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• SQLAuthority News – 5 days of SQL Server Reporting Service (SSRS) Summary

  - by Pinal Dave

  Earlier this week, I wrote five days series on SQL Server Reporting Service. The series is based on the book Beginning SSRS by Kathi Kellenberger. Supporting files are available with a free download from thewww.Joes2Pros.com web site. I just completed reading the book – it is a fantastic book and I am loving every bit of it. I new SSRS and I also knew how it is working however, I did not know was fine details of how I can get maximum out of the SSRS subject. This book has personally enabled me with the knowledge that I was missing in my knowledge back. Here is the question back to you – how many of you are working with SSRS and when you have a question you are left with no help online. There are not enough blogs or books available on this subject. The way Kathi has written this book is that it attempts to solve your day to day problem and make you think how you can take your daily problem and take it to the next level. Here is the article series which I have written on this subject and available to read: SQL SERVER – What is SSRS and Why SSRS is asked for in many Job Opening? Determine if SSRS 2012 is Installed on your SQL Server Installing SQL Server Data Tools and SSRS Create a Very First Report with the Report Wizard How to an Add Identity Column to Table in SQL Server Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL Tagged: Reporting Service, SSRS

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• SQL SERVER – Use ROLL UP Clause instead of COMPUTE BY

  - by pinaldave

  Note: This upgrade was test performed on development server with using bits of SQL Server 2012 RC0 (which was available at in public) when this test was performed. However, SQL Server RTM (GA on April 1) is expected to behave similarly. I recently observed an upgrade from SQL Server 2005 to SQL Server 2012 with compatibility keeping at SQL Server 2012 (110). After upgrading the system and testing the various modules of the application, we quickly observed that few of the reports were not working. They were throwing error. When looked at carefully I noticed that it was using COMPUTE BY clause, which is deprecated in SQL Server 2012. COMPUTE BY clause is replaced by ROLL UP clause in SQL Server 2012. However there is no direct replacement of the code, user have to re-write quite a few things when using ROLL UP instead of COMPUTE BY. The primary reason is that how each of them returns results. In original code COMPUTE BY was resulting lots of result set but ROLL UP. Here is the example of the similar code of ROLL UP and COMPUTE BY. I personally find the ROLL UP much easier than COMPUTE BY as it returns all the results in single resultset unlike the other one. Here is the quick code which I wrote to demonstrate the said behavior. CREATE TABLE tblPopulation ( Country VARCHAR(100), [State] VARCHAR(100), City VARCHAR(100), [Population (in Millions)] INT ) GO INSERT INTO tblPopulation VALUES('India', 'Delhi','East Delhi',9 ) INSERT INTO tblPopulation VALUES('India', 'Delhi','South Delhi',8 ) INSERT INTO tblPopulation VALUES('India', 'Delhi','North Delhi',5.5) INSERT INTO tblPopulation VALUES('India', 'Delhi','West Delhi',7.5) INSERT INTO tblPopulation VALUES('India', 'Karnataka','Bangalore',9.5) INSERT INTO tblPopulation VALUES('India', 'Karnataka','Belur',2.5) INSERT INTO tblPopulation VALUES('India', 'Karnataka','Manipal',1.5) INSERT INTO tblPopulation VALUES('India', 'Maharastra','Mumbai',30) INSERT INTO tblPopulation VALUES('India', 'Maharastra','Pune',20) INSERT INTO tblPopulation VALUES('India', 'Maharastra','Nagpur',11 ) INSERT INTO tblPopulation VALUES('India', 'Maharastra','Nashik',6.5) GO SELECT Country,[State],City, SUM ([Population (in Millions)]) AS [Population (in Millions)] FROM tblPopulation GROUP BY Country,[State],City WITH ROLLUP GO SELECT Country,[State],City, [Population (in Millions)] FROM tblPopulation ORDER BY Country,[State],City COMPUTE SUM([Population (in Millions)]) BY Country,[State]--,City GO After writing this blog post I continuously feel that there should be some better way to do the same task. Is there any easier way to replace COMPUTE BY? Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• SQL SERVER – Weekly Series – Memory Lane – #005

  - by pinaldave

  Here is the list of curetted articles of SQLAuthority.com across all these years. Instead of just listing all the articles I have selected a few of my most favorite articles and have listed them here with additional notes below it. Let me know which one of the following is your favorite article from memory lane. 2006 SQL SERVER – Cursor to Kill All Process in Database I indeed wrote this cursor and when I often look back, I wonder how naive I was to write this. The reason for writing this cursor was to free up my database from any existing connection so I can do database operation. This worked fine but there can be a potentially big issue if there was any important transaction was killed by this process. There is another way to to achieve the same thing where we can use ALTER syntax to take database in single user mode. Read more about that over here and here. 2007 Rules of Third Normal Form and Normalization Advantage – 3NF The rules of 3NF are mentioned here Make a separate table for each set of related attributes, and give each table a primary key. If an attribute depends on only part of a multi-valued key, remove it to a separate table If attributes do not contribute to a description of the key, remove them to a separate table. Correct Syntax for Stored Procedure SP Sometime a simple question is the most important question. I often see in industry incorrectly written Stored Procedure. Few writes code after the most outer BEGIN…END and few writes code after the GO Statement. In this brief blog post, I have attempted to explain the same. 2008 Switch Between Result Pan and Query Pan – SQL Shortcut Many times when I am writing query I have to scroll the result displayed in the result set. Most of the developer uses the mouse to switch between and Query Pane and Result Pane. There are few developers who are crazy about Keyboard shortcuts. F6 is the keyword which can be used to switch between query pane and tabs of the result pane. Interesting Observation – Use of Index and Execution Plan Query Optimization is a complex game and it has its own rules. From the example in the article we have discovered that Query Optimizer does not use clustered index to retrieve data, sometime non clustered index provides optimal performance for retrieving Primary Key. When all the rows and columns are selected Primary Key should be used to select data as it provides optimal performance. 2009 Interesting Observation – TOP 100 PERCENT and ORDER BY If you pull up any application or system where there are more than 100 SQL Server Views are created – I am very confident that at one or two places you will notice the scenario wherein View the ORDER BY clause is used with TOP 100 PERCENT. SQL Server 2008 VIEW with ORDER BY clause does not throw an error; moreover, it does not acknowledge the presence of it as well. In this article we have taken three perfect examples and demonstrated which clause we should use when. Comma Separated Values (CSV) from Table Column A Very common question – How to create comma separated values from a table in the database? The answer is also very common if we use XML. Check out this article for quick learning on the same subject. Azure Start Guide – Step by Step Installation Guide Though Azure portal has changed a quite bit since I wrote this article, the concept used in this article are not old. They are still valid and many of the functions are still working as mentioned in the article. I believe this one article will put you on the track to use Azure! Size of Index Table for Each Index – Solution Earlier I have posted a small question on this blog and requested help from readers to participate here and provide a solution. The puzzle was to write a query that will return the size for each index that is on any particular table. We need a query that will return an additional column in the above listed query and it should contain the size of the index. This article presents two of the best solutions from the puzzle. 2010 Well, this week in 2010 was the week of puzzles as I posted three interesting puzzles. Till today I am noticing pretty good interesting in the puzzles. They are tricky but for sure brings a great value if you are a database developer for a long time. I suggest you go over this puzzles and their answers. Did you really know all of the answers? I am confident that reading following three blog post will for sure help you enhance the experience with T-SQL. SQL SERVER – Challenge – Puzzle – Usage of FAST Hint SQL SERVER – Puzzle – Challenge – Error While Converting Money to Decimal SQL SERVER – Challenge – Puzzle – Why does RIGHT JOIN Exists 2011 DVM sys.dm_os_sys_info Column Name Changed in SQL Server 2012 Have you ever faced a situation where something does not work? When you try to fix it - you enjoy fixing it and started to appreciate the breaking changes. Well, this was exactly I felt yesterday. Before I begin my story, I want to candidly state that I do not encourage anybody to use * in the SELECT statement. Now the disclaimer is over – I suggest you read the original story – you will love it! Get Directory Structure using Extended Stored Procedure xp_dirtree Here is the question to you – why would you do something in SQL Server where you can do the same task in command prompt much easily. Well, the answer is sometime there are real use cases when we have to do such thing. This is a similar example where I have demonstrated how in SQL Server 2012 we can use extended stored procedure to retrieve directory structure. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Memory Lane, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• SQLAuthority News – Technical Review of Learning at Koenig Solutions

  - by pinaldave

  Yesterday I finished my 3 days fast track in person learning of course End to End SQL Server Business Intelligence at Koenig Solutions. You can read my previous article over here regarding why am I learning SQL Server. Yesterday I blogged about my experience of arriving to Training Center and my induction with the center. The Training Days I had enrolled for three days training so my routine each of the three days was very much same. However, the content every day was different as I was learning something new every day. Let me describe a few of the interesting details of my daily routine. A Single Student Batch The best part of my training was that in my training batch, I am single student. Koenig is known to smaller batches and often they have single student batches as well. I was very much delighted to know that I will have dedicated access and attention from my trainer in my batch as I will be single student in my batch. In most of the labs I have observed there are no more than 4 students at any time. Prakash and Pinal 7:30 AM Breakfast Talk We all students gather at 7:30 in breakfast area. The best time of the day. I was the only Indian student in the group. The other students were from USA, Canada, Nigeria, Bhutan, Tanzania, and a few others from other countries. I immediately become the source of information and reference manual. Though the distance between Delhi and Bangalore is 2000+ KM I was considered as a local guy. 8:30 AMHeading to Training Center Every day without fail at 8:30 the van started from our accommodation to the training center. As mentioned in an earlier blog post the distance is about 5 minutes and we were able to reach at the location before 8:45. This gave us some time settle in before our class starts at 9:00 AM. 9:00 AM Order Lunch Food Well it may sound funny that we just had breakfast 30 minutes but the first thing everybody has to do is to order lunch as soon as the class starts. There is an online training portal to order food for the day. Everybody has to place their order early during the day so the food arrives on time during lunch time. Everybody can order whatever they want to order using an online ordering system. The options are plenty and everybody can order what they like. 9:05 AM Learning Starts After deciding the lunch we started the learning. I was very fortunate to have a very experienced trainer - Prakash Chheatry. Though I have never met him before I have heard a lot about Prakash. He is known as the top most SQL Server Trainer in India. His student list contains some of the very well known SQL Server Experts of the world and few of SQL Server “best seller” book authors. Learning continues till 1:00 PM with one tea-coffee break in between. 1:00 PM Lunch The lunch time is again the fun time. We all students get together in the afternoon and tell the stories of the world. Indeed the best part of the day beside learning new stuff. 4:55 PM Ready to Return We stop at 4:55 as at precisely 5:00 PM the van stops by the institute which takes us back to our accommodation. Trust me seriously long long day always but the amount of the learning is the win of the day. 7:30 PM Dinner Time After coming back to the accommodation I study till 7:30 and then rush for dinner. Dinner is world cuisine and deserts are really delicious. After dinner every day I have written a blog and retired early as the next day is always going to be busier than the present day. What did I learn As I mentioned earlier I know SQL Server fairly well. I had expressed the same in my conversation as well. This is the reason I was assigned a fairly senior trainer and we learned everything quite quickly. As I know quite a few things we went pretty fast in many topics. There were a few things, I wanted to learn in detail as well practice on the labs. We slowed down where we wanted and rush through the concepts where I was very comfortable. Here is the list of the things which we covered in action pack three days. Introduction to Business Intelligence (Intro) SQL Server Analysis Service (Theory and Lab) SQL Server Integration Service  (Theory and Lab) SQL Server Reporting Service  (Theory and Lab) SQL Server PowerPivot (Lab) UDM (Theory) SharePoint Concepts (Theory) Power View (Demo) Business Intelligence and Security (Discussion) Well, I was delighted that I was able to refresh lots of concepts during these three days. Thanks to my trainer and my friend who helped me to have a good learning experience. I believe all the learning  will help me in my growth and future career. With this I end my this experience. I am planning to have another online learning experience later this month. I will blog about my experience as I begin it. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Training, T SQL, Technology

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• SQL SERVER – Weekly Series – Memory Lane – #053 – Final Post in Series

  - by Pinal Dave

  It has been a fantastic journey to write memory lane series for an entire year. This series gave me the opportunity to go back and see what I have contributed to this blog throughout the last 7 years. This was indeed fantastic series as this provided me the opportunity to witness how technology has grown throughout the year and how I have progressed in my career while writing this blog post. This series was indeed fantastic experience readers as many joined during the last few years and were not sure what they have missed in recent years. Let us continue with the final episode of the Memory Lane Series. Here is the list of selected articles of SQLAuthority.com across all these years. Instead of just listing all the articles I have selected a few of my most favorite articles and have listed them here with additional notes below it. Let me know which one of the following is your favorite article from memory lane. 2007 Get Current User – Get Logged In User Here is the straight script which list logged in SQL Server users. Disable All Triggers on a Database – Disable All Triggers on All Servers Question : How to disable all the triggers for a database? Additionally, how to disable all the triggers for all servers? For answer execute the script in the blog post. Importance of Master Database for SQL Server Startup I have received following questions many times. I will list all the questions here and answer them together. What is the purpose of Master database? Should our backup Master database? Which database is must have database for SQL Server for startup? Which are the default system database created when SQL Server 2005 is installed for the first time? What happens if Master database is corrupted? Answers to all of the questions are very much related. 2008 DECLARE Multiple Variables in One Statement SQL Server is a great product and it has many features which are very unique to SQL Server. Regarding feature of SQL Server where multiple variable can be declared in one statement, it is absolutely possible to do. 2009 How to Enable Index – How to Disable Index – Incorrect syntax near ‘ENABLE’ Many times I have seen that the index is disabled when there is a large update operation on the table. Bulk insert of very large file updates in any table using SSIS is usually preceded by disabling the index and followed by enabling the index. I have seen many developers running the following query to disable the index. 2010 List of all the Views from Database Many emails I received suggesting that they have hundreds of the view and now have no clue what is going on and how many of them have indexes and how many does not have an index. Some even asked me if there is any way they can get a list of the views with the property of Index along with it. Here is the quick script which does exactly the same. You can also include many other columns from the same view. Minimum Maximum Memory – Server Memory Options I was recently reading about SQL Server Memory Options over here. While reading this one line really caught my attention is minimum value allowed for maximum memory options. The default setting for min server memory is 0, and the default setting for max server memory is 2147483647. The minimum amount of memory you can specify for max server memory is 16 megabytes (MB). 2011 Fundamentals of Columnstore Index There are two kinds of storage in a database. Row Store and Column Store. Row store does exactly as the name suggests – stores rows of data on a page – and column store stores all the data in a column on the same page. These columns are much easier to search – instead of a query searching all the data in an entire row whether the data are relevant or not, column store queries need only to search a much lesser number of the columns. How to Ignore Columnstore Index Usage in Query In summary the question in simple words “How can we ignore using the column store index in selective queries?” Very interesting question – you can use I can understand there may be the cases when the column store index is not ideal and needs to be ignored the same. You can use the query hint IGNORE_NONCLUSTERED_COLUMNSTORE_INDEX to ignore the column store index. The SQL Server Engine will use any other index which is best after ignoring the column store index. 2012 Storing Variable Values in Temporary Array or Temporary List SQL Server does not support arrays or a dynamic length storage mechanism like list. Absolutely there are some clever workarounds and few extra-ordinary solutions but everybody can;t come up with such solution. Additionally, sometime the requirements are very simple that doing extraordinary coding is not required. Here is the simple case. Move Database Files MDF and LDF to Another Location It is not common to keep the Database on the same location where OS is installed. Usually Database files are in SAN, Separate Disk Array or on SSDs. This is done usually for performance reason and manageability perspective. Now the challenges comes up when database which was installed at not preferred default location and needs to move to a different location. Here is the quick tutorial how you can do it. UNION ALL and ORDER BY – How to Order Table Separately While Using UNION ALL If your requirement is such that you want your top and bottom query of the UNION resultset independently sorted but in the same result set you can add an additional static column and order by that column. Let us re-create the same scenario. Copy Data from One Table to Another Table – SQL in Sixty Seconds #031 – Video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVWIA-ACMNo Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)Filed under: Memory Lane, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• Big Data – ClustrixDB – Extreme Scale SQL Database with Real-time Analytics, Releases Software Download – NewSQL

  - by Pinal Dave

  There are so many things to learn and there is so little time we all have. As we have little time we need to be selective to learn whatever we learn. I believe I know quite a lot of things in SQL but I still do not know what is around SQL. I have started to learn about NewSQL recently. If you wonder what is NewSQL I encourage all of you to read my blog post about NewSQL over here Big Data – Buzz Words: What is NewSQL – Day 10 of 21. NewSQL databases are quickly becoming popular – providing the scale of NoSQL with the SQL features and transactions. As a part of learning NewSQL database, I have recently started to learn about ClustrixDB. ClustrixDB has been the most mature NewSQL database used by some of the largest internet sites in the world for over 3 years, with extensive SQL support. In addition to scale, it provides fast real-time analytics by bringing massively parallel processing (MPP), available only in warehousing databases, to the transactional database. The reason I am more intrigued about learning ClustrixDB is their recent announcement on Oct 31. ClustrixDB was only available as an appliance, but now with their software release on Oct 31, everyone can use it. It is now available as forever free for up to 12 cores with community support, and there is a 45 day trial for unlimited cluster sizes. With the forever free world, I am indeed interested in ClustrixDB now. I know that few of the leading eCommerce sites in the world uses them for their transactional database. Here are few of the details I have quickly noted for ClustrixDB. ClustrixDB allows user to: Scale by simply adding nodes to the cluster with a single command Run billions of transactions a day Run fast real-time analytics Achieve high-availability with recovery from node failure Manages itself Easily migrate from MySQL as it is nearly plug-and-play compatible, use MySQL drivers, tools and replication. While I was going through the documentation I realized that ClustrixDB also has extensive support for SQL features including complex queries involving joins on a dozen or more tables, aggregates, sorts, sub-queries. It also supports stored procedures, triggers, foreign keys, partitioned and temporary tables, and fully online schema changes. It is indeed a very matured product and SQL solution. Indeed Clusterix sound very promising solution, I decided to dig a bit deeper to understand who are current customers of the Clustrix as they exist in the industry for quite a few years. Their client list is indeed very interesting and here is my quick research about them. Twoo.com – Europe’s largest social discovery (dating) site runs 4.4 Billion Transactions a day with table sizes over a Terabyte, on a 168 core cluster. EngageBDR – Top 3 in the online advertising category uses ClustrixDB to serve 6.9 billion ads a day through real-time bidding platform. Their reports went from 4 hours to 15 seconds. NoMoreRack – Top 2 fastest growing e-commerce company in US used ClustrixDB for high availability and fast growth through Amazon cloud. MakeMyTrip – India’s leading travel site runs on ClustrixDB with two clusters running as multi-master in Chennai and Bangalore. Many enterprises such as AOL, CSC, Rakuten, Symantec use ClustrixDB when their applications need scale. I must accept that I am impressed with the information I have learned so far and now is the time to do some hand’s on experience with their product. I want to learn this technology so in future when it is about NewSQL, I know what I am talking about. Read more why Clustrix explains why you ClustrixDB might be the right database for you. Download ClustrixDB with me today and install it on your machine so in future when we discuss the technical aspects of it, we all are on the same page. The software can be downloaded here. Reference : Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com)Filed under: Big Data, MySQL, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL Tagged: Clustrix

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• SQL SERVER – Weekly Series – Memory Lane – #034

  - by Pinal Dave

  Here is the list of selected articles of SQLAuthority.com across all these years. Instead of just listing all the articles I have selected a few of my most favorite articles and have listed them here with additional notes below it. Let me know which one of the following is your favorite article from memory lane. 2007 UDF – User Defined Function to Strip HTML – Parse HTML – No Regular Expression The UDF used in the blog does fantastic task – it scans entire HTML text and removes all the HTML tags. It keeps only valid text data without HTML task. This is one of the quite commonly requested tasks many developers have to face everyday. De-fragmentation of Database at Operating System to Improve Performance Operating system skips MDF file while defragging the entire filesystem of the operating system. It is absolutely fine and there is no impact of the same on performance. Read the entire blog post for my conversation with our network engineers. Delay Function – WAITFOR clause – Delay Execution of Commands How do you delay execution of the commands in SQL Server – ofcourse by using WAITFOR keyword. In this blog post, I explain the same with the help of T-SQL script. Find Length of Text Field To measure the length of TEXT fields the function is DATALENGTH(textfield). Len will not work for text field. As of SQL Server 2005, developers should migrate all the text fields to VARCHAR(MAX) as that is the way forward. Retrieve Current Date Time in SQL Server CURRENT_TIMESTAMP, GETDATE(), {fn NOW()} There are three ways to retrieve the current datetime in SQL SERVER. CURRENT_TIMESTAMP, GETDATE(), {fn NOW()} Explanation and Comparison of NULLIF and ISNULL An interesting observation is NULLIF returns null if it comparison is successful, whereas ISNULL returns not null if its comparison is successful. In one way they are opposite to each other. Here is my question to you - How to create infinite loop using NULLIF and ISNULL? If this is even possible? 2008 Introduction to SERVERPROPERTY and example SERVERPROPERTY is a very interesting system function. It returns many of the system values. I use it very frequently to get different server values like Server Collation, Server Name etc. SQL Server Start Time We can use DMV to find out what is the start time of SQL Server in 2008 and later version. In this blog you can see how you can do the same. Find Current Identity of Table Many times we need to know what is the current identity of the column. I have found one of my developers using aggregated function MAX () to find the current identity. However, I prefer following DBCC command to figure out current identity. Create Check Constraint on Column Some time we just need to create a simple constraint over the table but I have noticed that developers do many different things to make table column follow rules than just creating constraint. I suggest constraint is a very useful concept and every SQL Developer should pay good attention to this subject. 2009 List Schema Name and Table Name for Database This is one of the blog post where I straight forward display script. One of the kind of blog posts, which I still love to read and write. Clustered Index on Separate Drive From Table Location A table devoid of primary key index is called heap, and here data is not arranged in a particular order, which gives rise to issues that adversely affect performance. Data must be stored in some kind of order. If we put clustered index on it then the order will be forced by that index and the data will be stored in that particular order. Understanding Table Hints with Examples Hints are options and strong suggestions specified for enforcement by the SQL Server query processor on DML statements. The hints override any execution plan the query optimizer might select for a query. 2010 Data Pages in Buffer Pool – Data Stored in Memory Cache One of my earlier year article, which I still read it many times and point developers to read it again. It is clear from the Resultset that when more than one index is used, datapages related to both or all of the indexes are stored in Memory Cache separately. TRANSACTION, DML and Schema Locks Can you create a situation where you can see Schema Lock? Well, this is a very simple question, however during the interview I notice over 50 candidates failed to come up with the scenario. In this blog post, I have demonstrated the situation where we can see the schema lock in database. 2011 Solution – Puzzle – Statistics are not updated but are Created Once In this example I have created following situation: Create Table Insert 1000 Records Check the Statistics Now insert 10 times more 10,000 indexes Check the Statistics – it will be NOT updated Auto Update Statistics and Auto Create Statistics for database is TRUE Now I have requested two things in the example 1) Why this is happening? 2) How to fix this issue? Selecting Domain from Email Address This is a straight to script blog post where I explain how to select only domain name from entire email address. Solution – Generating Zero Without using Any Numbers in T-SQL How to get zero digit without using any digit? This is indeed a very interesting question and the answer is even interesting. Try to come up with answer in next 10 minutes and if you can’t come up with the answer the blog post read this post for solution. 2012 Simple Explanation and Puzzle with SOUNDEX Function and DIFFERENCE Function In simple words - SOUNDEX converts an alphanumeric string to a four-character code to find similar-sounding words or names. DIFFERENCE function returns an integer value. The  integer returned is the number of characters in the SOUNDEX values that are the same. Read Only Files and SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) I have come across a very interesting feature in SSMS related to “Read Only” files. I believe it is a little unknown feature as well so decided to write a blog about the same. Identifying Column Data Type of uniqueidentifier without Querying System Tables How do I know if any table has a uniqueidentifier column and what is its value without using any DMV or System Catalogues? Only information you know is the table name and you are allowed to return any kind of error if the table does not have uniqueidentifier column. Read the blog post to find the answer. Solution – User Not Able to See Any User Created Object in Tables – Security and Permissions Issue Interesting question – “When I try to connect to SQL Server, it lets me connect just fine as well let me open and explore the database. I noticed that I do not see any user created instances but when my colleague attempts to connect to the server, he is able to explore the database as well see all the user created tables and other objects. Can you help me fix it?” Importing CSV File Into Database – SQL in Sixty Seconds #018 – Video Here is interesting small 60 second video on how to import CSV file into Database. ColumnStore Index – Batch Mode vs Row Mode Here is the logic behind when Columnstore Index uses Batch Mode and when it uses Row Mode. A batch typically represents about 1000 rows of data. Batch mode processing also uses algorithms that are optimized for the multicore CPUs and increased memory throughput. Follow up – Usage of $rowguid and $IDENTITY This is an excellent follow up blog post of my earlier blog post where I explain where to use $rowguid and $identity.  If you do not know the difference between them, this is a blog with a script example. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Memory Lane, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• SQL SERVER – Weekly Series – Memory Lane – #031

  - by Pinal Dave

  Here is the list of selected articles of SQLAuthority.com across all these years. Instead of just listing all the articles I have selected a few of my most favorite articles and have listed them here with additional notes below it. Let me know which one of the following is your favorite article from memory lane. 2007 Find Table without Clustered Index – Find Table with no Primary Key Clustered index is very important concept for any table. They impact the performance very heavily. Here is a quick script to find tables without a clustered index. Replace TEXT with VARCHAR(MAX) – Stop using TEXT, NTEXT, IMAGE Data Types Question: “Is VARCHAR (MAX) big enough to store the TEXT field?” Answer: “Yes, VARCHAR(MAX) is big enough to accommodate TEXT field. TEXT, NTEXT and IMAGE data types of SQL Server 2000 will be deprecated in a future version of SQL Server, SQL Server 2005 provides backward compatibility to data types but it is recommended to use new data types which are VARHCAR (MAX), NVARCHAR (MAX) and VARBINARY (MAX).” Limiting Result Sets by Using TABLESAMPLE – Examples Introduced in SQL Server 2005, TABLESAMPLE allows you to extract a sampling of rows from a table in the FROM clause. The rows retrieved are random and they are are not in any order. This sampling can be based on a percentage of number of rows. You can use TABLESAMPLE when only a sampling of rows is necessary for the application instead of a full result set. User Defined Functions (UDF) Limitations UDF have its own advantage and usage but in this article we will see the limitation of UDF. Things UDF can not do and why Stored Procedure are considered as more flexible then UDFs. Stored Procedure are more flexibility then User Defined Functions(UDF). However, this blog post is a good read to know what are the limitations of UDF. Change Database Compatible Level – Backward Compatibility For a long time SQL Server stayed on the compatibility level of 80 which is of SQL Server 2000. However, as soon as SQL Server 2005 introduced the issue of compatibility was quite a major issue. Since that time MS has been releasing the versions at every 2-3 years, changing compatibility is a ever popular topic. In this blog post, we learn how we can do the same using T-SQL. We can also do the same using SSMS and here is the blog post for the same: Change Database Compatible Level – Backward Compatibility – Part 2 – Management Studio. Constraint on VARCHAR(MAX) Field To Limit It Certain Length How can I limit the VARCHAR(MAX) field with maximum length of 12500 characters only. His Question was valid as our application was allowed 12500 characters. First of all – this requirement is bit strange but if someone wants to do the same, they can do it as described in this blog post. 2008 UNPIVOT Table Example Understanding UNPIVOT can be very complicated at times. In this blog post, I have attempted to explain the same concept in very simple words. Create Default Constraint Over Table Column A simple straight to script blog post – I still use this blog quite many times for my own reference. UDF – Get the Day of the Week Function It took me 4 iteration to find this very simple function which can immediately get the day of the week in a single line. 2009 Find Hostname and Current Logged In User Name There are two tricks listed in this blog post where users can find out the hostname and current logged user name immediately and very easily. Interesting Observation of Logon Trigger On All Servers When I was doing a project, I made an interesting observation of executing a logon trigger multiple times. It was absolutely unexpected for me! As I was logging only once, naturally, I was expecting the entry only once. However, it did it multiple times on different threads – indeed an eccentric phenomenon at first sight! Difference Between Candidate Keys and Primary Key One needs to be very careful in selecting the Primary Key as an incorrect selection can adversely impact the database architect and future normalization. For a Candidate Key to qualify as a Primary Key, it should be Non-NULL and unique in any domain. I have observed quite often that Primary Keys are seldom changed. I would like to have your feedback on not changing a Primary Key. Create Multiple Filegroup For Single Database Why should one create multiple file group for any database and what are the advantages of the same. In this blog post, I explain the same in detail. List All Objects Created on All Filegroups in Database In this blog post we discuss the essential question – “How can I find which object belongs to which filegroup. Is there any way to know this?” 2010 DATE and TIME in SQL Server 2008 When DATE is converted to DATETIME it adds the of midnight. When TIME is converted to DATETIME it adds the date of 1900 and it is something one wants to consider if you are going to run scripts from SQL Server 2008 to earlier version with CONVERT. Disabled Index and Update Statistics If you do not need a nonclustered index, I suggest you to drop it as keeping them disabled is an overhead on your system. This is because every time the statistics are updated for system all the statistics for disabled indexes are also updated. Precision of SMALLDATETIME – A 1 Minute Precision The precision of the datatype SMALLDATETIME is 1 minute. It discards the seconds by rounding up or rounding down any seconds greater than zero. 2011 Getting Columns Headers without Result Data – SET FMTONLY ON SET FMTONLY ON returns only metadata to the client. It can be used to test the format of the response without actually running the query. When this setting is ON the resultset only have headers of the results but no data. Copy Database from Instance to Another Instance – Copy Paste in SQL Server SQL Server has a feature which copy database from one database to another database and it can be automated as well using SSIS. Make sure you have SQL Server Agent Turned on as this feature will create a job. Puzzle – SELECT * vs SELECT COUNT(*) If you have ever wondered SELECT * gives error when executed alone but SELECT COUNT(*) does not. Why? in that case, you should read this blog post. Creating All New Database with Full Recovery Model This blog post is very based on very interesting story where the user wants to do something by default for every single new database created. Model database is a secret weapon which should be used very carefully and with proper evalution. If used carefully this can be a very much beneficiary when we need a newly created database behave in certain fashion. 2012 In year 2012 I had two interesting series ran on the blog. If there is no fun in learning, the learning becomes a burden. For the same reason, I had decided to build a three part quiz around SEQUENCE. The quiz was to identify the next value of the sequence. I encourage all of you to take part in this fun quiz. Guess the Next Value – Puzzle 1 Guess the Next Value – Puzzle 2 Guess the Next Value – Puzzle 3 Can anyone remember their final day of schooling?  This is probably a silly question because – of course you can!  Many people mark this as the most exciting, happiest day of their life.  It marks the end of testing, the end of following rules set by teachers, and the beginning of finally being able to earn money and work in your chosen field. Read five part series on developer training subject Developer Training - Importance and Significance - Part 1 Developer Training – Employee Morals and Ethics – Part 2 Developer Training – Difficult Questions and Alternative Perspective - Part 3 Developer Training – Various Options for Developer Training – Part 4 Developer Training – A Conclusive Summary- Part 5 Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Memory Lane, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• SQLAuthority News – Author Visit – SQL Server 2008 R2 Launch

  - by pinaldave

  June 11, 2010 was a wonderful day because I attended the very first SQL Server 2008 R2 Launch event held by Microsoft at Mumbai. I traveled to Mumbai from my home town, Ahmedabad. The event was located at one of the best hotels in Mumbai,”The Leela”. SQL Server R2 Launch was an evening event that had a few interesting talks. SQL PASS is associated with this event as one of the partners and its goal is to increase the awareness of the Community about SQL Server. I met many interesting people and had a great networking opportunity at the event. This event was kicked off with an awesome laser show and a “Welcome” video, which was followed by a Microsoft Executive session wherein there were several interesting demo. The very first demo was about Powerpivot. I knew beforehand that there will be Powerpivot demos because it is a very popular subject; however, I was really hoping to see other interesting demos from SQL Server 2008 R2. And believe me; I was happier to see the later demos. There were demos from SQL Server Utility Control Point, as well an integration of Bing Map with Reporting Servers. I really enjoyed the interactive and informative session by Shivaram Venkatesh. He had excellent presentation skills as well as ample technical knowledge to keep the audience attentive. I really liked his presentations skills wherein he did not read the whole slide deck; rather, he picked one point and using that point he told the story of the whole slide deck. I also enjoyed my conversation with Afaq Choonawala, who is one of the “gem guys” in Microsoft. I also want to acknowledge Ashwin Kini and Mohit Panchal for their excellent support to this event. Mumbai IT Pro is a user group which you can really count on for any kind of help. After excellent demos and a vibrant start of the event, all the audience was jazzed up. There were two vendors’ sessions right after the first session. Intel had 15 minutes to present; however, Intel’s representative, who had good knowledge of the subject, had nearly 30+ slides in his presentation, so he had to rush a bit to cover the whole slide deck. Intel presentations were followed up by another vendor presentation from NetApp. I have previously heard about this tool. After I saw the demo which did not work the first time the Net App presenter demonstrated it, I started to have a doubt on this product. I personally went to clarify my doubt to the demo booth after the presentation was over, but I realize the NetApp presenter or booth owner had absolutely a POOR KNOWLEDGE of SQL Server and even of their own NetApp product. The NetApp people tried to misguide us and when we argued, they started to say different things against what they said earlier. At one point in their presentation, they claimed their application does something very fast, which did not really happen in front of all the audience. They blamed SQL Server R2 DBCC CHECKDB command for their product’s failed demonstration. I know that NetApp has many great products; however, this one was not conveyed clearly and even created a negative impression to all of us. Well, let us not judge the potential, fun, education and enigma of the launch event through a small glitch. This event was jam-packed and extremely well-received by everybody who attended it. As what I said, average demos and good presentations by MS folks were really something to cheer about. Any launch event is considered as successful if it achieves its goal to excite users with its cutting edge technology; just like this event that left a very deep impression on me. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority Author Visit, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology Tagged: PASS, SQLPASS

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• SQL SERVER – Find Largest Supported DML Operation – Question to You

  - by pinaldave

  SQL Server is very big and it is not possible to know everything in SQL Server but we all keep learning. Recently I was going over the best practices of transactions log and I come across following statement. The log size must be at least twice the size of largest supported DML operation (using uncompressed data volumes). First of all I totally agree with this statement. However, here is my question – How do we measure the size of the largest supported DML operation? I welcome all the opinion and suggestions. I will combine the list and will share that with all of you with due credit. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Best Practices, Pinal Dave, Readers Contribution, Readers Question, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority News, SQLServer, T SQL, Technology

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• SQLAuthority News – Book Signing Event – SQLPASS 2011 Event Log

  - by pinaldave

  I have been dreaming of writing book for really long time, and I finally got the chance – in fact, two chances!  I recently wrote two books: SQL Programming Joes 2 Pros: Programming and Development for Microsoft SQL Server 2008 [Amazon] | [Flipkart] | [Kindle] and SQL Wait Stats Joes 2 Pros: SQL Performance Tuning Techniques Using Wait Statistics, Types & Queues [Amazon] | [Flipkart] | [Kindle].  I had a lot of fun writing these two books, even though sometimes I had to sacrifice some family time and time for other personal development to write the books. The good side of writing book is that when the efforts put in writing books are recognize by books readers and kind organizations like expressor studio. Book Signing Event Book writing is a complex process.  Even after you spend months, maybe years, writing the material you still have to go through the editing and fact checking processes.  And, once the book is out there, there is no way to take back all the copies to change mistakes or add something you forgot.  Most of the time it is a one-way street. Book Signing Event Just like every author, I had a dream that after the books were written, they would be loved by people and gain acceptance by an audience. My first book, SQL Programming Joes 2 Pros: Programming and Development for Microsoft SQL Server 2008, is extremely popular because it helps lots of people learn various fundamental topics. My second book covers beginning to learn SQL Server Wait Stats, which is a relatively new subject. This book has had very good acceptance in the community. Book Signing Event Helping my community is my primary focus, so I was happy to see this year’s SQLPASS tag line: ‘This is a Community.‘ At the event, the expressor studio guys came up with a very novel idea. They had previously used my books and they had found them very useful. They got 100 copies of the book and decided to give it away to community folks. They invited me and my co-author Rick Morelan to hold a book signing event. We did a book signing on Thursday between 1 pm and 2 pm. Book Signing Event This event was one of the best events for me. This was my first book signing event outside of India. I reached the book signing location around 20 minutes before the scheduled time and what I saw was a big line for the book signing event. I felt very honored looking at the crowd and all the people around the event location. I felt very humbled when I saw some of my very close friends standing in the line to get my signature. It was really heartwarming to see so many enthusiasts waiting for more than an hour to get my signature. While standing in line I had the chance to have a conversation with every single person who showed up for the signature. I made sure that I repeated every single name and wrote it in every book with my signature. There is saying that if we write a name once we will remember it forever. I want to remember all of you who saw me at the book signing. Your comments were wonderful, your feedback was amazing and you were all very supportive. Book Signing Event I have made a note of every conversation I had with all of you when I was signing the books. Once again, I just want to express my thanks for coming to my book signing event. The whole experience was very humbling. On the top of it, I want to thank the expressor studio people who made it possible, who organized the whole signing event. I am so thankful to them for facilitating the whole experience, which is going to be hard to beat by any future experience. My books Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL PASS, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority Author Visit, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology

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• SQL SERVER – Preserve Leading Zero While Coping to Excel from SSMS

  - by pinaldave

  Earlier I wrote two articles about how to efficiently copy data from SSMS to Excel. Since I wrote that post there are plenty of interest generated on this subject. There are a few questions I keep on getting over this subject. One of the question is how to get the leading zero preserved while copying the data from SSMS to Excel. Well it is almost the same way as my earlier post SQL SERVER – Excel Losing Decimal Values When Value Pasted from SSMS ResultSet. The key here is in EXCEL and not in SQL Server. The step here is to change the format of Excel Cell to Text from Numbers and that will preserve the value of the with leading or trailing Zeros in Excel. However, I assume this is done for display purpose only because once you convert column to Text you may find it difficult to do numeric operations over the column for example Aggregation, Average etc. If you need to do the same you should either convert the columns back to Numeric in Excel or do the process in Database and export the same value as along with it as well. However, I have seen in requirement in the real world where the user has to have a numeric value with leading Zero values in it for display purpose. Here is my suggestion, instead of manipulating numeric value in the database and converting it to character value the ideal thing to do is to store it as a numeric value only in the database. Whatever changes you want to do for display purpose should be handled at the time of the display using the format function of SQL or Application Language. Honestly, database is data layer and presentation is presentation layer – they are two different things and if possible they should not be mixed. If due to any reason you cannot follow above advise and you need is to have append leading zeros in the database only here are two of my previous articles I suggest you to refer them. I am open to learn new tricks as these articles are almost three years old. Please share your opinion and suggestions in the comments area. SQL SERVER – Pad Ride Side of Number with 0 – Fixed Width Number Display SQL SERVER – UDF – Pad Ride Side of Number with 0 – Fixed Width Number Display Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Function, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology Tagged: Excel

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• SQL SERVER – How to Force New Cardinality Estimation or Old Cardinality Estimation

  - by Pinal Dave

  After reading my initial two blog posts on New Cardinality Estimation, I received quite a few questions. Once I receive this question, I felt I should have clarified it earlier few things when I started to write about cardinality. Before continuing this blog, if you have not read it before I suggest you read following two blog posts. SQL SERVER – Simple Demo of New Cardinality Estimation Features of SQL Server 2014 SQL SERVER – Cardinality Estimation and Performance – SQL in Sixty Seconds #072 Q: Does new cardinality will improve performance of all of my queries? A: Remember, there is no 0 or 1 logic when it is about estimation. The general assumption is that most of the queries will be benefited by new cardinality estimation introduced in SQL Server 2014. That is why the generic advice is to set the compatibility level of the database to 120, which is for SQL Server 2014. Q: Is it possible that after changing cardinality estimation to new logic by setting the value to compatibility level to 120, I get degraded performance for few queries? A: Yes, it is possible. However, the number of the queries where this impact should be very less. Q: Can I still run my database in older compatibility level and force few queries to newer cardinality estimation logic? If yes, How? A: Yes, you can do that. You will need to force your query with trace flag 2312 to use newer cardinality estimation logic. USE AdventureWorks2014 GO -- Old Cardinality Estimation ALTER DATABASE AdventureWorks2014 SET COMPATIBILITY_LEVEL = 110 GO -- Using New Cardinality Estimation SELECT [AddressID],[AddressLine1],[City] FROM [Person].[Address] OPTION(QUERYTRACEON 2312);; -- Using Old Cardinality Estimation SELECT [AddressID],[AddressLine1],[City] FROM [Person].[Address]; GO Q: Can I run my database in newer compatibility level and force few queries to older cardinality estimation logic? If yes, How? A: Yes, you can do that. You will need to force your query with trace flag 9481 to use newer cardinality estimation logic. USE AdventureWorks2014 GO -- NEW Cardinality Estimation ALTER DATABASE AdventureWorks2014 SET COMPATIBILITY_LEVEL = 120 GO -- Using New Cardinality Estimation SELECT [AddressID],[AddressLine1],[City] FROM [Person].[Address]; -- Using Old Cardinality Estimation SELECT [AddressID],[AddressLine1],[City] FROM [Person].[Address] OPTION(QUERYTRACEON 9481); GO I guess, I have covered most of the questions so far I have received. If I have missed any questions, please send me again and I will include the same. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

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• SQL Contests – Solution – Identify the Database Celebrity

  - by Pinal Dave

  Last week we were running contest Identify the Database Celebrity and we had received a fantastic response to the contest. Thank you to the kind folks at NuoDB as they had offered two USD 100 Amazon Gift Cards to the winners of the contest. We had also additional contest that users have to download and install NuoDB and identified the sample database. You can read about the contest over here. Here is the answer to the questions which we had asked earlier in the contest. Part 1: Identify Database Celebrity Personality 1 – Edgar Frank “Ted” Codd (August 19, 1923 – April 18, 2003) was an English computer scientist who, while working for IBM, invented the relational model for database management, the theoretical basis for relational databases. He made other valuable contributions to computer science, but the relational model, a very influential general theory of data management, remains his most mentioned achievement. (Wki) Personality 2 – James Nicholas “Jim” Gray (born January 12, 1944; lost at sea January 28, 2007; declared deceased May 16, 2012) was an American computer scientist who received the Turing Award in 1998 “for seminal contributions to database and transaction processing research and technical leadership in system implementation.” (Wiki) Personality 3 – Jim Starkey (born January 6, 1949 in Illinois) is a database architect responsible for developing InterBase, the first relational database to support multi-versioning, the blob column type, type event alerts, arrays and triggers. Starkey is the founder of several companies, including the web application development and database tool company Netfrastructure and NuoDB. (Wiki) Part 2: Identify NuoDB Samples Database Names In this part of the contest one has to Download NuoDB and install the sample database Hockey. Hockey is sample database and contains few tables. Users have to install sample database and inform the name of the sample databases. Here is the valid answer. HOCKEY PLAYERS SCORING TEAM Once again, it was indeed fun to run this contest. I have received great feedback about it and lots of people wants me to run similar contest in future. I promise to run similar interesting contests in the near future. Winners Within next two days, we will let winners send emails. Winners will have to confirm their email address and NuoDB team will send them directly Amazon Cards. Once again it was indeed fun to run this contest. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

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• SQL SERVER – Quiz and Video – Introduction to Discovering XML Data Type Methods

  - by pinaldave

  This blog post is inspired from SQL Interoperability Joes 2 Pros: A Guide to Integrating SQL Server with XML, C#, and PowerShell – SQL Exam Prep Series 70-433 – Volume 5. [Amazon] | [Flipkart] | [Kindle] | [IndiaPlaza] This is follow up blog post of my earlier blog post on the same subject - SQL SERVER – Introduction to Discovering XML Data Type Methods – A Primer. In the article we discussed various basics terminology of the XML. The article further covers following important concepts of XML. What are XML Data Type Methods The query() Method The value() Method The exist() Method The modify() Method Above five are the most important concepts related to XML and SQL Server. There are many more things one has to learn but without beginners fundamentals one can’t learn the advanced  concepts. Let us have small quiz and check how many of you get the fundamentals right. Quiz 1.) Which method returns an XML fragment from the source XML? query( ) value( ) exist( ) modify( ) All of them Only query( ) and value( ) 2.) Which XML data type method returns a “1” if found and “0” if the specified XPath is not found in the source XML? query( ) value( ) exist( ) modify( ) All of them Only query( ) and value( ) 3.) Which XML data type method allows you to pick the data type of the value that is returned from the source XML? query( ) value( ) exist( ) modify( ) All of them Only query( ) and value( ) 4.) Which method will not work with a SQL SELECT statement? query( ) value( ) exist( ) modify( ) All of them Only query( ) and value( ) Now make sure that you write down all the answers on the piece of paper. Watch following video and read earlier article over here. If you want to change the answer you still have chance. Solution 1) 1 2) 3 3) 2 4) 4 Now compare let us check the answers and compare your answers to following answers. I am very confident you will get them correct. Available at USA: Amazon India: Flipkart | IndiaPlaza Volume: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Please leave your feedback in the comment area for the quiz and video. Did you know all the answers of the quiz? Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Joes 2 Pros, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• SQLAuthority News – Microsoft Whitepaper – AlwaysOn Solution Guide: Offloading Read-Only Workloads to Secondary Replicas

  - by pinaldave

  SQL Server 2012 has many interesting features but the most talked feature is AlwaysOn. Performance tuning is always a hot topic. I see lots of need of the same and lots of business around it. However, many times when people talk about performance tuning they think of it as a either query tuning, performance tuning, or server tuning. All are valid points, but performance tuning expert usually understands the business workload and business logic before making suggestions. For example, if performance tuning expert analysis workload and realize that there are plenty of reports as well read only queries on the server they can for sure consider alternate options for the same. If read only data is not required real time or it can accept the data which is delayed a bit it makes sense to divide the workload. A secondary replica of the original data which can serve all the read only queries and report is a good idea in most of the cases where there is plenty of workload which is not dependent on the real time data. SQL Server 2012 has introduced the feature of AlwaysOn which can very well fit in this scenario and provide a solution in Read-Only Workloads. Microsoft has recently announced a white paper which is based on absolutely the same subject. I recommend it to read for every SQL Enthusiast who is are going to implement a solution to offload read-only workloads to secondary replicas. Download white paper AlwaysOn Solution Guide: Offloading Read-Only Workloads to Secondary Replicas Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Backup and Restore, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology Tagged: AlwaysOn

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• SQL SERVER – Data Sources and Data Sets in Reporting Services SSRS

  - by Pinal Dave

  This example is from the Beginning SSRS by Kathi Kellenberger. Supporting files are available with a free download from the www.Joes2Pros.com web site. This example is from the Beginning SSRS. Supporting files are available with a free download from the www.Joes2Pros.com web site. Connecting to Your Data? When I was a child, the telephone book was an important part of my life. Maybe I was just a nerd, but I enjoyed getting a new book every year to page through to learn about the businesses in my small town or to discover where some of my school acquaintances lived. It was also the source of maps to my town’s neighborhoods and the towns that surrounded me. To make a phone call, I would need a telephone number. In order to find a telephone number, I had to know how to use the telephone book. That seems pretty simple, but it resembles connecting to any data. You have to know where the data is and how to interact with it. A data source is the connection information that the report uses to connect to the database. You have two choices when creating a data source, whether to embed it in the report or to make it a shared resource usable by many reports. Data Sources and Data Sets A few basic terms will make the upcoming choses make more sense. What database on what server do you want to connect to? It would be better to just ask… “what is your data source?” The connection you need to make to get your reports data is called a data source. If you connected to a data source (like the JProCo database) there may be hundreds of tables. You probably only want data from just a few tables. This means you want to write a specific query against this data source. A query on a data source to get just the records you need for an SSRS report is called a Data Set. Creating a local Data Source You can connect embed a connection from your report directly to your JProCo database which (let’s say) is installed on a server named Reno. If you move JProCo to a new server named Tampa then you need to update the Data Set. If you have 10 reports in one project that were all pointing to the JProCo database on the Reno server then they would all need to be updated at once. It’s possible to make a project level Data Source and have each report use that. This means one change can fix all 10 reports at once. This would be called a Shared Data Source. Creating a Shared Data Source The best advice I can give you is to create shared data sources. The reason I recommend this is that if a database moves to a new server you will have just one place in Report Manager to make the server name change. That one change will update the connection information in all the reports that use that data source. To get started, you will start with a fresh project. Go to Start > All Programs > SQL Server 2012 > Microsoft SQL Server Data Tools to launch SSDT. Once SSDT is running, click New Project to create a new project. Once the New Project dialog box appears, fill in the form, as shown in. Be sure to select Report Server Project this time – not the wizard. Click OK to dismiss the New Project dialog box. You should now have an empty project, as shown in the Solution Explorer. A report is meant to show you data. Where is the data? The first task is to create a Shared Data Source. Right-click on the Shared Data Sources folder and choose Add New Data Source. The Shared Data Source Properties dialog box will launch where you can fill in a name for the data source. By default, it is named DataSource1. The best practice is to give the data source a more meaningful name. It is possible that you will have projects with more than one data source and, by naming them, you can tell one from another. Type the name JProCo for the data source name and click the Edit button to configure the database connection properties. If you take a look at the types of data sources you can choose, you will see that SSRS works with many data platforms including Oracle, XML, and Teradata. Make sure SQL Server is selected before continuing. For this post, I am assuming that you are using a local SQL Server and that you can use your Windows account to log in to the SQL Server. If, for some reason you must use SQL Server Authentication, choose that option and fill in your SQL Server account credentials. Otherwise, just accept Windows Authentication. If your database server was installed locally and with the default instance, just type in Localhost for the Server name. Select the JProCo database from the database list. At this point, the connection properties should look like. If you have installed a named instance of SQL Server, you will have to specify the server name like this: Localhost\InstanceName, replacing the InstanceName with whatever your instance name is. If you are not sure about the named instance, launch the SQL Server Configuration Manager found at Start > All Programs > Microsoft SQL Server 2012 > Configuration Tools. If you have a named instance, the name will be shown in parentheses. A default instance of SQL Server will display MSSQLSERVER; a named instance will display the name chosen during installation. Once you get the connection properties filled in, click OK to dismiss the Connection Properties dialog box and OK again to dismiss the Shared Data Source properties. You now have a data source in the Solution Explorer. What’s next I really need to thank Kathi Kellenberger and Rick Morelan for sharing this material for this 5 day series of posts on SSRS. To get really comfortable with SSRS you will get to know the different SSDT windows, Build reports on your own (without the wizards),  Add report headers and footers, Accept user input,  create levels, charts, or even maps for visual appeal. You might be surprise to know a small 230 page book starts from the very beginning and covers the steps to do all these items. Beginning SSRS 2012 is a small easy to follow book so you can learn SSRS for less than $20. See Joes2Pros.com for more on this and other books. If you want to learn SSRS in easy to simple words – I strongly recommend you to get Beginning SSRS book from Joes 2 Pros. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL Tagged: Reporting Services, SSRS

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• SQLAuthority News – SQL Server Technology Evangelists and Evangelism

  - by pinaldave

  This is the exact conversation that I had with three people during the recent SQL Server Public Training. Person 1: “Are you an SQL Server Evangelist?” Pinal : “No, but Vinod Kumar is.” Person 1: “Who are you?” Person 2: “He is Pinal, haha!” Person 1: “I know that, but don’t you evangelize SQL Server Technology?” Pinal : “Hmm… I do that…” Person 1: “In that case, why don’t you call yourself an Evangelist?” Pinal : “…! …” Person 2: “Good Question! Who are you Pinal?” Pinal : “I think you are asking my title, is that correct?” Person 1: “Maybe.” Pinal : “I am a Mentor, and I work for Solid Quality Mentors.” Person 2: “I have seen you listing yourself as the Founder of SQLAuthority.com… so…” Pinal : “Yeah that’s true.” Person 3: “Let me summarize what these people are asking. What they are asking is that you can have multiple titles, so is being an evangelist one of your titles or not?” Pinal : “Well, I am an SQL Server MVP and lots of people say that we are also evangelists of technology. In fact,  we are all evangelists of technology, aren’t we?” Person 1: “So let me come back to my original topic: If you are an SQL Server Evangelist, then what is this evangelism?” Person 2: “And who is Vinod Kumar – I have heard about him a lot.” Pinal : “Oh okay. Now I got it. Let me explain …” The answer was quite long but since this conversation, I have been thinking about the words “evangelist” and “evangelism.” I think being an evangelist is one of the most respected jobs in the world and to do this job one must bear lots of responsibilities. There were two questions asked to me, so let me answer both one by one. Who is Vinod Kumar? Vinod Kumar is a Technology Evangelist for Microsoft and one of the most respected persons in the SQL Server Community in India. Let me copy-paste my note from the previous TechEd India 2010 article. “I attended 2 sessions of Vinod Kumar. Vinod is a natural storyteller so there was no doubt that his sessions would be jam-packed. People attended his sessions simply because Vinod was the best speaker in the event. He did not have a single time that disappointed audience; he is truly a good speaker. He knows his stuff very well. I personally do not think that in India he can be compared to anyone for SQL.” Pinal Dave and Vinod Kumar What is Technology Evangelism? Here I am listing three posts written by Vinod Kumar, wherein he talks about Technology Evangelism and Technology Evangelist in an in-depth manner. They are highly-regarded articles in the Community. Evangelism beyond boundaries with an Evangelists !!! Technology Evangelism Demystified New face of Online Technology Evangelism I strongly recommend reading them all. These are wonderful blog posts. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: About Me, MVP, Pinal Dave, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology

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• SQL SERVER – Transcript of Learning SQL Server Performance: Indexing Basics – Interview of Vinod Kumar by Pinal Dave

  - by pinaldave

  Recently I just wrote a blog post on about Learning SQL Server Performance: Indexing Basics and I received lots of request that if we can share some insight into the course. Here is 200 seconds interview of Vinod Kumar I took right after completing the course. We have few free codes to watch the course, please your comment at http://facebook.com/SQLAuth and we will few of first ones, we will send the code. There are many people who said they would like to read the transcript of the video. Here I have generated the same. Pinal: Vinod, we recently released this course, SQL Server Indexing. It is about performance tuning. So tell me – how do indexes help performance? Vinod: I think what happens in the industry when it comes to performance is that developers and DBAs look at indexes first.  So that’s the first step for any performance tuning exercise, indexing is one of the most critical aspects and it is important to learn it the right way. Pinal: Correct. So what you mean to say is that if you know indexing you can pretty much tune any server and query. Vinod: So I might contradict my false statement now. Indexing is usually a stepping stone but it does not lead you to the end. But it’s good to start with indexing and there are lots of nuances to indexing that you need to understand, like how SQL uses indexing and how performance can improve because of the strategies that you have made. Pinal: But now I’m confused. First you said indexes are good, and then you said that indexes can degrade your performance.  So what is this course about?  I mean how does this course really make an impact? Vinod: Ok -so from the course perspective, what we are trying to do is give you a capsule which gives you a good start. Every journey needs a beginning, you need that first step.  This course is that first step in understanding. This is the most basic, fundamental course that we have tried to attack. This is the fundamentals of indexing, some of the key things that you must know about indexing.   Some of the basics of indexing are lesser known and so I think this course is geared towards each and every one of you out there who wants to understand little bit more about indexing. Pinal: So what I understand is that if I enrolled in this course I will have a minimum understanding about indexing when dealing with performance tuning.  Right? Vinod: Exactly. In this course is we have tried to give you a nice summary. We are talking about clustered indexing, non clustered indexing, too many indexes, too few indexes, over indexing, under indexing, duplicate indexing, columns tune indexing, with SQL Server 2012. There’s lot’s to learn. Pinal: You can see the URL [http://bit.ly/sql-index] of the course on the screen. Go ahead, attend, and let us know what you think about it. Thank you. Vinod: Thank you. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Index, SQL Performance, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLServer, T SQL, Technology, Video

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• SQL SERVER – What the Business Says Is Not What the Business Wants

  - by pinaldave

  This blog post is written in response to T-SQL Tuesday hosted by Steve Jones. Steve raised a very interesting question; every DBA and Database Developer has already faced this situation. When I read the topic, I felt that I can write several different examples here. Today, I will cover this scenario, which seems quite amusing. Shrinking Database Earlier this year, I was working on SQL Server Performance Tuning consultancy; I had faced very interesting situation. No matter how much I attempt to reduce the fragmentation, I always end up with heavy fragmentation on the server. After careful research, I figured out that one of the jobs was continuously Shrinking the Database – which is a very bad practice. I have blogged about my experience over here SQL SERVER – SHRINKDATABASE For Every Database in the SQL Server. I removed the incorrect shrinking process right away; once it was removed, everything continued working as it should be. After a couple of days, I learned that one of their DBAs had put back the same DBCC process. I requested the Senior DBA to find out what is going on and he came up with the following reason: “Business Requirement.” I cannot believe this! Now, it was time for me to go deep into the subject. Moreover, it had become necessary to understand the need. After talking to the concerned people here, I understood what they needed. Please read the exact business need in their own language. The Shrinking “Business Need” “We shrink the database because if we take backup after shrinking the database, the size of the same is smaller. Once we take backup, we have to send it to our remote location site. Our business requirement is that we need to always make sure that the file is smallest when we transfer it to remote server.” The backup is not affected in any way if you shrink the database or not. The size of backup will be the same. After a couple of the tests, they agreed with me. Shrinking will create performance issues for the same as it will introduce heavy fragmentation in the database. The Real Solution The real business need was that they needed the smallest possible backup file. We finally implemented a quick solution which they are still using to date. The solution was compressed backup. I have written about this subject in detail few years before SQL SERVER – 2008 – Introduction to New Feature of Backup Compression. Compressed backup not only creates a small filesize but also increases the speed of the database as well. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Best Practices, Pinal Dave, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLServer, T SQL, Technology

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• SQLAuthority News – Weekend Experiment with NuoDB – Points to Pondor and Whitepaper

  - by pinaldave

  This weekend I have downloaded the latest beta version of NuoDB. I found it much improved and better UI. I was very much impressed as the installation was very smooth and I was up and running in less than 5 minutes with the product. The tools which are related to the Administration of the NuoDB seems to get makeover during this beta release. As per the claim they support now Solaris platform and have improved the native MacOS installation. I neither have Mac nor Solaris – I wish I would have experimented with the same. I will appreciate if anyone out there can confirm how the installations goes on these platforms. I have previously blogged about my experiment with NuoDB here: SQL SERVER – Weekend Project – Experimenting with ACID Transactions, SQL Compliant, Elastically Scalable Database SQL SERVER – Beginning NuoDB – Who will Benefit and How to Start SQL SERVER – Follow up on Beginning NuoDB – Who will Benefit and How to Start – Part 2 I am very impressed with the product so far and I have decided to understand the product further deep. Here are few of the questions which I am going to try to find answers with regards to NuoDB. Just so it is clear – NuoDB is not NOSQL, matter of the fact, it is following all the ACID properties of the database. If ACID properties are crucial why many NoSQL products are not adhering to it? (There are few out there do follow ACID but not all). I do understand the scalability of the database however does elasticity is crucial for the database and if yes how? (Elasticity is where the workload on the database is heavily fluctuating and the need of more than a single database server is coming up). How NuoDB has built scalable, elastic and 100% ACID compliance database which supports multiple platforms? How is NOSQL compared to NuoDB’s new architecture? In the next coming weeks, I am going to explore above concepts and dive deeper into the understanding of the same. Meanwhile I have read following white paper written by Experts at University of California at Santa Barbara. Very interesting read and great starter on the subject Database Scalability, Elasticity, and Autonomy in the Cloud. Additionally, my questions are also talking about NoSQL, this weekend I have started to learn about NoSQL from Pluralsight‘s online learning library. I will share my experience very soon. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL White Papers, T SQL, Technology Tagged: NuoDB

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• SQL SERVER – Working with FileTables in SQL Server 2012 – Part 2 – Methods to Insert Data Into Table

  - by pinaldave

  Read Part 1 Working with FileTables in SQL Server 2012 – Part 1 – Setting Up Environment In this second part of the series, we will see how we can insert the files into the FileTables. There are two methods to insert the data into FileTables: Method 1: Copy Paste data into the FileTables folder First, find the folder where FileTable will be storing the files. Go to Databases >> Newly Created Database (FileTableDB) >> Expand Tables. Here you will see a new folder which says “FileTables”. When expanded, it gives the name of the newly created “FileTableTb”. Right click on the newly created table, and click on “Explore FileTable Directory”. This will open up the folder where the FileTable data will be stored. When clicked on the option it will open up following folder in my local machine where the FileTable data will be stored. \\127.0.0.1\mssqlserver\FileTableDB\FileTableTb_Dir You can just copy your document just there. I copied few word document there and ran select statement to see the result. USE [FileTableDB] GO SELECT * FROM FileTableTb GO SELECT * returns all the rows. Here is SELECT statement which has only few columns selected from FileTable. SELECT [name] ,[file_type] ,CAST([file_stream] AS VARCHAR) FileContent ,[cached_file_size] ,[creation_time] ,[last_write_time] ,[last_access_time] FROM [dbo].[FileTableTb] GO I believe this is the simplest method to populate FileTable, because you just have to move the files to the specific table. Method 2: T-SQL Insert Statement There are always cases when you might want to programmatically insert the images into SQL Server File table. Here is a quick method which you can use to insert the data in the file table. I have inserted a very small text file using T-SQL, and later on, reading that using SELECT statement demonstrated in method 1 above. INSERT INTO [dbo].[FileTableTb] ([name],[file_stream]) SELECT 'NewFile.txt', * FROM OPENROWSET(BULK N'd:\NewFile.txt', SINGLE_BLOB) AS FileData GO The above T-SQL statement will copy the NewFile.txt to new location. When you run SELECT statement, it will retrieve the file and list in the resultset. Additionally, it returns the content in the SELECT statement as well. I think it is a pretty interesting way to insert the data into the FileTable. SELECT [name] ,[file_type] ,CAST([file_stream] AS VARCHAR) FileContent ,[cached_file_size] ,[creation_time] ,[last_write_time] ,[last_access_time] FROM [dbo].[FileTableTb] GO There are more to FileTable and we will see those in my future blog posts. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology Tagged: Filestream

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• SQL SERVER – QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON/OFF Explanation and Example – Question on Real World Usage

  - by Pinal Dave

  This is a follow up blog post of SQL SERVER – QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON/OFF and ANSI_NULL ON/OFF Explanation. I wrote that blog six years ago and I had plans that I will write a follow up blog post of the same. Today, when I was going over my to-do list and I was surprised that I had an item there which was six years old and I never got to do that. In the earlier blog post I wrote about exploitation of the Quoted Identifier and ANSI Null. In this blog post we will see a quick example of Quoted Identifier. However, before we continue this blog post, let us see a refresh what both of Quoted Identifider do. QUOTED IDENTIFIER ON/OFF This option specifies the setting for use of double quotes. When this is on, double quotation mark is used as part of the SQL Server identifier (object name). This can be useful in situations in which identifiers are also SQL Server reserved words. In simple words when we have QUOTED IDENTIFIER ON, anything which is wrapped in double quotes becomes an object. E.g. -- The following will work SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON GO CREATE DATABASE "Test1" GO -- The following will throw an error about Incorrect syntax near 'Test2'. SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER OFF GO CREATE DATABASE "Test2" GO This feature is particularly helpful when we are working with reserved keywords in SQL Server. For example if you have to create a database with the name VARCHAR or INT or DATABASE you may want to put double quotes around your database name and turn on quoted identifiers to create a database with the such name. Personally, I do not think so anybody will ever create a database with the reserve keywords intentionally, as it will just lead to confusion. Here is another example to give you further clarity about how Quoted Idenifier setting works with SELECT statement. -- The following will throw an error about Invalid column name 'Column'. SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON GO SELECT "Column" GO -- The following will work SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER OFF GO SELECT "Column" GO Personally, I always use the following method to create database as it works irrespective of what is the quoted identifier’s status. It always creates objects with my desire name whenever I would like to create. CREATE DATABASE [Test3] I believe the future of the quoted identifier on or off is useful in the real world when we have script generated from another database where this setting was ON and we have to now execute the same script again in our environment again. Question to you - I personally have never used this feature as I mentioned earlier. I believe this feature is there to support the scripts which are generated in another SQL Database or generate the script for other database. Do you have a real world scenario where we need to turn on or off Quoted Identifiers. Click to Download Scripts Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• SQLAuthority News – 2 New Books – FREE Books and Book Signing at #SQLPASS 2012

  - by pinaldave

  As an author the most interesting task is to participate in Book Signing Events. If you are at SQLPASS – we are going to have a lot of book signing events. Here is the good news! MY NEW BOOKS ARE OUT! SQL 2012 Functions Limited Edition Click to Expand This book is a very special edition book. Our current plans is to run this book for the limited edition. You can avail this book from Amazon and it will soon come to India. Join following book signing events where you will get this book for free. Wednesday, November 7, 2012 7pm-8pm - Embarcadero Booth Book Signing (FREE BOOK) Thursday, November 8, 2012 12pm-1pm - Embarcadero Booth Book Signing (FREE BOOK) SQL Queries 2012 Joes 2 Pros Volume1 Click to Expand This is my first book this year which will be available in bookstores. Last Year I published 3 books and this year this is my first book. This book is available on Amazon over here and it will come to India very soon. Join following book signing events where you will get this book for free. Wednesday, November 7, 2012 12pm-1pm – Book Signing at Exhibit Hall Joes Pros booth#117 (FREE BOOK) If you are attending SQLPASS you may get this book’s Autographed Special Edition for FREE if you attend following book signing events. Rest all the time – I will be at Exhibition Hall Joes 2 Pros Booth #117. Stop by for the goodies! Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Joes 2 Pros, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL PASS, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority Book Review, SQLAuthority News, SQLServer, T SQL, Technology

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• SQL SERVER – Winners – Contest Win Joes 2 Pros Combo (USD 198)

  - by pinaldave

  Earlier this week we had contest ran over the blog where we are giving away USD 198 worth books of Joes 2 Pros. We had over 500+ responses during the five days of the contest. After removing duplicate and incorrect responses we had a total of 416 valid responses combined total 5 days. We got maximum correct answer on day 2 and minimum correct answer on day 5. Well, enough of the statistics. Let us go over the winners’ names. The winners have been selected randomly by one of the book editors of Joes 2 Pros. SQL Server Joes 2 Pros Learning Kit 5 Books Day 1 Winner USA: Philip Dacosta India: Sandeep Mittal Day 2 Winner USA: Michael Evans India: Satyanarayana Raju Pakalapati Day 3 Winner USA: Ratna Pulapaka India: Sandip Pani Day 4 Winner USA: Ramlal Raghavan India: Dattatrey Sindol Day 5 Winner USA: David Hall India: Mohit Garg I congratulate all the winners for their participation. All of you will receive emails from us. You will have to reply the email with your physical address. Once you receive an email please reply within 3 days so we can ship the 5 book kits to you immediately. Bonus Winners Additionally, I had announced that every day I will select a winner from the readers who have left comments with their favorite blog post. Here are the winners with their favorite blog post. Day 1: Prasanna kumar.D [Favorite Post] Day 2: Ganesh narim [Favorite Post] Day 3: Sreelekha [Favorite Post] Day 4: P.Anish Shenoy [Favorite Post] Day 5: Rikhil [Favorite Post] All the bonus winners will receive my print book SQL Wait Stats if your shipping address is in India or Pluralsight Subscription if you are outside India. If you are not winner of the contest but still want to learn SQL Server you can get the book from here. Amazon | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | Flipkart | Indiaplaza Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Joes 2 Pros, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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