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  • Using LogParser - part 2

    - by fatherjack
    PersonAddress.csv SalesOrderDetail.tsv In part 1 of this series we downloaded and installed LogParser and used it to list data from a csv file. That was a good start and in this article we are going to see the different ways we can stream data and choose whether a whole file is selected. We are also going to take a brief look at what file types we can interrogate. If we take the query from part 1 and add a value for the output parameter as -o:datagrid so that the query becomes LOGPARSER "SELECT top 15 * FROM C:\LP\person_address.csv" -o:datagrid and run that we get a different result. A pop-up dialog that lets us view the results in a resizable grid. Notice that because we didn't specify the columns we wanted returned by LogParser (we used SELECT *) is has added two columns to the recordset - filename and rownumber. This behaviour can be very useful as we will see in future parts of this series. You can click Next 10 rows or All rows or close the datagrid once you are finished reviewing the data. You may have noticed that the files that I am working with are different file types - one is a csv (comma separated values) and the other is a tsv (tab separated values). If you want to convert a file from one to another then LogParser makes it incredibly simple. Rather than using 'datagrid' as the value for the output parameter, use 'csv': logparser "SELECT SalesOrderID, SalesOrderDetailID, CarrierTrackingNumber, OrderQty, ProductID, SpecialOfferID, UnitPrice, UnitPriceDiscount, LineTotal, rowguid, ModifiedDate into C:\Sales_SalesOrderDetail.csv FROM C:\Sales_SalesOrderDetail.tsv" -i:tsv -o:csv Those familiar with SQL will not have to make a very big leap of faith to making adjustments to the above query to filter in/out records from the source file. Lets get all the records from the same file where the Order Quantity (OrderQty) is more than 25: logparser "SELECT SalesOrderID, SalesOrderDetailID, CarrierTrackingNumber, OrderQty, ProductID, SpecialOfferID, UnitPrice, UnitPriceDiscount, LineTotal, rowguid, ModifiedDate into C:\LP\Sales_SalesOrderDetailOver25.csv FROM C:\LP\Sales_SalesOrderDetail.tsv WHERE orderqty > 25" -i:tsv -o:csv Or we could find all those records where the Order Quantity is equal to 25 and output it to an xml file: logparser "SELECT SalesOrderID, SalesOrderDetailID, CarrierTrackingNumber, OrderQty, ProductID, SpecialOfferID, UnitPrice, UnitPriceDiscount, LineTotal, rowguid, ModifiedDate into C:\LP\Sales_SalesOrderDetailEq25.xml FROM C:\LP\Sales_SalesOrderDetail.tsv WHERE orderqty = 25" -i:tsv -o:xml All the standard comparison operators are to be found in LogParser; >, <, =, LIKE, BETWEEN, OR, NOT, AND. Input and Output file formats. LogParser has a pretty impressive list of file formats that it can parse and a good selection of output formats that will let you generate output in a format that is useable for whatever process or application you may be using. From any of these To any of these IISW3C: parses IIS log files in the W3C Extended Log File Format.   NAT: formats output records as readable tabulated columns. IIS: parses IIS log files in the Microsoft IIS Log File Format. CSV: formats output records as comma-separated values text. BIN: parses IIS log files in the Centralized Binary Log File Format. TSV: formats output records as tab-separated or space-separated values text. IISODBC: returns database records from the tables logged to by IIS when configured to log in the ODBC Log Format. XML: formats output records as XML documents. HTTPERR: parses HTTP error log files generated by Http.sys. W3C: formats output records in the W3C Extended Log File Format. URLSCAN: parses log files generated by the URLScan IIS filter. TPL: formats output records following user-defined templates. CSV: parses comma-separated values text files. IIS: formats output records in the Microsoft IIS Log File Format. TSV: parses tab-separated and space-separated values text files. SQL: uploads output records to a table in a SQL database. XML: parses XML text files. SYSLOG: sends output records to a Syslog server. W3C: parses text files in the W3C Extended Log File Format. DATAGRID: displays output records in a graphical user interface. NCSA: parses web server log files in the NCSA Common, Combined, and Extended Log File Formats. CHART: creates image files containing charts. TEXTLINE: returns lines from generic text files. TEXTWORD: returns words from generic text files. EVT: returns events from the Windows Event Log and from Event Log backup files (.evt files). FS: returns information on files and directories. REG: returns information on registry values. ADS: returns information on Active Directory objects. NETMON: parses network capture files created by NetMon. ETW: parses Enterprise Tracing for Windows trace log files and live sessions. COM: provides an interface to Custom Input Format COM Plugins. So, you can query data from any of the types on the left and really easily get it into a format where it is ready for analysis by other tools. To a DBA or network Administrator with an enquiring mind this is a treasure trove. In part 3 we will look at working with multiple sources and specifically outputting to SQL format. See you there!

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  • HTG Explains: Live File System vs. Mastered Disc Formats in Windows

    - by Chris Hoffman
    When burning a CD or DVD with Windows, you’ll be asked whether you want to use a Live File System or a Mastered disc format. Each has its own advantages and disadvantages. Windows 7 refers to this as “Like a USB flash drive” or “With a CD/DVD player.” But how exactly can a non-rewritable disc function like a USB flash drive? HTG Explains: What is the Windows Page File and Should You Disable It? How To Get a Better Wireless Signal and Reduce Wireless Network Interference How To Troubleshoot Internet Connection Problems

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  • Is there a well grounded theory on backward and forward compatibility of formats, languages, grammars and vocabularies?

    - by Breton
    I have a friend who has the specific problem of building a case against the use of a custom HTML <wrapper> tag in some site's markup. Now, intuitively we can answer that use of such a tag is risky, as future HTML specs may define a wrapper tag with semantics that conflict with its use on the site. We can also appeal to a particular section of the HTML5 spec which also recommends against the use of custom tags for this reason. And while I agree with the conclusion, I find these arguments a little on the weak side, on their own. Is there some well grounded and proven theory in computer science from which we can derive this conclusion? Have programming language theorists created proofs about the properties of vocabulary versioning, or some such thing?

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  • How to turn on gzip compression in JBoss 5 ?

    - by Vladimir Bezugliy
    I added following file deployers\jbossweb.deployer\server.xml <Connector compression="force" compressionMinSize="512" noCompressionUserAgents="gozilla, traviata" compressableMimeType="text/html,text/xml,image/png,text/css,text/javascript"> </Connector> But fiddler shows that jboss does not compress responses. How to ensure that gzip compression in JBoss is turned on? Is it possible to check it in jmx-console?

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  • What Excel formats are (most) compatible with LibreOffice and Google Docs?

    - by iconoclast
    I use Excel (and occasionally Numbers), but I want to be able to share with users of Google Docs and LibreOffice (and I may want to switch in the future). What's the most compatible format to save my Excel spreadsheets in? I'm asking as a question here rather than merely Googling for a list of formats that LibreOffice and GoogleDocs support (although I'm doing that too, and will post the answer if no one else does) because there are likely to be hidden "gotchas" that only someone who has experience using all of the above applications is going to know about. Answers that include personal experience will be preferred over those that only post a link to the relevant facts on google.com and libreoffice.com.

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  • What's Excel formats are (most) compatible with LibreOffice and Google Docs?

    - by iconoclast
    I use Excel (and occasionally Numbers), but I want to be able to share with users of Google Docs and LibreOffice (and I may want to switch in the future). What's the most compatible format to save my Excel spreadsheets in? I'm asking as a question here rather than merely Googling for a list of formats that LibreOffice and GoogleDocs support (although I'm doing that too, and will post the answer if no one else does) because there are likely to be hidden "gotchas" that only someone who has experience using all of the above applications is going to know about. Answers that include personal experience will be preferred over those that only post a link to the relevant facts on google.com and libreoffice.com. Oh, and of course the other reason I'm asking the question is because it's good to have this info readily available on SuperUser.com for anyone else who wants to know the same thing.

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  • What media formats do I have to use to prevent Zune from having to convert media for Windows Phone?

    - by Billy ONeal
    Zune is able to accept pretty much every media format under the sun, or at least can once someone's installed something like the KLite Codec Pack. However, it does do conversion on your behalf to a more supported format when you try to sync the contents over the Windows Phone. I'd like to not have to wait for the really slow process of doing the conversion... how do I know which media format to download? (For example, there are 5 media formats available for each of the MIX sessions....)

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  • Is it possible to have a conditional formatting cell "visually cycle" through all the formats that evaluated true?

    - by Ben
    Like the title says, "In Excel, when a cell has multiple conditional formatting rules that evaluate true, is it possible to have the cell "visually cycle" through all the formats that evaluated true? If not, suggestions on what to do would be appreciated!" I'm creating an employee schedule for a business that has multiple job areas that need to have an employee assigned to cover. The schedule is currently set up with the date on the top row, employee list down the left column, and the employee's assigned "job area" cross-referencing with the date on the top row. Originally it was set up where if every required "job area" didn't have someone assigned to it, the date would (via conditional formatting) change to red. I've set it up now that if a condition isn't met, the date will change to the color of the "job area" that doesn't have an employee assigned to it. However, there are cases where multiple job areas don't have an employee assigned, but the date will only change color based on the first condition that isn't met. It'd be nice if there was some way for the date cell to cycle through the different colors that correspond to the job areas where no one is assigned. I have a hunch that's not possible though. If it is possible, I'd love to know how to do it. And if it isn't, if anyone has any suggestions on how I can modify the Excel sheet to make it easier to identify the job areas that don't have anyone assigned to them, I would appreciate it. FYI This schedule goes out months in advance.

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  • ASP.NET GZip Encoding Caveats

    - by Rick Strahl
    GZip encoding in ASP.NET is pretty easy to accomplish using the built-in GZipStream and DeflateStream classes and applying them to the Response.Filter property.  While applying GZip and Deflate behavior is pretty easy there are a few caveats that you have watch out for as I found out today for myself with an application that was throwing up some garbage data. But before looking at caveats let’s review GZip implementation for ASP.NET. ASP.NET GZip/Deflate Basics Response filters basically are applied to the Response.OutputStream and transform it as data is written to it through the ASP.NET Response object. So a Response.Write eventually gets written into the output stream which if a filter is also written through the filter stream’s interface. To perform the actual GZip (and Deflate) encoding typically used by Web pages .NET includes the GZipStream and DeflateStream stream classes which can be readily assigned to the Repsonse.OutputStream. With these two stream classes in place it’s almost trivially easy to create a couple of reusable methods that allow you to compress your HTTP output. In my standard WebUtils utility class (from the West Wind West Wind Web Toolkit) created two static utility methods – IsGZipSupported and GZipEncodePage – that check whether the client supports GZip encoding and then actually encodes the current output (note that although the method includes ‘Page’ in its name this code will work with any ASP.NET output). /// <summary> /// Determines if GZip is supported /// </summary> /// <returns></returns> public static bool IsGZipSupported() { string AcceptEncoding = HttpContext.Current.Request.Headers["Accept-Encoding"]; if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(AcceptEncoding) && (AcceptEncoding.Contains("gzip") || AcceptEncoding.Contains("deflate"))) return true; return false; } /// <summary> /// Sets up the current page or handler to use GZip through a Response.Filter /// IMPORTANT: /// You have to call this method before any output is generated! /// </summary> public static void GZipEncodePage() { HttpResponse Response = HttpContext.Current.Response; if (IsGZipSupported()) { string AcceptEncoding = HttpContext.Current.Request.Headers["Accept-Encoding"]; if (AcceptEncoding.Contains("deflate")) { Response.Filter = new System.IO.Compression.DeflateStream(Response.Filter, System.IO.Compression.CompressionMode.Compress); Response.Headers.Remove("Content-Encoding"); Response.AppendHeader("Content-Encoding", "deflate"); } else { Response.Filter = new System.IO.Compression.GZipStream(Response.Filter, System.IO.Compression.CompressionMode.Compress); Response.Headers.Remove("Content-Encoding"); Response.AppendHeader("Content-Encoding", "gzip"); } } } As you can see the actual assignment of the Filter is as simple as: Response.Filter = new DeflateStream(Response.Filter, System.IO.Compression.CompressionMode.Compress); which applies the filter to the OutputStream. You also need to ensure that your response reflects the new GZip or Deflate encoding and ensure that any pages that are cached in Proxy servers can differentiate between pages that were encoded with the various different encodings (or no encoding). To use this utility function now is trivially easy: In any ASP.NET code that wants to compress its Response output you simply use: protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) { WebUtils.GZipEncodePage(); Entry = WebLogFactory.GetEntry(); var entries = Entry.GetLastEntries(App.Configuration.ShowEntryCount, "pk,Title,SafeTitle,Body,Entered,Feedback,Location,ShowTopAd", "TEntries"); if (entries == null) throw new ApplicationException("Couldn't load WebLog Entries: " + Entry.ErrorMessage); this.repEntries.DataSource = entries; this.repEntries.DataBind(); } Here I use an ASP.NET page, but the above WebUtils.GZipEncode() method call will work in any ASP.NET application type including HTTP Handlers. The only requirement is that the filter needs to be applied before any other output is sent to the OutputStream. For example, in my CallbackHandler service implementation by default output over a certain size is GZip encoded. The output that is generated is JSON or XML and if the output is over 5k in size I apply WebUtils.GZipEncode(): if (sbOutput.Length > GZIP_ENCODE_TRESHOLD) WebUtils.GZipEncodePage(); Response.ContentType = ControlResources.STR_JsonContentType; HttpContext.Current.Response.Write(sbOutput.ToString()); Ok, so you probably get the idea: Encoding GZip/Deflate content is pretty easy. Hold on there Hoss –Watch your Caching Or is it? There are a few caveats that you need to watch out for when dealing with GZip content. The fist issue is that you need to deal with the fact that some clients don’t support GZip or Deflate content. Most modern browsers support it, but if you have a programmatic Http client accessing your content GZip/Deflate support is by no means guaranteed. For example, WinInet Http clients don’t support GZip out of the box – it has to be explicitly implemented. Other low level HTTP clients on other platforms too don’t support GZip out of the box. The problem is that your application, your Web Server and Proxy Servers on the Internet might be caching your generated content. If you return content with GZip once and then again without, either caching is not applied or worse the wrong type of content is returned back to the client from a cache or proxy. The result is an unreadable response for *some clients* which is also very hard to debug and fix once in production. You already saw the issue of Proxy servers addressed in the GZipEncodePage() function: // Allow proxy servers to cache encoded and unencoded versions separately Response.AppendHeader("Vary", "Content-Encoding"); This ensures that any Proxy servers also check for the Content-Encoding HTTP Header to cache their content – not just the URL. The same thing applies if you do OutputCaching in your own ASP.NET code. If you generate output for GZip on an OutputCached page the GZipped content will be cached (either by ASP.NET’s cache or in some cases by the IIS Kernel Cache). But what if the next client doesn’t support GZip? She’ll get served a cached GZip page that won’t decode and she’ll get a page full of garbage. Wholly undesirable. To fix this you need to add some custom OutputCache rules by way of the GetVaryByCustom() HttpApplication method in your global_ASAX file: public override string GetVaryByCustomString(HttpContext context, string custom) { // Override Caching for compression if (custom == "GZIP") { string acceptEncoding = HttpContext.Current.Response.Headers["Content-Encoding"]; if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(acceptEncoding)) return ""; else if (acceptEncoding.Contains("gzip")) return "GZIP"; else if (acceptEncoding.Contains("deflate")) return "DEFLATE"; return ""; } return base.GetVaryByCustomString(context, custom); } In a page that use Output caching you then specify: <%@ OutputCache Duration="180" VaryByParam="none" VaryByCustom="GZIP" %> To use that custom rule. It’s all Fun and Games until ASP.NET throws an Error Ok, so you’re up and running with GZip, you have your caching squared away and your pages that you are applying it to are jamming along. Then BOOM, something strange happens and you get a lovely garbled page that look like this: Lovely isn’t it? What’s happened here is that I have WebUtils.GZipEncode() applied to my page, but there’s an error in the page. The error falls back to the ASP.NET error handler and the error handler removes all existing output (good) and removes all the custom HTTP headers I’ve set manually (usually good, but very bad here). Since I applied the Response.Filter (via GZipEncode) the output is now GZip encoded, but ASP.NET has removed my Content-Encoding header, so the browser receives the GZip encoded content without a notification that it is encoded as GZip. The result is binary output. Here’s what Fiddler says about the raw HTTP header output when an error occurs when GZip encoding was applied: HTTP/1.1 500 Internal Server Error Cache-Control: private Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8 Date: Sat, 30 Apr 2011 22:21:08 GMT Content-Length: 2138 Connection: close ?`I?%&/m?{J?J??t??` … binary output striped here Notice: no Content-Encoding header and that’s why we’re seeing this garbage. ASP.NET has stripped the Content-Encoding header but left our filter intact. So how do we fix this? In my applications I typically have a global Application_Error handler set up and in this case I’ve been using that. One thing that you can do in the Application_Error handler is explicitly clear out the Response.Filter and set it to null at the top: protected void Application_Error(object sender, EventArgs e) { // Remove any special filtering especially GZip filtering Response.Filter = null; … } And voila I get my Yellow Screen of Death or my custom generated error output back via uncompressed content. BTW, the same is true for Page level errors handled in Page_Error or ASP.NET MVC Error handling methods in a controller. Another and possibly even better solution is to check whether a filter is attached just before the headers are sent to the client as pointed out by Adam Schroeder in the comments: protected void Application_PreSendRequestHeaders() { // ensure that if GZip/Deflate Encoding is applied that headers are set // also works when error occurs if filters are still active HttpResponse response = HttpContext.Current.Response; if (response.Filter is GZipStream && response.Headers["Content-encoding"] != "gzip") response.AppendHeader("Content-encoding", "gzip"); else if (response.Filter is DeflateStream && response.Headers["Content-encoding"] != "deflate") response.AppendHeader("Content-encoding", "deflate"); } This uses the Application_PreSendRequestHeaders() pipeline event to check for compression encoding in a filter and adjusts the content accordingly. This is actually a better solution since this is generic – it’ll work regardless of how the content is cleaned up. For example, an error Response.Redirect() or short error display might get changed and the filter not cleared and this code actually handles that. Sweet, thanks Adam. It’s unfortunate that ASP.NET doesn’t natively clear out Response.Filters when an error occurs just as it clears the Response and Headers. I can’t see where leaving a Filter in place in an error situation would make any sense, but hey - this is what it is and it’s easy enough to fix as long as you know where to look. Riiiight! IIS and GZip I should also mention that IIS 7 includes good support for compression natively. If you can defer encoding to let IIS perform it for you rather than doing it in your code by all means you should do it! Especially any static or semi-dynamic content that can be made static should be using IIS built-in compression. Dynamic caching is also supported but is a bit more tricky to judge in terms of performance and footprint. John Forsyth has a great article on the benefits and drawbacks of IIS 7 compression which gives some detailed performance comparisons and impact reviews. I’ll post another entry next with some more info on IIS compression since information on it seems to be a bit hard to come by. Related Content Built-in GZip/Deflate Compression in IIS 7.x HttpWebRequest and GZip Responses © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2011Posted in ASP.NET   IIS7  

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  • HTML5 Audio: Which formats? Ditch Ogg Vorbis in favor of Ogg Opus? Is MP3 still needed?

    - by phoibos
    I'm currently working on a website which has to stream audio files. Since bandwidth is always an issue, the file size should be as small as possible. I wonder what audio formats I should provide. MP3 - Most common format but low quality, I don't know if it's even required, since AAC is well supported by the browsers incapable of playing free codecs MP4 AAC - Nice quality / small filesize, supported by Safari / Mobile Devices / IE9 / Flash / Chrome A free codec - well, until recently, there only was Ogg Vorbis, but Ogg Opus is standardized now and it's really good! Questions: Is it time yet to use Opus instead if Vorbis? Firefox supports Opus since version 15, and Opera has support on its roadmap - I guess Chrome will follow in the future too. Do I still have to provide an MP3 file?

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  • Need software to convert RAR to ZIP ("store" mode - no compression) * Extract->re-archive changes date/time attributes

    - by Larry78
    I have tried all of the following applications (download.cnet.com - the free ones), and none of them will convert an RAR archive to a ZIP, without compressing the files ("store" mode). 7-ZIP would be fine, too. [The RAR is a "solid" archive with password (I know it), files "stored" - no compression, used WinRAR 3.5.1] PeaZip, 7-Zip, FilZip, TugZip, SimplyZipSE, QuickZip, WinShrink. (A couple of the apps let you try, but the program gives an error - indicating how bad the software is. (Like "unknown header # #.") None of these apps will do the conversion at all. IZArc 4.1 comes the closest. It will convert an RAR to a ZIP, but it compresses the zip. There is a general preference setting to "store" - but it doesn't effect conversions. I don't want to extract the RAR files and re-archive them because I need to preserve the modified/created file attributes. IZArc preserves them, but it compresses the files. WinRAR has the option to convert archives, but I get the error "skipping encryped archive" when I try to convert it. It asks for the password first, and I know it's right because that password opens the archive, and I can read/view all the files in the archive.

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  • Can a page opt out of IIS 7 compression?

    - by Glen Little
    My pages are automatically being compressed by IIS7 with GZIP. That is great... but, for one particular page, I need to stream it to the user, using Response.Flush() when needed. But when the output is being compressed, the IIS server seems to collect all my output until the page is done before compressing and sending it to the client. That nullifies my attempt to Flush the content out to the user. Is there a way that I can have this one page opt out of the compression? One possible option I've determined that if I manually set the content type to one that does not match the IIS configuration at c:\windows\system32\inetsrv\config\applicationhost.config, then IIS will not compress it. Eg. Response.ContentType = "x-text/html". This works okay with IE8, as it falls back to display the HTML. But Firefox will ask the user what to do with the unknown file type. This could work, if there was another Mime Type I could use that browsers would accept as HTML, that is not matched in the applicationhost.config. For reference, these are the mime types that will be compressed: <add mimeType="text/*" enabled="true" /> <add mimeType="message/*" enabled="true" /> <add mimeType="application/x-javascript" enabled="true" /> <add mimeType="application/atom+xml" enabled="true" /> <add mimeType="application/xaml+xml" enabled="true" /> Others options? Are there other options to opt out of compression?

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  • Are there any modern platforms with non-IEEE C/C++ float formats?

    - by Patrick Niedzielski
    Hi all, I am writing a video game, Humm and Strumm, which requires a network component in its game engine. I can deal with differences in endianness easily, but I have hit a wall in attempting to deal with possible float memory formats. I know that modern computers have all a standard integer format, but I have heard that they may not all use the IEEE standard for floating-point integers. Is this true? While certainly I could just output it as a character string into each packet, I would still have to convert to a "well-known format" of each client, regardless of the platform. The standard printf() and atod() would be inadequate. Please note, because this game is a Free/Open Source Software program that will run on GNU/Linux, *BSD, and Microsoft Windows, I cannot use any proprietary solutions, nor any single-platform solutions. Cheers, Patrick

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  • Advantages of SQL Backup Pro

    - by Grant Fritchey
    Getting backups of your databases in place is a fundamental issue for protection of the business. Yes, I said business, not data, not databases, but business. Because of a lack of good, tested, backups, companies have gone completely out of business or suffered traumatic financial loss. That’s just a simple fact (outlined with a few examples here). So you want to get backups right. That’s a big part of why we make Red Gate SQL Backup Pro work the way it does. Yes, you could just use native backups, but you’ll be missing a few advantages that we provide over and above what you get out of the box from Microsoft. Let’s talk about them. Guidance If you’re a hard-core DBA with 20+ years of experience on every version of SQL Server and several other data platforms besides, you may already know what you need in order to get a set of tested backups in place. But, if you’re not, maybe a little help would be a good thing. To set up backups for your servers, we supply a wizard that will step you through the entire process. It will also act to guide you down good paths. For example, if your databases are in Full Recovery, you should set up transaction log backups to run on a regular basis. When you choose a transaction log backup from the Backup Type you’ll see that only those databases that are in Full Recovery will be listed: This makes it very easy to be sure you have a log backup set up for all the databases you should and none of the databases where you won’t be able to. There are other examples of guidance throughout the product. If you have the responsibility of managing backups but very little knowledge or time, we can help you out. Throughout the software you’ll notice little green question marks. You can see two in the screen above and more in each of the screens in other topics below this one. Clicking on these will open a window with additional information about the topic in question which should help to guide you through some of the tougher decisions you may have to make while setting up your backup jobs. Here’s an example: Backup Copies As a part of the wizard you can choose to make a copy of your backup on your network. This process runs as part of the Red Gate SQL Backup engine. It will copy your backup, after completing the backup so it doesn’t cause any additional blocking or resource use within the backup process, to the network location you define. Creating a copy acts as a mechanism of protection for your backups. You can then backup that copy or do other things with it, all without affecting the original backup file. This requires either an additional backup or additional scripting to get it done within the native Microsoft backup engine. Offsite Storage Red Gate offers you the ability to immediately copy your backup to the cloud as a further, off-site, protection of your backups. It’s a service we provide and expose through the Backup wizard. Your backup will complete first, just like with the network backup copy, then an asynchronous process will copy that backup to cloud storage. Again, this is built right into the wizard or even the command line calls to SQL Backup, so it’s part a single process within your system. With native backup you would need to write additional scripts, possibly outside of T-SQL, to make this happen. Before you can use this with your backups you’ll need to do a little setup, but it’s built right into the product to get this done. You’ll be directed to the web site for our hosted storage where you can set up an account. Compression If you have SQL Server 2008 Enterprise, or you’re on SQL Server 2008R2 or greater and you have a Standard or Enterprise license, then you have backup compression. It’s built right in and works well. But, if you need even more compression then you might want to consider Red Gate SQL Backup Pro. We offer four levels of compression within the product. This means you can get a little compression faster, or you can just sacrifice some CPU time and get even more compression. You decide. For just a simple example I backed up AdventureWorks2012 using both methods of compression. The resulting file from native was 53mb. Our file was 33mb. That’s a file that is smaller by 38%, not a small number when we start talking gigabytes. We even provide guidance here to help you determine which level of compression would be right for you and your system: So for this test, if you wanted maximum compression with minimum CPU use you’d probably want to go with Level 2 which gets you almost as much compression as Level 3 but will use fewer resources. And that compression is still better than the native one by 10%. Restore Testing Backups are vital. But, a backup is just a file until you restore it. How do you know that you can restore that backup? Of course, you’ll use CHECKSUM to validate that what was read from disk during the backup process is what gets written to the backup file. You’ll also use VERIFYONLY to check that the backup header and the checksums on the backup file are valid. But, this doesn’t do a complete test of the backup. The only complete test is a restore. So, what you really need is a process that tests your backups. This is something you’ll have to schedule separately from your backups, but we provide a couple of mechanisms to help you out here. First, when you create a backup schedule, all done through our wizard which gives you as much guidance as you get when running backups, you get the option of creating a reminder to create a job to test your restores. You can enable this or disable it as you choose when creating your scheduled backups. Once you’re ready to schedule test restores for your databases, we have a wizard for this as well. After you choose the databases and restores you want to test, all configurable for automation, you get to decide if you’re going to restore to a specified copy or to the original database: If you’re doing your tests on a new server (probably the best choice) you can just overwrite the original database if it’s there. If not, you may want to create a new database each time you test your restores. Another part of validating your backups is ensuring that they can pass consistency checks. So we have DBCC built right into the process. You can even decide how you want DBCC run, which error messages to include, limit or add to the checks being run. With this you could offload some DBCC checks from your production system so that you only run the physical checks on your production box, but run the full check on this backup. That makes backup testing not just a general safety process, but a performance enhancer as well: Finally, assuming the tests pass, you can delete the database, leave it in place, or delete it regardless of the tests passing. All this is automated and scheduled through the SQL Agent job on your servers. Running your databases through this process will ensure that you don’t just have backups, but that you have tested backups. Single Point of Management If you have more than one server to maintain, getting backups setup could be a tedious process. But, with Red Gate SQL Backup Pro you can connect to multiple servers and then manage all your databases and all your servers backups from a single location. You’ll be able to see what is scheduled, what has run successfully and what has failed, all from a single interface without having to connect to different servers. Log Shipping Wizard If you want to set up log shipping as part of a disaster recovery process, it can frequently be a pain to get configured correctly. We supply a wizard that will walk you through every step of the process including setting up alerts so you’ll know should your log shipping fail. Summary You want to get your backups right. As outlined above, Red Gate SQL Backup Pro will absolutely help you there. We supply a number of processes and functionalities above and beyond what you get with SQL Server native. Plus, with our guidance, hints and reminders, you will get your backups set up in a way that protects your business.

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