lung infection. Tykie was at the hospital with Ocie when he could visit. Several weeks after she was able to come home after a miraculous recovery, Tykie and Ocie went to a car show in downtown Wichita. Ocie’s retina tore loose in the only eye he could see out of and he almost blind was in great pain. How Ocie and Tykie got home is still a mystery, but the family legend goes that Tykie added seeing eye dog to his repertoire and helped drive him home. Health problems continued for Ocie and when he was placed in a nursing home, Tykie was moved to be Betty’s hearing dog. No problem for Tykie, he still saw his friends at the post and continued to help with visitors at the door. The night of May 3, 1999, Betty and Tykie were in the bedroom watching TV when Tykie began hitting her with both front paws as he would if something were urgent. She said later she thought he wanted to go out. As she and the dog walked down the hall towards the back of the house, Tykie hit her again with his front paws with such urgency that she fell into a small coat closet. That small 2-by-2 closet became their refuge as that very second the roof of her house went off as the f4 tornado raced through the city. Betty acquired one small wound on her hand from a piece of flying glass as she pulled Tykie into the closet with her. Tykie was a hero that day and a lot of days after. He kept Betty going as she rebuilt her home and after her husband died April 15, 2000. Tykie had to be cared for so she had to take him outside and bring him inside. He attended weddings of grandchildren and funerals of Post friends. When Betty died February 17, 2002 Tykie’s life changed again. IHD gave approval for his transfer and retirement to Betty and Ocie’s grandson, Brian Laird, who has a similar hearing loss to his grandfather. A few days after the funeral Tykie flew to his new home in Rutherford, NJ where he was able to take long walks for a couple of years before moving back to the Kansas City area. He was still full of adventure. He was written up in a book about service dogs and his story of the tornado and his picture appeared. He spent weekends at Brian’s mother’s farm to get muddy and be afraid of cats and chickens. He also took on an odyssey as he slipped from his fenced yard in Lenexa one day and walked more than seven miles in Overland Park traffic before being found by a good Samaritan who called IHD to find out where he belonged. Tykie was deaf for about the last two years of his long life and became blind as well, but he continued to strive to please. Tykie was 16 years and 4 months when he was cremated. His ashes were scattered on the graves of Betty and Ocie Sims at Greenwood Cemetery west of Wichita on the afternoon of March 21, 2010, with about a dozen family and Post 401 members. It is still the rule. Service dogs are the only dogs allowed inside the Post home. Submitted by Linda Laird, daughter of Betty and Ocie and mother of Brian Laird.

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• CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server

  - by The Geek

  Overview CloudBerry Online Backup version 1.5 is a front end application for Amazon S3 storage for backing up your Windows Home Server data. It makes backing up your essential data to Amazon S3 an easy process in the event the disaster strikes. Installation You install the Cloudberry Addin as you do for any addins for Windows Home Server. On a PC on your network, browse to the shared folders on your server and open the Add-Ins folder and copy over WHS_CloudBerryOnlineBackupSetup_v1.5.0.81S3o.msi (link below), then close out of the folder. Next launch the Windows Home Server Console, click Settings, then Add-Ins. Click on the Available tab and click the Install button. It installs very quickly, and when you get the Installation Succeeded dialog click OK. You will lose connection through the Console, just click OK, then reconnect. After reconnecting, you’ll see CloudBerry Backup has been installed, and you can begin using it. You can setup a backup plan right away or find out what’s new with version 1.5. Amazon S3 Account If you don’t already have an Amazon S3 account, you’ll be prompted to create a new one. Click on the Create an account hyperlink, which takes you to the Amazon S3 page where you can sign up. After reviewing the functionality of Amazon S3, click on the Sign Up for Amazon S3 button. Enter in your contact information and accept the Amazon Web Services Customer Agreement. You’re then shown their pricing for storage plans. The amount of storage space you use will depend on your needs. It’s relatively cheap for smaller amounts of data. Just keep in mind the more data you store and download, the more S3 is going to cost. Note: Amazon S3 is introducing Reduced Redundancy Storage which will lower the cost of the data stored on S3. CloudBerry 1.5 will support this new feature. You can find out more about this new pricing structure. Note: Keep in mind that after you first sign up for an Amazon S3 account, it can take up to 24 hours to be authorized. In fact, you may want to sign up for the S3 account before installing the Add-In. After you sign up for your S3 Account, you’ll be given access credentials which you can enter in and create a Storage Bucket name. Features & Use CloudBerry is wizard driven, straight-forward and easy to use. Here we take a look at creating a backup plan. To begin, click on the Setup Backup Plan button to kick off the wizard. Select your backup mode based on the amount of features you want. In our example we’re going to select Advanced Mode as it offers more features than Simple Mode. Select your backup storage account or create a new one. You can select a default account by checking Use currently selected account as default. Now you can go through and select the files and folders you want to backup from your home server. Check the box Show physical drives to get more of a selection of files and folders. This also allows you to backup files from your data drive as well. It has full support for drive extenders so you can backup your shares as well. The cool thing about Cloudberry is it allows you to drill down specific files and folders unlike other WHS backup utilities. Next you can use advanced filters to specify files and/or folders to skip if you want. There are compression and encryption options as well. This will save storage space, bandwidth, and keep your data secure. Purge Options allow you to customize options for getting rid of older files. You can also select the option to delete files from the S3 service that have been deleted locally. Be careful with this option however, as you won’t be able to restore files if you delete them locally. You have some nice scheduling options from running backups manually, specific date and time, or recurring daily, weekly or monthly. Receive email notifications in all cases or when a backup fails. This is a good option so you know if things were successful or something failed, and you need to back it up manually. Email notifications… Give your plan a name… Then if the summary page looks good you can continue, or still go back at this point if something doesn’t look correct and needs adjusting. That’s it! You’re ready to go, and you have an option to start your first backup right away. After you’ve created a backup plan, you can go in and edit, delete, view history, or restore files. Restoring Files using CloudBerry To restore data from your backups kick off the Restore Wizard and select the backup to restore from. You can select the last backup, a specific point in time, or manually browse through the files. Browse through the directory and select the files you need to restore. Choose the destination to restore the files to. You can select from the original location, a specific location, to overwrite existing files, or set the location as the default for future restores. If the files are encrypted, enter in the correct passwords. If the summary looks good, click on Next to start the restore process. You’ll be shown a progress bar at the bottom of the screen while the files are restored. After the process has completed, close out of the Restore Wizard. In this example we restored a couple of music files to the desktop of Windows Home Server… But as shown above you can save them to the original location, other network locations, or WHS shared folders. This can make it a lot easier to keep track of files you’ve restored. You can also access different options for CloudBerry by clicking Settings in WHS Console then CloudBerry Backup. Here you can set up a new storage account, check for updates, app options, Diagnostics, and send feedback. Under Options there are several settings you can tweak to get the best experience for your WHS backups. CloudBerry Web Interface Another nice feature is the CloudBerry Web Interface so you can access your data from anywhere you have an Internet connection. To check it out in WHS Console, click on the Backup Web Interface link…you’ll probably want to bookmark the link in your favorite browser. Note: This feature is still in beta and at the time of this review, the Web Interface wasn’t up and running so we weren’t able to test it out. Performance The Cloudberry app works very well through the Windows Home Server Console. The amount of time it takes to backup or restore your data will depend on the speed of your Internet connection and size of the files. In our tests, backing up 1GB of data to the Amazon S3 account took around an hour, but we were running it on a DSL with limited upload speeds so your mileage will vary. Product Support In our experience, the team at CloudBerry offered great support in a timely manner when contacting them. You can fill out a help request through a form on their website and they also have a community forum. Conclusion We were very pleased with CloudBerry Online Backup for WHS. It’s wizard driven interface makes it extremely easy to use, and offers comprehensive backup choices for your Amazon S3 account. CloudBerry will only backup files that have been modified, so if files haven’t been changed, they won’t be backed up again.They offer a free 15 day trial and is $29.99 after that for a full license. Once you buy the app you own it, and charges to your S3 account will vary depending on the amount of data you upload. If you’re looking for an effective and easy to use front end application to backup your Windows Home Server data to your Amazon S3 account, CloudBerry is a recommended affordable choice. Download CloudBerry for Windows Home Server Sign Up For Amazon S3 Account Rating Installation: 9 Ease of Use: 8 Features: 8 Performance: 8 Product Support: 8 Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Restore Files from Backups on Windows Home ServerGMedia Blog: Setting Up a Windows Home ServerBackup Windows Home Server Folders to an External Hard DriveBackup Your Windows Home Server Off-Site with Asus WebstorageRemove a Network Computer from Windows Home Server TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 VMware Workstation 7 Acronis Online Backup Sculptris 1.0, 3D Drawing app AceStock, a Tiny Desktop Quote Monitor Gmail Button Addon (Firefox) Hyperwords addon (Firefox) Backup Outlook 2010 Daily Motivator (Firefox)

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• SQL SERVER – Beginning of SQL Server Architecture – Terminology – Guest Post

  - by pinaldave

  SQL Server Architecture is a very deep subject. Covering it in a single post is an almost impossible task. However, this subject is very popular topic among beginners and advanced users.  I have requested my friend Anil Kumar who is expert in SQL Domain to help me write  a simple post about Beginning SQL Server Architecture. As stated earlier this subject is very deep subject and in this first article series he has covered basic terminologies. In future article he will explore the subject further down. Anil Kumar Yadav is Trainer, SQL Domain, Koenig Solutions. Koenig is a premier IT training firm that provides several IT certifications, such as Oracle 11g, Server+, RHCA, SQL Server Training, Prince2 Foundation etc. In this Article we will discuss about MS SQL Server architecture. The major components of SQL Server are: Relational Engine Storage Engine SQL OS Now we will discuss and understand each one of them. 1) Relational Engine: Also called as the query processor, Relational Engine includes the components of SQL Server that determine what your query exactly needs to do and the best way to do it. It manages the execution of queries as it requests data from the storage engine and processes the results returned. Different Tasks of Relational Engine: Query Processing Memory Management Thread and Task Management Buffer Management Distributed Query Processing 2) Storage Engine: Storage Engine is responsible for storage and retrieval of the data on to the storage system (Disk, SAN etc.). to understand more, let’s focus on the following diagram. When we talk about any database in SQL server, there are 2 types of files that are created at the disk level – Data file and Log file. Data file physically stores the data in data pages. Log files that are also known as write ahead logs, are used for storing transactions performed on the database. Let’s understand data file and log file in more details: Data File: Data File stores data in the form of Data Page (8KB) and these data pages are logically organized in extents. Extents: Extents are logical units in the database. They are a combination of 8 data pages i.e. 64 KB forms an extent. Extents can be of two types, Mixed and Uniform. Mixed extents hold different types of pages like index, System, Object data etc. On the other hand, Uniform extents are dedicated to only one type. Pages: As we should know what type of data pages can be stored in SQL Server, below mentioned are some of them: Data Page: It holds the data entered by the user but not the data which is of type text, ntext, nvarchar(max), varchar(max), varbinary(max), image and xml data. Index: It stores the index entries. Text/Image: It stores LOB ( Large Object data) like text, ntext, varchar(max), nvarchar(max),  varbinary(max), image and xml data. GAM & SGAM (Global Allocation Map & Shared Global Allocation Map): They are used for saving information related to the allocation of extents. PFS (Page Free Space): Information related to page allocation and unused space available on pages. IAM (Index Allocation Map): Information pertaining to extents that are used by a table or index per allocation unit. BCM (Bulk Changed Map): Keeps information about the extents changed in a Bulk Operation. DCM (Differential Change Map): This is the information of extents that have modified since the last BACKUP DATABASE statement as per allocation unit. Log File: It also known as write ahead log. It stores modification to the database (DML and DDL). Sufficient information is logged to be able to: Roll back transactions if requested Recover the database in case of failure Write Ahead Logging is used to create log entries Transaction logs are written in chronological order in a circular way Truncation policy for logs is based on the recovery model SQL OS: This lies between the host machine (Windows OS) and SQL Server. All the activities performed on database engine are taken care of by SQL OS. It is a highly configurable operating system with powerful API (application programming interface), enabling automatic locality and advanced parallelism. SQL OS provides various operating system services, such as memory management deals with buffer pool, log buffer and deadlock detection using the blocking and locking structure. Other services include exception handling, hosting for external components like Common Language Runtime, CLR etc. I guess this brief article gives you an idea about the various terminologies used related to SQL Server Architecture. In future articles we will explore them further. Guest Author  The author of the article is Anil Kumar Yadav is Trainer, SQL Domain, Koenig Solutions. Koenig is a premier IT training firm that provides several IT certifications, such as Oracle 11g, Server+, RHCA, SQL Server Training, Prince2 Foundation etc. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Security, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Training, T SQL, Technology

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• Recreating OMS instances in a HA environment when instances on all nodes are lost

  - by rnigam

  Oracle highly recommends deploying EM in a HA environment. The best practices for HA deployments, backup and housekeeping of your Enterprise Manager environment are documented in the Oracle Enterprise Manager Advanced Configuration Guide. It is imperative that there is a good disaster recovery plan in place for your EM deployment. In this post I want to talk about a customer who failed to do the correct planning and housekeeping for EM and landed in a situation where we the all the OMSes were nearly blown away had we not jumped to help. We recently hit an issue at a customer site where we had a two node OMS setup of the Enterprise Manager and a RAC Database being used as the EM repository. An accidental delete of the OMS oracle home left us with a single node deployment. While we were trying to figure out a possible path to recover the first node, the second node was rebooted under a maintenance window. What followed was a complete site outage as the Admin and managed servers would not start on either of the nodes. In my situation there were - No backups of the Oracle Homes from any node - No OMS Configuration snapshots (created using the “emctl exportconfig oms” command) and the instance home was completely lost on node 1 which also had the Admin Server  We did however have: - A copy of the emkey.ora that I found under the OMS_ORACLE_HOME/ of the second node (NOTE: it is a bad practice to have your emkey present under the OMS Oracle home directory on the same server as the OMS. The backup of the emkey should be maintained on some other server. In this case however it was a savior in my situation since there were no backups - The oms oracle home on the second node but missing a number of files and had a number of changes done to the files in the home. There were a number of attempts to start the server by modifying various files based on the Weblogic server logs to have atleast node up and running but all of them failed. Here is how you can recover from this scenario: Follow these steps: STEP 1: Check status of emkey.ora Check whether the emkey exists is present in the EM repository or not. Run the following command: $OMS_ORACLE_HOME/bin/emctl status emkey If the output is something like this below then you are good to go and the key is present in the repository ./emctl status emkey Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g Release 1 Grid Control Copyright (c) 1996, 2010 Oracle Corporation. All rights reserved. Enter Enterprise Manager Root (SYSMAN) Password : The EMKey is configured properly. Here are the messages that you might see as the emctl status emkey output depending upon whether the EM Admin Server is up and if the key is configured properly: Case1:  AdminServer is up, emkey is proper in CredStore & not in repos. This is same as the output of the command shown above:The EMKey is configured properly Case 2: AdminServer is up, emkey is proper in CredStore & exists in repos:The EMKey is configured properly, but is not secure. Secure the EMKey by running "emctl config emkey -remove_from_repos".Case 3: AdminServer is down or emkey is corrupted in CredStore) & (emkey exists in repos): The EMKey exists in the Management Repository, but is not configured properly or is corrupted in the credential store.Configure the EMKey by running "emctl config emkey -copy_to_credstore".Case 4: (AdminServer is down or emkey is corrupted in CredStore) & (emkey does not exist in repos): The EMKey is not configured properly or is corrupted in the credential store and does not exist in the Management Repository. To correct the problem:1) Get the backed up emkey.ora file.2) Configure the emkey by running "emctl config emkey -copy_to_credstore_from_file". If not the key was not secured properly, we will have to be put in the repository before proceeding. Look at the next step 2 for doing this There may be cases (like mine) where running emctl may give errors like the following: $OMS_ORACLE_HOME/bin/emctl status emkey Exception in thread “Main Thread” java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: oracle/security/pki/OracleWallet At oracle.sysman.emctl.config.oms.EMKeyCmds.main (EMKeyCmds.java:658) Just move to the next step to put the key back in the repository STEP 2: Put emkey.ora back in the repository Skip this step if your emkey.ora is present in the repository. If not, you need to put the key back in the repository See if you can run the following command (with sample output): $OMS_ORACLE_HOME/bin/emctl config emkey –copy_to_repos Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g Release 1 Grid Control Copyright (c) 1996, 2010 Oracle Corporation. All rights reserved. The EMKey has been copied to the Management Repository. This operation will cause the EMKey to become unsecure. After the required operation has been completed, secure the EMKey by running "emctl config emkey -remove_from_repos". Typically the key is present under $OMS_ORACLE_HOME/sysman/config directory before being removed after the install as a best practice. If you hit any errors while running emctl commands like the one mentioned in step 1, jump to step 3 and we will take care of the emkey.ora in Step 5 STEP 3: Get the port information Check for the existing port information in the emd.properties file under EM_INSTANCE_DIRECTORY (typically gc_inst directory right above the Middleware home where you have deployed em. For eg. /u01/app/oracle/product/gc_inst in case your oms home is /u01/app/oracle/product/Middleware/oms11g) In my case I got the information from the emgc.properties present in the gc_inst on the second node. If you can run emctl you may want to try the following command as well $OMS_ORACLE_HOME/bin/emctl status oms –details Note this information as this will be used in the next step STEP 4: Perform cleanup on Node 1 Note the oracle home of the Weblogic and OMS, get the list of applied patches in the homes (using opatch lsinventory command), take a backup copy of the home just in case we need it and then de-install/remove oracle homes, update inventory and cleanup processes on the first node STEP 5: Perform Software Only Installation of OMS on Node 1 Perform Weblogic 10.3.2 installation exactly under the same location as present in the earlier installation. Perform software only installation of the OMS using the following command. This will not run any configuration assistants and bypass all user interface validations runInstaller –noconfig -validationaswarnings Select the “Additional OMS” option while performing the installation. Provide the same path for OMS and Instance directories like the previous installation Use the port information collected in Step 3 while performing the installation. Once the installation is complete run the allroot.sh script to complete the binary deployment STEP 6: Apply one-off patches At this point you can apply any patches to the OMS Oracle Home previously. You only need to run opatch to install the patch in the home and not required to run the SQLs STEP 7: Copy EM key This step is only required if you were not able to use emctl command to put the emkey back into the EM repository in STEP 2 Copy the emkey.ora file of the old installation you have under $OMS_ORACLE_HOME/sysman/config directory of the newly installed OMS STEP 8: Configure Grid Control Domain Run the following command to configure the EM domain and OMS. Note that you need to use a different GC Domain name than what you used earlier. For example I have used GCDOMAIN11 as the new domain name when my previous domain name was GCDOMAIN $OMS_ORACLE_HOME/bin/omsca new –AS_USERNAME weblogic –EM_DOMAIN_NAME GCDOMAIN11 –NM_USER nodemanager -nostart This command as shown below will prompt for a number of inputs like Admin Server hostname, port, password, etc. Verify if the defaults shown are correct by pressing enter or provide a new value STEP 9: Run Add-ON Configuration Assistant After this step run the following add-on configuration assistant. This was used in my case to configure the virtualization add-on $OMS_ORACLE_HOME/addonca -oui -omsonly -name vt -install gc STEP 10: Start the OMS Now start the OMS using $OMS_ORACLE_HOME/bin/emctl start oms In a multi-node setup like mine you would either have a software load balancer or DNS round robin (using a virtual host name that resolves to one of multiple OMS hostnames) being used for load balancing. Secure the OMS against the SLB or DNS virtual hostname using the following $ OMS_HOME/bin/emctl secure oms -host slb.example.com -secure_port 1159 -slb_port 1159 -slb_console_port 443 STEP 11: Configure the Agent From the $AGENT_ORACLE_HOME/bin run the ./agentca –f At this point you should have your OMS on node 1 fully re-covered. Clean up node 2 and use the normal Additional OMS installation process documented in the official installation guide to add the additional OMS on node 2 Summary It took us nearly a little over two days to completely recover the environment with some other non-EM related issues that hit us along the way as well. In the end a situation like this could have been completely avoided had the proper housekeeping and backup of the Enterprise Manager Deployment been done in the first place. This is going to a topic that we cover in the next post. In the meantime please do refer to the Oracle Enterprise Manager Advanced Configuration Guide for planning your EM installation, backup and housekeeping procedures. This can be found here: http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E11857_01/index.htm Thanks This post would not have been possible without Raj Aggarwal, Prasad Chebrolu and Ravikumar Basa who helped to recover the environment and provided all the support we needed

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• RSS Feeds currently on Simple-Talk

  - by Andrew Clarke

  There are a number of news-feeds for the Simple-Talk site, but for some reason they are well hidden. Whilst we set about reorganizing them, I thought it would be a good idea to list some of the more important ones. The most important one for almost all purposes is the Homepage RSS feed which represents the blogs and articles that are placed on the homepage. Main Site Feed representing the Homepage ..which is good for most purposes but won't always have all the blogs, or maybe it will occasionally miss an article. If you aren't interested in all the content, you can just use the RSS feeds that are more relevant to your interests. (We'll be increasing these categories soon) The newsfeed for SQL articles The .NET section newsfeed The newsfeed for Red Gate books The newsfeed for Opinion articles The SysAdmin section newsfeed if you want to get a more refined feed, then you can pick and choose from these feeds for each category so as to make up your custom news-feed in the SQL section, SQL Training Learn SQL Server Database Administration TSQL Programming SQL Server Performance Backup and Recovery SQL Tools SSIS SSRS (Reporting Services) in .NET there are... ASP.NET Windows Forms .NET Framework ,NET Performance Visual Studio .NET tools in Sysadmin there are Exchange General Virtualisation Unified Messaging Powershell in opinion, there is... Geek of the Week Opinion Pieces in Books, there is .NET Books SQL Books SysAdmin Books And all the blogs have got feeds. So although you can get all the blogs from here.. Main Blog Feed          You can get individual RSS feeds.. AdamRG's Blog       Alex.Davies's Blog       AliceE's Blog       Andrew Clarke's Blog       Andrew Hunter's Blog       Bart Read's Blog       Ben Adderson's Blog       BobCram's Blog       bradmcgehee's Blog       Brian Donahue's Blog       Charles Brown's Blog       Chris Massey's Blog       CliveT's Blog       Damon's Blog       David Atkinson's Blog       David Connell's Blog       Dr Dionysus's Blog       drsql's Blog       FatherJack's Blog       Flibble's Blog       Gareth Marlow's Blog       Helen Joyce's Blog       James's Blog       Jason Crease's Blog       John Magnabosco's Blog       Laila's Blog       Lionel's Blog       Matt Lee's Blog       mikef's Blog       Neil Davidson's Blog       Nigel Morse's Blog       Phil Factor's Blog       red@work's Blog       reka.burmeister's Blog       Richard Mitchell's Blog       RobbieT's Blog       RobertChipperfield's Blog       Rodney's Blog       Roger Hart's Blog       Simon Cooper's Blog       Simon Galbraith's Blog       TheFutureOfMonitoring's Blog       Tim Ford's Blog       Tom Crossman's Blog       Tony Davis's Blog       As well as these blogs, you also have the forums.... SQL Server for Beginners Forum     Programming SQL Server Forum    Administering SQL Server Forum    .NET framework Forum    .Windows Forms Forum   ASP.NET Forum   ADO.NET Forum 

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• How to restore your production database without needing additional storage

  - by David Atkinson

  Production databases can get very large. This in itself is to be expected, but when a copy of the database is needed the database must be restored, requiring additional and costly storage.  For example, if you want to give each developer a full copy of your production server, you’ll need n times the storage cost for your n-developer team. The same is true for any test databases that are created during the course of your project lifecycle. If you’ve read my previous blog posts, you’ll be aware that I’ve been focusing on the database continuous integration theme. In my CI setup I create a “production”-equivalent database directly from its source control representation, and use this to test my upgrade scripts. Despite this being a perfectly valid and practical thing to do as part of a CI setup, it’s not the exact equivalent to running the upgrade script on a copy of the actual production database. So why shouldn’t I instead simply restore the most recent production backup as part of my CI process? There are two reasons why this would be impractical. 1. My CI environment isn’t an exact copy of my production environment. Indeed, this would be the case in a perfect world, and it is strongly recommended as a good practice if you follow Jez Humble and David Farley’s “Continuous Delivery” teachings, but in practical terms this might not always be possible, especially where storage is concerned. It may just not be possible to restore a huge production database on the environment you’ve been allotted. 2. It’s not just about the storage requirements, it’s also the time it takes to do the restore. The whole point of continuous integration is that you are alerted as early as possible whether the build (yes, the database upgrade script counts!) is broken. If I have to run an hour-long restore each time I commit a change to source control I’m just not going to get the feedback quickly enough to react. So what’s the solution? Red Gate has a technology, SQL Virtual Restore, that is able to restore a database without using up additional storage. Although this sounds too good to be true, the explanation is quite simple (although I’m sure the technical implementation details under the hood are quite complex!) Instead of restoring the backup in the conventional sense, SQL Virtual Restore will effectively mount the backup using its HyperBac technology. It creates a data and log file, .vmdf, and .vldf, that becomes the delta between the .bak file and the virtual database. This means that both read and write operations are permitted on a virtual database as from SQL Server’s point of view it is no different from a conventional database. Instead of doubling the storage requirements upon a restore, there is no ‘duplicate’ storage requirements, other than the trivially small virtual log and data files (see illustration below). The benefit is magnified the more databases you mount to the same backup file. This technique could be used to provide a large development team a full development instance of a large production database. It is also incredibly easy to set up. Once SQL Virtual Restore is installed, you simply run a conventional RESTORE command to create the virtual database. This is what I have running as part of a nightly “release test” process triggered by my CI tool. RESTORE DATABASE WidgetProduction_Virtual FROM DISK=N'D:\VirtualDatabase\WidgetProduction.bak' WITH MOVE N'WidgetProduction' TO N'C:\WidgetWF\ProdBackup\WidgetProduction_WidgetProduction_Virtual.vmdf', MOVE N'WidgetProduction_log' TO N'C:\WidgetWF\ProdBackup\WidgetProduction_log_WidgetProduction_Virtual.vldf', NORECOVERY, STATS=1, REPLACE GO RESTORE DATABASE WidgetProduction_Virtual WITH RECOVERY   Note the only change from what you would do normally is the naming of the .vmdf and .vldf files. SQL Virtual Restore intercepts this by monitoring the extension and applies its magic, ensuring the ‘virtual’ restore happens rather than the conventional storage-heavy restore. My automated release test then applies the upgrade scripts to the virtual production database and runs some validation tests, giving me confidence that were I to run this on production for real, all would go smoothly. For illustration, here is my 8Gb production database: And its corresponding backup file: Here are the .vldf and .vmdf files, which represent the only additional used storage for the new database following the virtual restore.   The beauty of this product is its simplicity. Once it is installed, the interaction with the backup and virtual database is exactly the same as before, as the clever stuff is being done at a lower level. SQL Virtual Restore can be downloaded as a fully functional 14-day trial. Technorati Tags: SQL Server

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• How to restore your production database without needing additional storage

  - by David Atkinson

  Production databases can get very large. This in itself is to be expected, but when a copy of the database is needed the database must be restored, requiring additional and costly storage.  For example, if you want to give each developer a full copy of your production server, you'll need n times the storage cost for your n-developer team. The same is true for any test databases that are created during the course of your project lifecycle. If you've read my previous blog posts, you'll be aware that I've been focusing on the database continuous integration theme. In my CI setup I create a "production"-equivalent database directly from its source control representation, and use this to test my upgrade scripts. Despite this being a perfectly valid and practical thing to do as part of a CI setup, it's not the exact equivalent to running the upgrade script on a copy of the actual production database. So why shouldn't I instead simply restore the most recent production backup as part of my CI process? There are two reasons why this would be impractical. 1. My CI environment isn't an exact copy of my production environment. Indeed, this would be the case in a perfect world, and it is strongly recommended as a good practice if you follow Jez Humble and David Farley's "Continuous Delivery" teachings, but in practical terms this might not always be possible, especially where storage is concerned. It may just not be possible to restore a huge production database on the environment you've been allotted. 2. It's not just about the storage requirements, it's also the time it takes to do the restore. The whole point of continuous integration is that you are alerted as early as possible whether the build (yes, the database upgrade script counts!) is broken. If I have to run an hour-long restore each time I commit a change to source control I'm just not going to get the feedback quickly enough to react. So what's the solution? Red Gate has a technology, SQL Virtual Restore, that is able to restore a database without using up additional storage. Although this sounds too good to be true, the explanation is quite simple (although I'm sure the technical implementation details under the hood are quite complex!) Instead of restoring the backup in the conventional sense, SQL Virtual Restore will effectively mount the backup using its HyperBac technology. It creates a data and log file, .vmdf, and .vldf, that becomes the delta between the .bak file and the virtual database. This means that both read and write operations are permitted on a virtual database as from SQL Server's point of view it is no different from a conventional database. Instead of doubling the storage requirements upon a restore, there is no 'duplicate' storage requirements, other than the trivially small virtual log and data files (see illustration below). The benefit is magnified the more databases you mount to the same backup file. This technique could be used to provide a large development team a full development instance of a large production database. It is also incredibly easy to set up. Once SQL Virtual Restore is installed, you simply run a conventional RESTORE command to create the virtual database. This is what I have running as part of a nightly "release test" process triggered by my CI tool. RESTORE DATABASE WidgetProduction_virtual FROM DISK=N'C:\WidgetWF\ProdBackup\WidgetProduction.bak' WITH MOVE N'WidgetProduction' TO N'C:\WidgetWF\ProdBackup\WidgetProduction_WidgetProduction_Virtual.vmdf', MOVE N'WidgetProduction_log' TO N'C:\WidgetWF\ProdBackup\WidgetProduction_log_WidgetProduction_Virtual.vldf', NORECOVERY, STATS=1, REPLACE GO RESTORE DATABASE mydatabase WITH RECOVERY   Note the only change from what you would do normally is the naming of the .vmdf and .vldf files. SQL Virtual Restore intercepts this by monitoring the extension and applies its magic, ensuring the 'virtual' restore happens rather than the conventional storage-heavy restore. My automated release test then applies the upgrade scripts to the virtual production database and runs some validation tests, giving me confidence that were I to run this on production for real, all would go smoothly. For illustration, here is my 8Gb production database: And its corresponding backup file: Here are the .vldf and .vmdf files, which represent the only additional used storage for the new database following the virtual restore.   The beauty of this product is its simplicity. Once it is installed, the interaction with the backup and virtual database is exactly the same as before, as the clever stuff is being done at a lower level. SQL Virtual Restore can be downloaded as a fully functional 14-day trial. Technorati Tags: SQL Server

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• How I Work: A Cloud Developer's Workstation

  - by BuckWoody

  I've written here a little about how I work during the day, including things like using a stand-up desk (still doing that, by the way). Inspired by a Twitter conversation yesterday, I thought I might explain how I set up my computing environment. First, a couple of important points. I work in Cloud Computing, specifically (but not limited to) Windows Azure. Windows Azure has features to run a Virtual Machine (IaaS), run code without having to control a Virtual Machine (PaaS) and use databases, video streaming, Hadoop and more (a kind of SaaS for tech pros). As such, my designs run the gamut of on-premises, VM's in the Cloud, and software that I write for a platform. I focus on data primarily, meaning that I design a lot of systems that use an RDBMS (like SQL Server or Windows Azure Databases) or a NoSQL approach (MongoDB on Azure or large-scale Key-Value Pairs in Table storage) and even Hadoop and R, and also Cloud Numerics in F#. All that being said, those things inform my choices below. Hardware I have a Lenovo X220 tablet/laptop which I really like a great deal - it's a light, tough, extremely fast system. When I travel, that's the system I take. It has 8GB of RAM, and an SSD drive. I sometimes use that to develop or work at a client's site, on the road, or in the living room when I'm not in my home office. My main system is a GateWay DX430017 - I've maxed it out on RAM, and I have two 1TB drives in it. It's not only my workstation for work; I leave it on all the time and it streams our videos, music and books. I have about 3400 e-books, and I've just started using Calibre to stream the library. I run Windows 8 on it so I can set up Hyper-V images, since Windows Azure allows me to move regular Hyper-V disks back and forth to the Cloud. That's where all my "servers" are, when I have to use an IaaS approach. The reason I use a desktop-style system rather than a laptop only approach is that a good part of my job is setting up architectures to solve really big, complex problems. That means I have to simulate entire networks on-premises, along with the Hybrid Cloud approach I use a lot. I need a lot of disk space and memory for that, and I use two huge monitors on my stand-up desk. I could probably use 10 monitors if I had the room for them. Also, since it's our home system as well, I leave it on all the time and it doesn't travel.   Software For the software for my systems, it's important to keep in mind that I not only write code, but I design databases, teach, present, and create Linux and other environments. Windows 8 - While the jury is out for me on the new interface, the context-sensitive search, integrated everything, and speed is just hands-down the right choice. I've evaluated a server OS, Linux, even an Apple, but I just am not as efficient on those as I am with Windows 8. Visual Studio Ultimate - I develop primarily in .NET (C# and F# mostly) and I use the Team Foundation Server in the cloud, and I'm asked to do everything from UI to Services, so I need everything. Windows Azure SDK, Windows Azure Training Kit - I need the first to set up my Azure PaaS coding, and the second has all the info I need for PaaS, IaaS and SaaS. This is primarily how I get paid. :) SQL Server Developer Edition - While I might install Oracle, MySQL and Postgres on my VM's, the "outside" environment is SQL Server for an RDBMS. I install the Developer Edition because it has the same features as Enterprise Edition, and comes with all the client tools and documentation. Microsoft Office -  Even if I didn't work here, this is what I would use. I've just grown too accustomed to doing business this way to change, so my advice is always "use what works", and this does. The parts I use are: OneNote (and a Math Add-in) - I do almost everything - and I mean everything in OneNote. I can code, do high-end math, present, design, collaborate and more. All my notebooks are on my Skydrive. I can use them from any system, anywhere. If you take the time to learn this program, you'll be hooked. Excel with PowerPivot - Don't make that face. Excel is the world's database, and every Data Scientist I know - even the ones where I teach at the University of Washington - know it, use it, and love it.  Outlook - Primary communications, CRM and contact tool. I have all of my social media hooked up to it, so when I get an e-mail from you, I see everything, see all the history we've had on e-mail, find you on a map and more. Lync - I was fine with LiveMeeting, although it has it's moments. For me, the Lync client is tres-awesome. I use this throughout my day, present on it, stay in contact with colleagues and the folks on the dev team (who wish I didn't have it) and more.  PowerPoint - Once again, don't make that face. Whenever I see someone complaining about PowerPoint, I have 100% of the time found they don't know how to use it. If you suck at presenting or creating content, don't blame PowerPoint. Works great on my machine. :) Zoomit - Magnifier - On Windows 7 (and 8 as well) there's a built-in magnifier, but I install Zoomit out of habit. It enlarges the screen. If you don't use one of these tools (or their equivalent on some other OS) then you're presenting/teaching wrong, and you should stop presenting/teaching until you get them and learn how to show people what you can see on your tiny, tiny monitor. :) Cygwin - Unix for Windows. OK, that's not true, but it's mostly that. I grew up on mainframes and Unix (IBM and HP, thank you) and I can't imagine life without  sed, awk, grep, vim, and bash. I also tend to take a lot of the "Science" and "Development" and "Database" packages in it as well. PuTTY - Speaking of Unix, when I need to connect to my Linux VM's in Windows Azure, I want to do it securely. This is the tool for that. Notepad++ - Somewhere between torturing myself in vim and luxuriating in OneNote is Notepad++. Everyone has a favorite text editor; this one is mine. Too many features to name, and it's free. Browsers - I install Chrome, Firefox and of course IE. I know it's in vogue to rant on IE, but I tend to think for myself a great deal, and I've had few (none) problems with it. The others I have for the haterz that make sites that won't run in IE. Visio - I've used a lot of design packages, but none have the extreme meta-data edit capabilities of Visio. I don't use this all the time - it can be rather heavy, but what it does it does really well. I also present this way when I'm not using PowerPoint. Yup, I just bring up Visio and diagram away as I'm chatting with clients. Depending on what we're covering, this can be the right tool for that. Tweetdeck - The AIR one, not that new disaster they came out with. I live on social media, since you, dear readers, are my cube-mates. When I get tired of you all, I close Tweetdeck. When I need help or someone needs help from me, or if I want to see a picture of a cat while I'm coding, I bring it up. It's up most all day and night. Windows Media Player - I listen to Trance or Classical when I code, and I find music managers overbearing and extra. I just use what comes in the box, and it works great for me. R - F# and Cloud Numerics now allows me to load in R libraries (yay!) and I use this for statistical work on big data loads. Microsoft Math - One of the most amazing, free, rich, amazing, awesome, amazing calculators out there. I get the 64-bit version for quick math conversions, plots and formula-checks. Python - I know, right? Who knew that the scientific community loved Python so much. But they do. I use 2.7; not as much runs with 3+. I also use IronPython in Visual Studio, or I edit in Notepad++ Camstudio recorder - Windows PSR - In much of my training, and all of my teaching at the UW, I need to show a process on a screen. Camstudio records screen and voice, and it's free. If I need to make static training, I use the Windows PSR tool that's built right in. It's ostensibly for problem duplication, but I use it to record for training.   OK - your turn. Post a link to your blog entry below, and tell me how you set your system up.  

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• SQL Saturday 43 in Redmond

  - by AjarnMark

  I attended my first SQLSaturday a couple of days ago, SQLSaturday #43 in Redmond (at Microsoft).  I got there really early, primarily because I forgot how fast I can get there from my home when nobody else is on the road.  On a weekday in rush hour traffic, that would have taken two hours to get there.  I gave myself 90 minutes, and actually got there in about 45.  Crazy! I made the mistake of going to the main Microsoft campus, but that’s not where the event was being held.  Instead it was in a big Microsoft conference center on the other side of the highway.  Fortunately, I had the address with me and quickly realized my mistake.  When I got back on track, I noticed that there were bright yellow signs out on the street corner that looked like they said they were for SOL Saturday, which actually was appropriate since it was the sunniest day around here in a long time. Since I was there so early, the registration was just getting setup, so I found Greg Larsen who was coordinating things and offered to help.  He put me to work with a group of people organizing the pre-printed raffle tickets and stuffing swag bags. I had never been to a SQLSaturday before this one, so I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect even though I have read about a few on some blogs.  It makes sense that each one will be a little bit different since they are almost completely volunteer driven, and the whole concept is still in its early stages.  I have been to the PASS Summit for the last several years, and was hoping for a smaller version of that.  Now, it’s not really fair to compare one free day of training run entirely by volunteers with a multi-day, $1,000+ event put on under the direction of a professional event management company.  But there are some parallels. At this SQLSaturday, there was no opening general session, just coffee and pastries in the common area / expo hallway and straight into the first group of sessions.  I don’t know if that was because there was no single room large enough to hold everyone, or for other reasons.  This worked out okay, but the organization guy in me would have preferred to have even a 15 minute welcome message from the organizers with a little overview of the day.  Even something as simple as, “Thanks to persons X, Y, and Z for helping put this together…Sessions will start in 20 minutes and are all in rooms down this hallway…the bathrooms are on the other side of the conference center…lunch today is pizza and we would like to thank sponsor Q for providing it.”  It doesn’t need to be much, certainly not a full-blown Keynote like at the PASS Summit, but something to use as a rallying point to pull everyone together and get the day off to an official start would be nice.  Again, there may have been logistical reasons why that was not feasible here.  I’m just putting out my thoughts for other SQLSaturday coordinators to consider. The event overall was great.  I believe that there were over 300 in attendance, and everything seemed to run smoothly.  At least from an attendee’s point of view where there was plenty of muffins in the morning and pizza in the afternoon, with plenty of pop to drink.  And hey, if you’ve got the food and drink covered, a lot of other stuff could go wrong and people will be very forgiving.  But as I said, everything appeared to run pretty smoothly, at least until Buck Woody showed up in his Oracle shirt.  Other than that, the volunteers did a great job! I was a little surprised by how few people in my own backyard that I know.  It makes sense if you really think about it, given how many companies must be using SQL Server around here.  I guess I just got spoiled coming into the PASS Summit with a few contacts that I already knew would be there.  Perhaps I have been spending too much time with too few people at the Summits and I need to step out and meet more folks.  Of course, it also is different since the Summit is the big national event and a number of the folks I know are spread out across the country, so the Summit is the only time we’re all in the same place at the same time.  I did make a few new contacts at SQLSaturday, and bumped into a couple of people that I knew (and a couple others that I only knew from Twitter, and didn’t even realize that they were here in the area). Other than the sheer entertainment value of Buck Woody’s session, the one that was probably the greatest value for me was a quick introduction to PowerShell.  I have not done anything with it yet, but I think it will be a good tool to use to implement my plans for automated database recovery testing.  I saw just enough at the session to take away some of the intimidation factor, and I am getting ready to jump in and see what I can put together in the next few weeks.  And that right there made the investment worthwhile.  So I encourage you, if you have the opportunity to go to a SQLSaturday event near you, go for it!

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• Windows 7 doesn't boot after Ubuntu install

  - by Omu

  I had windows 7 installed on my pc, then I installed Ubuntu 10.10/ During the installation process I have chosen to manually set my partitions: I set a 10GB drive for ubuntu root 1GB drive for swap and for boot drive I've chosen the one used by windows 7 Now I can boot ubuntu, I have the windows 7 option in the boot list, but when I choose Windows 7, it shows me a black screen for a second and returns back to boot screen. Boot Info Script 0.55 dated February 15th, 2010 ============================= Boot Info Summary: ============================== = Windows is installed in the MBR of /dev/sda sda1: _________________________________________________________________________ File system: ntfs Boot sector type: Grub 2 Boot sector info: Grub 2 is installed in the boot sector of sda1 and looks at sector 304908237 of the same hard drive for core.img, but core.img can not be found at this location. No errors found in the Boot Parameter Block. Operating System: Windows 7 Boot files/dirs: /bootmgr /Boot/BCD /Windows/System32/winload.exe sda2: _________________________________________________________________________ File system: ntfs Boot sector type: Windows XP Boot sector info: No errors found in the Boot Parameter Block. Operating System: Boot files/dirs: sda3: _________________________________________________________________________ File system: Extended Partition Boot sector type: - Boot sector info: sda5: _________________________________________________________________________ File system: ext4 Boot sector type: - Boot sector info: Operating System: Ubuntu 10.10 Boot files/dirs: /boot/grub/grub.cfg /etc/fstab /boot/grub/core.img sda4: _________________________________________________________________________ File system: swap Boot sector type: - Boot sector info: =========================== Drive/Partition Info: ============================= Drive: sda ___________________ _____________________________________________________ Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders, total 312581808 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Partition Boot Start End Size Id System /dev/sda1 * 63 62,894,474 62,894,412 7 HPFS/NTFS /dev/sda2 62,894,478 291,579,749 228,685,272 7 HPFS/NTFS /dev/sda3 291,579,811 309,157,937 17,578,127 5 Extended /dev/sda5 291,579,813 309,157,937 17,578,125 83 Linux /dev/sda4 309,159,936 312,580,095 3,420,160 82 Linux swap / Solaris blkid -c /dev/null: ____________________________________________________________ Device UUID TYPE LABEL /dev/sda1 1266BB2766BB0A8D ntfs /dev/sda2 BEDBF1147C76F703 ntfs DATA /dev/sda3: PTTYPE="dos" /dev/sda4 dd38226d-c7c9-4ae5-a726-6d18d34a22e4 swap /dev/sda5 e1dafd1c-f855-406b-8f9a-f9d527c70255 ext4 /dev/sda: PTTYPE="dos" ============================ "mount | grep ^/dev output: =========================== Device Mount_Point Type Options /dev/sda5 / ext4 (rw,errors=remount-ro,commit=0) =========================== sda5/boot/grub/grub.cfg: =========================== # # DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE # # It is automatically generated by grub-mkconfig using templates # from /etc/grub.d and settings from /etc/default/grub # ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/00_header ### if [ -s $prefix/grubenv ]; then set have_grubenv=true load_env fi set default="0" if [ "${prev_saved_entry}" ]; then set saved_entry="${prev_saved_entry}" save_env saved_entry set prev_saved_entry= save_env prev_saved_entry set boot_once=true fi function savedefault { if [ -z "${boot_once}" ]; then saved_entry="${chosen}" save_env saved_entry fi } function recordfail { set recordfail=1 if [ -n "${have_grubenv}" ]; then if [ -z "${boot_once}" ]; then save_env recordfail; fi; fi } function load_video { insmod vbe insmod vga } insmod part_msdos insmod ext2 set root='(hd0,msdos5)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set e1dafd1c-f855-406b-8f9a-f9d527c70255 if loadfont /usr/share/grub/unicode.pf2 ; then set gfxmode=640x480 load_video insmod gfxterm fi terminal_output gfxterm insmod part_msdos insmod ext2 set root='(hd0,msdos5)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set e1dafd1c-f855-406b-8f9a-f9d527c70255 set locale_dir=($root)/boot/grub/locale set lang=en insmod gettext if [ "${recordfail}" = 1 ]; then set timeout=-1 else set timeout=10 fi ### END /etc/grub.d/00_header ### ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/05_debian_theme ### set menu_color_normal=white/black set menu_color_highlight=black/light-gray ### END /etc/grub.d/05_debian_theme ### ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/10_linux ### menuentry 'Ubuntu, with Linux 2.6.35-22-generic' --class ubuntu --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os { recordfail insmod part_msdos insmod ext2 set root='(hd0,msdos5)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set e1dafd1c-f855-406b-8f9a-f9d527c70255 linux /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.35-22-generic root=UUID=e1dafd1c-f855-406b-8f9a-f9d527c70255 ro quiet splash initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.35-22-generic } menuentry 'Ubuntu, with Linux 2.6.35-22-generic (recovery mode)' --class ubuntu --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os { recordfail insmod part_msdos insmod ext2 set root='(hd0,msdos5)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set e1dafd1c-f855-406b-8f9a-f9d527c70255 echo 'Loading Linux 2.6.35-22-generic ...' linux /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.35-22-generic root=UUID=e1dafd1c-f855-406b-8f9a-f9d527c70255 ro single echo 'Loading initial ramdisk ...' initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.35-22-generic } ### END /etc/grub.d/10_linux ### ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/20_linux_xen ### ### END /etc/grub.d/20_linux_xen ### ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/20_memtest86+ ### menuentry "Memory test (memtest86+)" { insmod part_msdos insmod ext2 set root='(hd0,msdos5)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set e1dafd1c-f855-406b-8f9a-f9d527c70255 linux16 /boot/memtest86+.bin } menuentry "Memory test (memtest86+, serial console 115200)" { insmod part_msdos insmod ext2 set root='(hd0,msdos5)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set e1dafd1c-f855-406b-8f9a-f9d527c70255 linux16 /boot/memtest86+.bin console=ttyS0,115200n8 } ### END /etc/grub.d/20_memtest86+ ### ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/30_os-prober ### menuentry "Windows 7 (loader) (on /dev/sda1)" { insmod part_msdos insmod ntfs set root='(hd0,msdos1)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set 1266bb2766bb0a8d chainloader +1 } ### END /etc/grub.d/30_os-prober ### ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/40_custom ### # This file provides an easy way to add custom menu entries. Simply type the # menu entries you want to add after this comment. Be careful not to change # the 'exec tail' line above. ### END /etc/grub.d/40_custom ### ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/41_custom ### if [ -f $prefix/custom.cfg ]; then source $prefix/custom.cfg; fi ### END /etc/grub.d/41_custom ### =============================== sda5/etc/fstab: =============================== # /etc/fstab: static file system information. # # Use 'blkid -o value -s UUID' to print the universally unique identifier # for a device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name # devices that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5). # # proc /proc proc nodev,noexec,nosuid 0 0 /dev/sda5 / ext4 errors=remount-ro 0 1 # swap was on /dev/sda4 during installation UUID=dd38226d-c7c9-4ae5-a726-6d18d34a22e4 none swap sw 0 0 =================== sda5: Location of files loaded by Grub: =================== 156.1GB: boot/grub/core.img 156.3GB: boot/grub/grub.cfg 149.9GB: boot/initrd.img-2.6.35-22-generic 156.3GB: boot/vmlinuz-2.6.35-22-generic 149.9GB: initrd.img 156.3GB: vmlinuz

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• How to restore your production database without needing additional storage

  - by David Atkinson

  Production databases can get very large. This in itself is to be expected, but when a copy of the database is needed the database must be restored, requiring additional and costly storage.  For example, if you want to give each developer a full copy of your production server, you'll need n times the storage cost for your n-developer team. The same is true for any test databases that are created during the course of your project lifecycle. If you've read my previous blog posts, you'll be aware that I've been focusing on the database continuous integration theme. In my CI setup I create a "production"-equivalent database directly from its source control representation, and use this to test my upgrade scripts. Despite this being a perfectly valid and practical thing to do as part of a CI setup, it's not the exact equivalent to running the upgrade script on a copy of the actual production database. So why shouldn't I instead simply restore the most recent production backup as part of my CI process? There are two reasons why this would be impractical. 1. My CI environment isn't an exact copy of my production environment. Indeed, this would be the case in a perfect world, and it is strongly recommended as a good practice if you follow Jez Humble and David Farley's "Continuous Delivery" teachings, but in practical terms this might not always be possible, especially where storage is concerned. It may just not be possible to restore a huge production database on the environment you've been allotted. 2. It's not just about the storage requirements, it's also the time it takes to do the restore. The whole point of continuous integration is that you are alerted as early as possible whether the build (yes, the database upgrade script counts!) is broken. If I have to run an hour-long restore each time I commit a change to source control I'm just not going to get the feedback quickly enough to react. So what's the solution? Red Gate has a technology, SQL Virtual Restore, that is able to restore a database without using up additional storage. Although this sounds too good to be true, the explanation is quite simple (although I'm sure the technical implementation details under the hood are quite complex!) Instead of restoring the backup in the conventional sense, SQL Virtual Restore will effectively mount the backup using its HyperBac technology. It creates a data and log file, .vmdf, and .vldf, that becomes the delta between the .bak file and the virtual database. This means that both read and write operations are permitted on a virtual database as from SQL Server's point of view it is no different from a conventional database. Instead of doubling the storage requirements upon a restore, there is no 'duplicate' storage requirements, other than the trivially small virtual log and data files (see illustration below). The benefit is magnified the more databases you mount to the same backup file. This technique could be used to provide a large development team a full development instance of a large production database. It is also incredibly easy to set up. Once SQL Virtual Restore is installed, you simply run a conventional RESTORE command to create the virtual database. This is what I have running as part of a nightly "release test" process triggered by my CI tool. RESTORE DATABASE WidgetProduction_virtual FROM DISK=N'C:\WidgetWF\ProdBackup\WidgetProduction.bak' WITH MOVE N'WidgetProduction' TO N'C:\WidgetWF\ProdBackup\WidgetProduction_WidgetProduction_Virtual.vmdf', MOVE N'WidgetProduction_log' TO N'C:\WidgetWF\ProdBackup\WidgetProduction_log_WidgetProduction_Virtual.vldf', NORECOVERY, STATS=1, REPLACE GO RESTORE DATABASE mydatabase WITH RECOVERY   Note the only change from what you would do normally is the naming of the .vmdf and .vldf files. SQL Virtual Restore intercepts this by monitoring the extension and applies its magic, ensuring the 'virtual' restore happens rather than the conventional storage-heavy restore. My automated release test then applies the upgrade scripts to the virtual production database and runs some validation tests, giving me confidence that were I to run this on production for real, all would go smoothly. For illustration, here is my 8Gb production database: And its corresponding backup file: Here are the .vldf and .vmdf files, which represent the only additional used storage for the new database following the virtual restore.   The beauty of this product is its simplicity. Once it is installed, the interaction with the backup and virtual database is exactly the same as before, as the clever stuff is being done at a lower level. SQL Virtual Restore can be downloaded as a fully functional 14-day trial. Technorati Tags: SQL Server

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• Tuning Red Gate: #4 of Some

  - by Grant Fritchey

  First time connecting to these servers directly (keys to the kingdom, bwa-ha-ha-ha. oh, excuse me), so I'm going to take a look at the server properties, just to see if there are any issues there. Max memory is set, cool, first possible silly mistake clear. In fact, these look to be nicely set up. Oh, I'd like to see the ANSI Standards set by default, but it's not a big deal. The default location for database data is the F:\ drive, where I saw all the activity last time. Cool, the people maintaining the servers in our company listen, parallelism threshold is set to 35 and optimize for ad hoc is enabled. No shocks, no surprises. The basic setup is appropriate. On to the problem database. Nothing wrong in the properties. The database is in SIMPLE recovery, but I think it's a reporting system, so no worries there. Again, I'd prefer to see the ANSI settings for connections, but that's the worst thing I can see. Time to look at the queries, tables, indexes and statistics because all the information I've collected over the last several days suggests that we're not looking at a systemic problem (except possibly not enough memory), but at the traditional tuning issues. I just want to note that, I started looking at the system, not the queries. So should you when tuning your environment. I know, from the data collected through SQL Monitor, what my top poor performing queries are, and the most frequently called, etc. I'm starting with the most frequently called. I'm going to get the execution plan for this thing out of the cache (although, with the cache dumping constantly, I might not get it). And it's not there. Called 1.3 million times over the last 3 days, but it's not in cache. Wow. OK. I'll see what's in cache for this database: SELECT  deqs.creation_time,         deqs.execution_count,         deqs.max_logical_reads,         deqs.max_elapsed_time,         deqs.total_logical_reads,         deqs.total_elapsed_time,         deqp.query_plan,         SUBSTRING(dest.text, (deqs.statement_start_offset / 2) + 1,                   (deqs.statement_end_offset - deqs.statement_start_offset) / 2                   + 1) AS QueryStatement FROM    sys.dm_exec_query_stats AS deqs         CROSS APPLY sys.dm_exec_sql_text(deqs.sql_handle) AS dest         CROSS APPLY sys.dm_exec_query_plan(deqs.plan_handle) AS deqp WHERE   dest.dbid = DB_ID('Warehouse') AND deqs.statement_end_offset > 0 AND deqs.statement_start_offset > 0 ORDER BY deqs.max_logical_reads DESC ; And looking at the most expensive operation, we have our first bad boy: Multiple table scans against very large sets of data and a sort operation. a sort operation? It's an insert. Oh, I see, the table is a heap, so it's doing an insert, then sorting the data and then inserting into the primary key. First question, why isn't this a clustered index? Let's look at some more of the queries. The next one is deceiving. Here's the query plan: You're thinking to yourself, what's the big deal? Well, what if I told you that this thing had 8036318 reads? I know, you're looking at skinny little pipes. Know why? Table variable. Estimated number of rows = 1. Actual number of rows. well, I'm betting several more than one considering it's read 8 MILLION pages off the disk in a single execution. We have a serious and real tuning candidate. Oh, and I missed this, it's loading the table variable from a user defined function. Let me check, let me check. YES! A multi-statement table valued user defined function. And another tuning opportunity. This one's a beauty, seriously. Did I also mention that they're doing a hash against all the columns in the physical table. I'm sure that won't lead to scans of a 500,000 row table, no, not at all. OK. I lied. Of course it is. At least it's on the top part of the Loop which means the scan is only executed once. I just did a cursory check on the next several poor performers. all calling the UDF. I think I found a big tuning opportunity. At this point, I'm typing up internal emails for the company. Someone just had their baby called ugly. In addition to a series of suggested changes that we need to implement, I'm also apologizing for being such an unkind monster as to question whether that third eye & those flippers belong on such an otherwise lovely child.

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• I thought everyone did it like this – Training Session Code Management

  - by Fatherjack

  One of an occasional series of blogs about things that I do that perhaps others don’t. From very early on in my dealings with SQL Server Management Studio I started using Solutions and Projects. This means that I started using them when writing sessions and it wasn’t until speaking with someone at PASS Summit 2013 that I found out that this was a process that was unheard of by some people. So, here we go, a run through how I create and manage code and other documents that I use in presentations. For people unsure what solutions and projects are; • Solution – a container for one or more projects. • Project – a container for files, .sql files are grouped as Queries, all other files are stored as Misc. How do I start? Open Management Studio as normal, and then click File | New and select Project This will bring up the New Project dialog box and you can select/add details as necessary in the places indicated. If this is the first project you are creating then be sure to select the Create directory for solution check box (4). If know in advance that you are going to have more than one project in the solution then you may want to edit the Solution name (3) as by default it will take the name of the project that you enter at (2). This will lead you to the following folder structure (depending on the location that you chose in 3) above. In SSMS you need to turn on the Solution Explorer, either via the View menu or pressing Ctrl + Alt + L                   This will bring up a dockable window that will let you quickly access the files that you choose to include in the Solution.                     Can we get to work and write some code yet please? Yes, we can. As with many Microsoft products there are several ways to go about this, let’s look at the easiest way when creating new code. When writing a presentation I usually start from the position we are currently in – a brand new solution and project with no code. Later on we will look at incorporating existing code files into the Project where we need it. Right-click on the Project name and choose Add New Query           As soon as you click this you will be prompted to select the sql server that you want to connect to and once you have done that you will have your new query open in the text editor and the Solution Explorer will now look like this, showing your server connection and your new query.               And the Project folder will look like this         Now once you have written your code don’t press save, choose Save As and give the code a better name than QueryX.sql. SSMS will interpret this as a request to rename Query1 and your Project and the Project folder will show that SQLQuery1.sql no longer exists but there is now a file named as you requested. If you happen to click save in error then right-click the query in the project and choose rename.               You can then alter the name as you like, even when open in the SSMS text editor, and the file will be renamed. When creating a set of scripts for a presentation I name files with a numeric prefix so that when they are sorted by name they are in the order that I need to use them during the session. I love this idea but I’ve got loads of existing scripts I want to put in Projects Excellent, adding existing files to a project is easy, let’s consider that you have query files in your My Documents folder and you want to bring them into the Project we have just created. Right-click on the Project and choose Add | Existing Item           Navigate to the location of your chosen file and select it. The file will open in SSMS text editor and the Project will be updated to show that the selected query is now part of your project. If you look in Windows Explorer you will see that the query file has been copied into the Project folder, the original file still remains in your My Documents (or wherever it existed). I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader to explore creating further Projects within a solution but will happily answer questions if you get into difficulties. What other advantages do I get from this? Well, as all your code is neatly in one Solution folder and the folder contains only files that are pertinent to the session you are presenting then it makes it very easy to share this code, simply copy the whole folder onto a USB stick, Blog, FTP location, wherever you choose and it’s all there in one self-contained parcel. You don’t have to limit yourself to .sql query files, you can add any sort of document via the Add Existing Item method, just try it out. Right-click on the protect and choose Add | Existing Item           Change the file type filter.                       You can multi select items here using Ctrl as you click each item you want. When you are done, click the Add button and the items will be brought into your project.                 Again, using this process means the files are copied into the project folder, leaving you original files untouched in their original location. Once they are here you can double click them in the SSMS Solution Explorer to open them, for files with a specific file type then the appropriate application will be launched – ie Word, Excel etc. However, if the files are something that the SSMS Text editor can display then they will open in a tab in SSMS. Try it out with a text file or even a PS1 file … This sounds excellent but what do I need to watch out for? One big thing to consider when working like this is the version of SSMS that you are using. There is something fundamentally different between the different versions in the way that the project (.ssmssqlproj) and solution (.sqlsuo and .ssmssln) files are formatted. If you create a solution in an older version of SSMS and then open it in a newer version you will be given the option to upgrade it. Once you do this upgrade then the older version of SSMS will not be able to open the solution any more. Now this ranks as more of an annoyance than disaster as the files within the projects are not affected in any way, you would just have to delete the files mentioned and recreate the solution in the older version again. Summary So, here we have seen how using SSMS Projects and Solutions can help keep related code files (and other document types) together in a neat structure so that they can be quickly navigated during a presentation and it also makes it incredibly simple to distribute your code and share it with others. I hope this is of use to you and helps you bring more order into your sql files, whether you are a person that does technical presentations or not, having your code grouped and managed can make for a lot of advantages as your code library expands.  

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, May 19, 2014

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, May 19, 2014Popular ReleasesLINQ to Twitter: LINQ to Twitter v3.0.3: Supports .NET 4.5x, Windows Phone 8.x, Windows 8.x, Windows Azure, Xamarin.Android, and Xamarin.iOS. New features include Status/Lookup, Mute APIs, and bug fixes. 100% Twitter API v1.1 coverage, Async, Portable Class Library (PCL).CS-Script for Notepad++ (C# intellisense and code execution): Release v1.0.26.0: Added access to the Release Notes during 'Check for Updates...'' Debug panels Added support for generic types members Members are grouped into 'Raw View' and 'Non-Public members' categories Implemented dedicated (array-like) view for Lists and Dictionaries http://download-codeplex.sec.s-msft.com/Download?ProjectName=csscriptnpp&DownloadId=846498ClosedXML - The easy way to OpenXML: ClosedXML 0.70.0: A lot of fixes. See history.SFDL.NET: SFDL.NET (2.2.9.2): Changelog: Neues Icon Xup.in CnL Plugin BugfixSEToolbox: SEToolbox 01.030.008 Release 1: Fixed cube editor failing to apply color to cubes. Added to cube editor, replace cube dialog, and Build Percent dialog. Corrected for hidden asteroid ore, allowing rare ore to show when importing an asteroid, or converting a 3d model to an asteroid (still appears to be limitations on rare ore in small asteroids). Allowed ore selection to Asteroid file import. (Can copy/import and convert existing asteroid to another ore). Added progress bars to common long running operations. Fixed ...Better Robocopy GUI: Command Line GUI for Robocopy: Better Robocopy GUI had become the primary plugin in Command Line GUI built on .NET 4Mini SQL Query: Mini SQL Query (1.0.71.456): Minor fixes and template corrections.HMS_TEST: ??1: ?? ???????TFS Planning and Disaster Recovery Avoidance Guide: v1.4.BETA - TFS, DR and Azure IaaS Planning Guides: Welcome to the TFS Planning and DR Avoidance Guidance What is new? A new crisper, more compact style, which is easier to consume on multiple devices without sacrificing any content. Also included are the new TFS on Azure IaaS guide and supplementary guides. Note Capacity planning workbook and posters are included in the Everything Zip package. Quality-Bar Detail Documentation has been reviewed by Visual Studio ALM Rangers Documentation has been through an independent technical review ...CRM Web API Lead Capture Example: CRM Web API Lead Capture Example: Sample Visual Studio 2013 project that provides an example of how you could use Web API and Microsoft Azure (could be deployed anywhere) to capture simple HTML form data into Dynamics CRM without directly having to integrate a .NET component.MB Tools: MDT Monitor Tool v1.4: This tool is used to connect to an MDT 2013 Monitor Webservice. The purpose is to provide an alternative to the MDT Deployment Workbench. Update: New in v1.4: Fixed bug where Dart Remote Viewer didnt work Option to show client local time instead of UTC, edit config.xml to enable/disable New in v1.2: Fixed Dart Remote Viewer not connection to full ip Issue: 1222 New in v1.1: Added timers for autorefresh of webservice info Added some better errorchecking and cleaned up the code a bit ...Bob The Simple Text Game: Bob The Simple Text Game: Bob The Simple Text GameWinAudit: WinAudit Freeware v3.0: WinAudit.exe v3.0 MD5: 88750CCF49FF7418199B2645755830FA Known Issues: 1. Report creation can be very slow when right-to-left (Hebrew) characters are present. 2. Emsisoft Anti-Malware may stop and/or quarantine WinAudit. This happens when WinAudit attempts to obtain a list if running programmes. You will need to set an exception rule in Emsisoft to allow WinAudit to run.crashme: crashme source tarball 2.7: Updated for 64-bit Linux environments with a system call to change the default no-execute-data protection. This tarball is equivalent to committed source revision 108727LUA for Windows CE: LUA 5.2.3 for Windows CE 5.0 (ARMV4I): LUA for Windows CE This is a preliminary porting of the latest LUA release (5.2.3) to the Windows CE platform. Command-line compiler, interpreter, dynamic-link-library, and import-library (both static and dynamic stubs) are provided as a binary release. In this release, the Windows CE compatibility CRT static library has been added, in order to embed statically the LUA interpreter. Moreover, the include files are present in the distribution archive, too.Jquery Dirty Flag: Beta Version 1.0: Simple Way to Manage Dirty Flag @ Client SideProView: ProView-2: Added a new short-cut key: Ctrl+D copies the value from the above cell to the current cell. The key combination Shift+NumPadMinus makes an underscore character Fixed a bug during renaming that displayed the message "The file is in use by another process" The spread sheet can now be customized with a highlighting row color for the currently displayed image.TerraMap (Terraria World Map Viewer): TerraMap 1.0.4: Added support for the new Terraria v1.2.4 update. New items, walls, and tiles Fixed Issue 35206: Hightlight/Find doesn't work for Demon Altars Fixed finding Demon Hearts/Shadow Orbs Added ability to find Enchanted Swords (in the stone) and Water Bolt books Fixed installer not uninstalling older versions The setup file will make sure .NET 4 is installed, install TerraMap, create desktop and start menu shortcuts, add a .wld file association, and launch TerraMap. If you prefer the zip ...WPF Localization Extension: v2.2.1: Issue #9277 Issue #9292 Issue #9311 Issue #9312 Issue #9313 Issue #9314CtrlAltStudio Viewer: CtrlAltStudio Viewer 1.2.1.41167 Release: This release of the CtrlAltStudio Viewer includes the following significant features: Oculus Rift support. Stereoscopic 3D display support. Variable walking / flying speed. Xbox 360 Controller support. Kinect for Windows support. Based on Firestorm viewer 4.6.5 codebase. For more details, see the release notes linked to below. Release notes: http://ctrlaltstudio.com/viewer/release-notes/1-2-1-41167-release Support info: http://ctrlaltstudio.com/viewer/support Privacy policy: http:/...New Projects.NET Development Library: .NET Development LibraryBizTalk Flow Visualizer: This tool has been designed to help BizTalk developers and administrators visualize the flow of messages through their implementation of BizTalk Server.BlackSwan: Provides tools for value investingCamel Case Parser: Simple method with unit tests for splitting an up or down camel cased word into the words that comprise it.eukota_sandbox: really just a repository for practicing with some students i mentor.Hyperlapse: Software repository for Hyperlapse, a Universal Store App for Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8.1, National Level entry in code.fun.do hackathon by Microsoft.Informiamoci Partecipando: Progetto presentato al #code4italyKipLink: MVC5 Web Api 2 EF DB First Oracle 11g Custom MembershipMatAcademyPlayground: MatAcademy 2014 playgroundOgCRM: Proyecto OgCRMPowerSYDI: This is an re-engineering of SYDI vbscript created by Patrick Ogenstad in PowerShell. SharpLightReporting: SharpLightReporting is a reporting system for .Net developers, based on open source SpreadsheetLight excel/spreadsheet automation system. T4 Template to pre-generate views for Entity Framework 5.0, .NET 4.5: T4 Template to pre-generate views for Entity Framework 6.0, .NET 4.5Task Board: Simple TaskboardWentex OS: Wentex das kostenfrei Betriebssystem für alleWinldTunnel - VIPBrowserProject: NoneWintcy: Wintcy's only function is to disable taskbar transparency that Microsoft for some reason has left in Windows 8.????????-????????【??】????????????: ????????????????????????,??????????,????,????,?????????、??????,??????。 ??????-??????【??】??????????: ???????????,?????????????? ??。????????、????、????、?????????? ???????。 ??????-??????【??】??????????: ???????????????????????:????、????、??????????????,????????。????????! ??????-【??】??????????: ???????????????????,????,????,????,???????,?????,?????.??????。 ??????-??????【??】??????????: ????????????????????????????:???????,??????,????,????,????,?????！ ??????-??????【??】??????????: ????????????,??,??,??,??? ?,??,,??,??,??,??,??,??,????????,??????！ ??????-??????【??】??????????: ?????????????????,?????????????。????????????,???????,???????,?????,?????。 ??????-??????【??】??????????: ???????????? 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???? ???? ???? ???? ???? ??????? ?????，????????????????. ??????-??????【??】??????????: ???????????????:?????? ???? ??????,???????,??????,???????。 ??????-??????【??】??????????: ????????????,????,??????????? ???? ???? ?????????,???,??,?????! ??????-??????【??】??????????: ???????????,????,????,??????,????“????、????、????、????”????????,??????. ??????-??????【??】??????????: ???????????、????、????、??????、????、????????,????????、?????????,?????。 ??????-??????【??】??????????: ?????????????????,?????????????。????????????,???????,???????,?????,?????。 ??????-??????【??】??????????: ?????????????????????????????、????、????、???????????,????,????! ??????-??????【??】??????????: ????????????????6?,???????????????????????????,??????????????,?????????！ ??????-??????【??】??????????: ????????????????8?，????????,????????,??????????,?????,????? ,????????! ??????-??????【??】??????????: ?????????????????,??????????????、???????、???????、???????、?????！ ??????-??????【??】??????????: ??????????????????????????,???????????,????????,?????????????????????。 ??????-??????【??】??????????: ????????????????????,????????????????,????????????????,??????！ ??????-??????【??】??????????: ????????????,????,??????????? ???? ???? ?????????,???,??,?????! ??????-??????【??】??????????: ???????????????????????????,???????????????????????,???????。 ??????-??????【??】??????????: ????????????????:?????? ???? ??????,???????,??????,???????。 ??????-??????【??】??????????: ?????????、???、??、??????????????????????????????,????????????????! ??????-??????【??】??????????: ????????????????????,????????:??、??、???,?????????????????????! ??????-??????【??】??????????: ?????????????,?????,???????????,???????,????,????,????,?????。 ??????-??????【??】??????????: ???????????????,????,???????、???????????,???????????,????,?????,???????。 ??????-??????【??】??????????: ??????????????????,???????????,??????????????,??????????，??????????????！ ??????-??????【??】??????????: ????????????????,?????????????? ??。??????????、????、????、?????????? ???????。 ??????-??????【??】??????????: ????????????,??????????、??????,??????????、????、????、???????。 ??????-??????【??】??????????: ?????????????、??????????????????,????????,?????,??????,????,????,????! ??????-??????【??】??????????: ??????????????????????,????????,??????????,?????,????? 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• Interview with Ronald Bradford about MySQL Connect

  - by Keith Larson

  Ronald Bradford,  an Oracle ACE Director has been busy working with  database consulting, book writing (EffectiveMySQL) while traveling and speaking around the world in support of MySQL. I was able to take some of his time to get an interview on this thoughts about theMySQL Connect conference. Keith Larson: What where your thoughts when you heard that Oracle was going to provide the community the MySQL Conference ?Ronald Bradford: Oracle has already been providing various different local community events including OTN Tech Days and  MySQL community days. These are great for local regions both in the US and abroad.  In previous years there has been an increase of content at Oracle Open World, however that benefits the Oracle community far more then the MySQL community.  It is good to see that Oracle is realizing the benefit in providing a large scale dedicated event for the MySQL community that includes speakers from the MySQL development teams, invested companies in the ecosystem and other community evangelists.I fully expect a successful event and look forward to hopefully seeing MySQL Connect at the upcoming Brazil and Japan OOW conferences and perhaps an event on the East Coast.Keith Larson: Since you are part of the content committee, what did you think of the submissions that were received during call for papers?Ronald Bradford: There was a large number of quality submissions to the number of available presentation sessions. As with the previous years as a committee member for the annual MySQL conference, there is always a large variety of common cornerstone MySQL features as well as new products and upcoming companies sharing their MySQL experiences. All of the usual major players in the ecosystem will in presenting at MySQL Connect including Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, Continuent, Percona, Tokutek, Sphinx and Amazon to name a few.  This is ensuring the event will have a large number of quality speakers and a difficult time in choosing what to attend. Keith Larson: What sessions do you look forwarding to attending? Ronald Bradford: As with most quality conferences you can only be in one place at one time, so with multiple tracks per session it is always difficult to decide. The continued work and success with MySQL Cluster, and with a number of sessions I am sure will be popular. The features that interest me the most are around the optimizer, where there are several sessions on new features, and on the importance of backups. There are three presentations in this area to choose from.Keith Larson: Are you going to cover any of the content in your books at your MySQL Connect sessions?Ronald Bradford: I will be giving two presentations at MySQL Connect. The first will include the techniques available for creating better indexes where I will be touching on some aspects of the first Effective MySQL book on Optimizing SQL Statements.  In my second presentation from experiences of managing 500+ AWS MySQL instances, I will be touching on areas including SQL tuning, backup and recovery and scale out with replication.   These are the key topics of the initial books in the Effective MySQL series that focus on performance, scalability and business continuity.  The books however cover a far greater amount of detail then can be presented in a 1 hour session. Keith Larson: What features of MySQL 5.6 do you look forward to the most ?Ronald Bradford: I am very impressed with the optimizer trace feature. The ability to see exposed information is invaluable not just for MySQL 5.6, but to also apply information discerned for optimizing SQL statements in earlier versions of MySQL.  Not everybody understands that it is easy to deploy a MySQL 5.6 slave into an existing topology running an older version if MySQL for evaluation of many new features.  You can use the new mysqlbinlog streaming feature for duplicating master binary logs on an older version with a MySQL 5.6 slave.  The improvements in instrumentation in the Performance Schema are exciting.   However, as with my upcoming Replication Techniques in Depth title, that will be available for sale at MySQL Connect, there are numerous replication features, some long overdue with provide significant management benefits. Crash Save Slaves, Global transaction Identifiers (GTID)  and checksums just to mention a few.Keith Larson: You have been to numerous conferences, what would you recommend for people at the conference? Ronald Bradford: Make the time to meet and introduce yourself to the speakers that cover the topics that most interest you. The MySQL ecosystem has a very strong community.  The relationships you build with presenters, developers and architects in MySQL can be invaluable, however they are created over time. Get to know these people, interact with them over time.  This is the opportunity to learn more then just the content from a 1 hour session. Keith Larson: Any additional tips to handling the long hours ? Ronald Bradford: Conferences can be hard, especially with all the post event drinking.  This is a two day event and I am sure will include additional events on Friday and Saturday night so come well prepared, and leave work behind. Take the time to learn something new.   You can always catchup on sleep later. Keith Larson: Thank you so much for taking some time to do this I look forward to seeing you at the MySQL Connect conference.  Please stay tuned here for more updates on MySQL. 

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