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• Weblogic domain scale up using EM Grid Control 11gR1

  - by dmitry.nefedkin(at)oracle.com

  As you know a weblogic domain consists of set of servers running independently or in a cluster mode, sharing the distributed resources. And in most environments weblogic  cluster consists of multiple managed servers running simultaneously and working together to provide increased scalability and reliability.  These servers can run on the same machine, or be located on different machines.  It's a common task to increase a cluster's capacity by adding new machines to the cluster to host the new server instances.  You can do it by manually installing weblogic binaries to the new host and use pack/unpack commands to add a managed server to this new host.  But with Enterprise Manager Grid Control 11gR1 (EMGC) there is  another way - Fusion Middleware Domain Scale Up  procedure. I'm going to show you how it works.Here is a picture of  my medrec_oradb weblogic domain, what is registered in EMGC. It contains an admin server and a cluster MedRecCluster with  the single managed server MS1. Both admin and managed servers are on the same host oel46-vmware, it's a virtual machine with OEL 4.6 that runs inside our Oracle VM infrastructure.  And here are the application deployments, note that couple of applications are deployed to the cluster.First of all I have to prepare a new machine that will host new managed sever of my cluster. I created new VM with OEL 5.4 using the corresponding Oracle VM template available in Oracle E-Delivery site for Oracle Linux and Oracle VM and named it wls1032. Next step is to install Oracle EM Grid Control 11gR1 Agent to this new host.  You can download it from the OTN page and install it manually,  or you can use Agent Installation Deployment procedure available in EMGC  (Deployments->Agent Installation->Install Agent). Anyway, when you agent is up and running on the new machine, you will see it in EMGC Console in the Targets->Hosts subtab.Now we are ready to scale up our weblogic domain. Click the Deployments tab in Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control, and then click Deployment Procedure. Select a Fusion Middleware Domain Scale Up procedure from the list, and click Schedule Deployment. The first page of the FMW Domain Scale Up Wizard is displayed and you can proceed with the deployment process.Select the domain from list, enter the working directory on the admin server host, and also fill the weblogic credentials for the administration server console and the OS credentials for the  admin server host.  Click Next button.  The next step allows you to configure you domain, to add a new manager server to the cluster you should select the cluster in the tree and click Add Server button. Select the newly added server in a tree, choose the target host and  enter the configuration details of your managed server. You can also add new machine and node manager details.  Please note that you cannot change the values in  Domain Location and Fusion Middleware Home fields, so these locations on the target host will be the same as for the admin server host.   Working directory on the target host should have enough free space to store FMW home binaries and domain configuration files.  In my experience the working directories should have at least 3 Gb of free space.  The last thing you should fill is the OS credentials for the target host. The next steps allows you to schedule the execution of the procedure, it is started immediately in my example. The last step is just a review the configuration for the domain scale up. Click Submit to launch the process. You can track the status of the procedure execution by selecting Deployments->Deployment Procedures->Procedure Completion Status in the EMGC Console.As you can see in the picture below, the procedure consists of the many steps, and I'm going to share my experience about the issues that I had at some of the steps. Please keep in mind that you can always continue the execution from the last successfully completed step by clicking Retry button.Check OUI Prerequisites  step may fail if the target host does  not pass prerequisites checks for Weblogic Server installation such as amount of RAM, linux packages installed, etc. Create FMW Clone Archive step may fail if you do not have enough free space in the working directory on the administration server host.Transfer cloning archive to targets  step  may fail if the EMGC agents on the admin server host or on target host are not secured.   You should secure the agent by issuing ./emctl secure agent  command from $AGENT_HOME/bin directory and entering the agent registration password.Both Transfer cloning archive to targets and Apply Clone at target hosts steps may fail if you do not have enough free space in the working directory on the target host. The most complicated issue I had on the Run Inventory Collection  step. The step failed and I noticed that the agent on the target server is also failed with the following error in the $AGENT_HOME/sysman/log/emagent.trc  log file:2010-12-28 11:50:34,310 Thread-2838952848 ERROR upload: Failed to upload file A0000008.xml: Fatal Error.Response received: 500|ORA-20603: The timezone of the multiagent target (/Farm_Localhost_MedRec_medrec_oradb/medrec_oradb,weblogic_domain)is not consistent with the timezone (America/Los_Angeles) reported by other agents.2010-12-28 11:50:34,310 Thread-2838952848 ERROR upload: 1 Failure(s) in a row or XML error for A0000008.xml, retcode = -6, we give up2010-12-28 11:50:35,552 Thread-2838952848 WARN  upload: FxferSend: received fatal error in header from repository: https://oel46-vmware:1159/em/uploadFATAL_ERROR::500|ORA-20603: The timezone of the multiagent target (/Farm_Localhost_MedRec_medrec_oradb/medrec_oradb,weblogic_domain)is not consistent with the timezone (America/Los_Angeles) reported by other agents.2010-12-28 11:50:35,552 Thread-2838952848 ERROR upload: number of fatal error exceeds the limit 32010-12-28 11:50:35,552 Thread-2838952848 ERROR upload: agent will shutdown now2010-12-28 11:50:35,552 Thread-2838952848 ERROR : Signalled to Exit with status 55. Too many fatal upload failures2010-12-28 11:50:35,552 Thread-2838952848 ERROR upload: 1 Failure(s) in a row or XML error for A0000008.xml, retcode = -6, we give up2010-12-28 11:50:35,552 Thread-3044607680 ERROR main: EMAgent abnormal terminatingI checked the timezone of my domain target inside EMGC repositoryselect timezone_regionfrom mgmt_targets where target_type = 'weblogic_domain'  and display_name = 'medrec_oradb'"TIMEZONE_REGION""America/Los_Angeles"Then checked the timezone of my agents and indeed, they differedselect target_name, timezone_region from mgmt_targets where type_display_name = 'Agent'"TARGET_NAME"    "TIMEZONE_REGION""oel46-vmware:3872"    "America/Los_Angeles""wls1032.imc.fors.ru:3872"    "America/New_York"So I had to change the timezone on the wls1032 host and propagate this changes to the agent and to the EMGC repository. Here was the steps:issued system-config-date command on wls1032.imc.fors.ru  and set timezone to "America/Los_Angeles"propagated the changes to the agent bu executing ./emctl resetTZ agent  command from $AGENT_HOME/bin directoryconnected to EMGC repository as sysman and executed the following PL/SQL block:   begin      mgmt_target.set_agent_tzrgn('wls1032.imc.fors.ru:3872','America/Los_Angeles');      commit;   end;After that I had to clear the pending uploads on wls1032.imc.fors.ru:  rm -r $AGENT_HOME/sysman/emd/state/*  rm -r $AGENT_HOME/sysman/emd/collection/*  rm -r $AGENT_HOME/sysman/emd/upload/*  rm $AGENT_HOME/sysman/emd/lastupld.xml  rm $AGENT_HOME/sysman/emd/agntstmp.txt  $AGENT_HOME/bin/emctl start agent  $AGENT_HOME/bin/emctl clearstate agentThe last part of this solution was to resync the agent in EMGC console by clicking Agent Resynchronization button (please leave "Unblock agent on successful completion of agent resynchronization" checkbox checked in the next screen).After that I issued ./emctl upload command from $AGENT_HOME/bin on the wls1032 host,  and my previous error disappeared,  but I catched another one: EMD upload error: Failed to upload file A0000004.xml: HTTP error.Response received: ERROR-400|Data will be rejected for upload from agent 'https://wls1032.imc.fors.ru:3872/emd/main/', max size limit for direct load exceeded [7544731/5242880]So the uploading XML file size was 7 Mb, and the limit on OMS was 5 Mb.  To increase the max file size limit to 20 Mb I had to connect to the OMS host and execute the following commands from $OMS_HOME/bin directory: ./emctl set property -name em.loader.maxDirectLoadFileSz -value 20971520 -module emoms ./emctl stop oms ./emctl start omsAfter that I issued ./emctl upload command from $AGENT_HOME/bin on the wls1032 one more time and it completed successfully.   The agent uploaded the configuration information to the EMGC  repository and I was able to see the results of my weblogic domain scale-up in EMGC Console.DeploymentsSo, now the weblogic cluster contains 2 managed servers located on the different hosts. This powerful feature of the Enterprise Manager Grid Control  is a part of  the WebLogic Server Management Pack Enterprise Edition.

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• Software Engineering Practices &ndash; Different Projects should have different maturity levels

  - by Dylan Smith

  I’ve had a lot of discussions at the office lately about the drastically different sets of software engineering practices used on our various projects, if what we are doing is appropriate, and what factors should you be considering when determining what practices are most appropriate in a given context. I wanted to write up my thoughts in a little more detail on this subject, so here we go: If you compare any two software projects (specifically comparing their codebases) you’ll often see very different levels of maturity in the software engineering practices employed. By software engineering practices, I’m specifically referring to the quality of the code and the amount of technical debt present in the project. Things such as Test Driven Development, Domain Driven Design, Behavior Driven Development, proper adherence to the SOLID principles, etc. are all practices that you would expect at the mature end of the spectrum. At the other end of the spectrum would be the quick-and-dirty solutions that are done using something like an Access Database, Excel Spreadsheet, or maybe some quick “drag-and-drop coding”. For this blog post I’m going to refer to this as the Software Engineering Maturity Spectrum (SEMS). I believe there is a time and a place for projects at every part of that SEMS. The risks and costs associated with under-engineering solutions have been written about a million times over so I won’t bother going into them again here, but there are also (unnecessary) costs with over-engineering a solution. Sometimes putting multiple layers, and IoC containers, and abstracting out the persistence, etc is complete overkill if a one-time use Access database could solve the problem perfectly well. A lot of software developers I talk to seem to automatically jump to the very right-hand side of this SEMS in everything they do. A common rationalization I hear is that it may seem like a small trivial application today, but these things always grow and stick around for many years, then you’re stuck maintaining a big ball of mud. I think this is a cop-out. Sure you can’t always anticipate how an application will be used or grow over its lifetime (can you ever??), but that doesn’t mean you can’t manage it and evolve the underlying software architecture as necessary (even if that means having to toss the code out and re-write it at some point…maybe even multiple times). My thoughts are that we should be making a conscious decision around the start of each project approximately where on the SEMS we want the project to exist. I believe this decision should be based on 3 factors: 1. Importance - How important to the business is this application? What is the impact if the application were to suddenly stop working? 2. Complexity - How complex is the application functionality? 3. Life-Expectancy - How long is this application expected to be in use? Is this a one-time use application, does it fill a short-term need, or is it more strategic and is expected to be in-use for many years to come? Of course this isn’t an exact science. You can’t say that Project X should be at the 73% mark on the SEMS and expect that to be helpful. My point is not that you need to precisely figure out what point on the SEMS the project should be at then translate that into some prescriptive set of practices and techniques you should be using. Rather my point is that we need to be aware that there is a spectrum, and that not everything is going to be (or should be) at the edges of that spectrum, indeed a large number of projects should probably fall somewhere within the middle; and different projects should adopt a different level of software engineering practices and maturity levels based on the needs of that project. To give an example of this way of thinking from my day job: Every couple of years my company plans and hosts a large event where ~400 of our customers all fly in to one location for a multi-day event with various activities. We have some staff whose job it is to organize the logistics of this event, which includes tracking which flights everybody is booked on, arranging for transportation to/from airports, arranging for hotel rooms, name tags, etc The last time we arranged this event all these various pieces of data were tracked in separate spreadsheets and reconciliation and cross-referencing of all the data was literally done by hand using printed copies of the spreadsheets and several people sitting around a table going down each list row by row. Obviously there is some room for improvement in how we are using software to manage the event’s logistics. The next time this event occurs we plan to provide the event planning staff with a more intelligent tool (either an Excel spreadsheet or probably an Access database) that can track all the information in one location and make sure that the various pieces of data are properly linked together (so for example if a person cancels you only need to delete them from one place, and not a dozen separate lists). This solution would fall at or near the very left end of the SEMS meaning that we will just quickly create something with very little attention paid to using mature software engineering practices. If we examine this project against the 3 criteria I listed above for determining it’s place within the SEMS we can see why: Importance – If this application were to stop working the business doesn’t grind to a halt, revenue doesn’t stop, and in fact our customers wouldn’t even notice since it isn’t a customer facing application. The impact would simply be more work for our event planning staff as they revert back to the previous way of doing things (assuming we don’t have any data loss). Complexity – The use cases for this project are pretty straightforward. It simply needs to manage several lists of data, and link them together appropriately. Precisely the task that access (and/or Excel) can do with minimal custom development required. Life-Expectancy – For this specific project we’re only planning to create something to be used for the one event (we only hold these events every 2 years). If it works well this may change (see below). Let’s assume we hack something out quickly and it works great when we plan the next event. We may decide that we want to make some tweaks to the tool and adopt it for planning all future events of this nature. In that case we should examine where the current application is on the SEMS, and make a conscious decision whether something needs to be done to move it further to the right based on the new objectives and goals for this application. This may mean scrapping the access database and re-writing it as an actual web or windows application. In this case, the life-expectancy changed, but let’s assume the importance and complexity didn’t change all that much. We can still probably get away with not adopting a lot of the so-called “best practices”. For example, we can probably still use some of the RAD tooling available and might have an Autonomous View style design that connects directly to the database and binds to typed datasets (we might even choose to simply leave it as an access database and continue using it; this is a decision that needs to be made on a case-by-case basis). At Anvil Digital we have aspirations to become a primarily product-based company. So let’s say we use this tool to plan a handful of events internally, and everybody loves it. Maybe a couple years down the road we decide we want to package the tool up and sell it as a product to some of our customers. In this case the project objectives/goals change quite drastically. Now the tool becomes a source of revenue, and the impact of it suddenly stopping working is significantly less acceptable. Also as we hold focus groups, and gather feedback from customers and potential customers there’s a pretty good chance the feature-set and complexity will have to grow considerably from when we were using it only internally for planning a small handful of events for one company. In this fictional scenario I would expect the target on the SEMS to jump to the far right. Depending on how we implemented the previous release we may be able to refactor and evolve the existing codebase to introduce a more layered architecture, a robust set of automated tests, introduce a proper ORM and IoC container, etc. More likely in this example the jump along the SEMS would be so large we’d probably end up scrapping the current code and re-writing. Although, if it was a slow phased roll-out to only a handful of customers, where we collected feedback, made some tweaks, and then rolled out to a couple more customers, we may be able to slowly refactor and evolve the code over time rather than tossing it out and starting from scratch. The key point I’m trying to get across is not that you should be throwing out your code and starting from scratch all the time. But rather that you should be aware of when and how the context and objectives around a project changes and periodically re-assess where the project currently falls on the SEMS and whether that needs to be adjusted based on changing needs. Note: There is also the idea of “spectrum decay”. Since our industry is rapidly evolving, what we currently accept as mature software engineering practices (the right end of the SEMS) probably won’t be the same 3 years from now. If you have a project that you were to assess at somewhere around the 80% mark on the SEMS today, but don’t touch the code for 3 years and come back and re-assess its position, it will almost certainly have changed since the right end of the SEMS will have moved farther out (maybe the project is now only around 60% due to decay). Developer Skills Another important aspect to this whole discussion is around the skill sets of your architects and lead developers. When talking about the progression of a developers skills from junior->intermediate->senior->… they generally start by only being able to write code that belongs on the left side of the SEMS and as they gain more knowledge and skill they become capable of working at a higher and higher level along the SEMS. We all realize that the learning never stops, but eventually you’ll get to the point where you can comfortably develop at the right-end of the SEMS (the exact practices and techniques that translates to is constantly changing, but that’s not the point here). A critical skill that I’d love to see more evidence of in our industry is the most senior guys not only being able to work at the right-end of the SEMS, but more importantly be able to consciously work at any point along the SEMS as project needs dictate. An even more valuable skill would be if you could make the conscious decision to move a projects code further right on the SEMS (based on changing needs) and do so in an incremental manner without having to start from scratch. An exercise that I’m planning to go through with all of our projects here at Anvil in the near future is to map out where I believe each project currently falls within this SEMS, where I believe the project *should* be on the SEMS based on the business needs, and for those that don’t match up (i.e. most of them) come up with a plan to improve the situation.

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• Using Microsoft benefits to kickstart your own development

  - by douglasscott

  Working for a big company I enjoy all the Microsoft tools I can consume. I also have the infrastructure to support my development and team communication.I recently helped form a small consulting team that requires the same type of resources. That is when the realization of the true cost of Microsoft's professional development tools really hit me.Okay, I'll just bite the bullet and get what I'm used to working with to do high quality development projects.  After just a few minutes of looking at street prices and doing some quick math I began to have a realization...doing this right isn't cheap!Luckily there is help.  If you are willing to get your ducks in a row and do a little documentation  Microsoft will give you some developer manna. I went to the Bizspark site and completed the application which describes your company profile and services offer.  The approval process took about a week.  Voila, A Visual Studio Ultimate with MSDN Subscription!As a start-up Office 365 can be a great solution for all your team communications.  I also enrolled in the Microsoft Cloud Essentials program as part of a business track.  Once you meet the Cloud Essentials requirements you will receive 250 Office 365 licenses! This includes Office and hosted Exchange, Lync, and SharePoint.Take advantage of what Microsoft has to offer for your start-up.  It just may surprise you and save you a lot of your start-up budget.

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• June 22-24, 2010 in London City Level 400 SQL Server Performance Monitoring & Tuning Workshop

  - by sqlworkshops

  We are organizing the “3 Day Level 400 SQL Server Performance Monitoring & Tuning Workshop” for the 1st time in London City during June 22-24, 2010.Agenda is located @ www.sqlworkshops.com/workshops & you can register @ www.sqlworkshops.com/ruk. Charges: £ 1800 (5% discount for those who register before 21st May, £ 1710).In this 3 Day Level 400 hands-on workshop, unlike short SQLBits sessions, we go deeper on the tuning topics. Not sure if this will be a good use of your time & money? Watch our webcasts @ www.sqlworkshops.com/webcasts.We are trying to balance these commercial offerings with our free community contributions. Financially: These workshops are essential for us to stay in business!Feedback from Finland workshop posted by Jukka, Wärtsilä Oyj on February 23, 2010 to the LinkedIn SQL Server User Group Finland (more feedbacks @ www.sqlworkshops.com/feedbacks):Just want to start this thread and give some feedback on the Workshop that I attended last week at Microsoft.Three days in a row, deep dive into the query optimization and performance monitoring :-) I must say, that the SQL guru Ramesh has all the tricks up in his sleeves.The workshop was very helpful and what's most important: no slide show marathon: samples after samples explained very clearly and with our own class room SQL servers we can try the same stuff while Ramesh typed his own samples.If the workshop will be rearranged, I can most willingly recommend it to anyone who wants to know what's "under the hood" of SQL Server 2008.Once again, thank you Microsoft and Ramesh to make this happen. May the force be with us all :-)Hope to see you @ the Workshop. Feel free to pass on this information to your SQL Server colleagues.-ramesh-www.sqlbits.com/speakers/r_meyyappan/default.aspx

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

  - by Tamarick Hill

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

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• SQL SERVER – Weekly Series – Memory Lane – #003

  - 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 This was the first year of my blogging and lots of new things I was learning as I go. I was indeed an infant in blogging a few years ago. However, as time passed by I have learned a lot. This year was year of experiments and new learning. 2007 Working as a full time DBA I often encoutered various errors and I started to learn how to avoid those error and document the same. ERROR Msg 5174 Each file size must be greater than or equal to 512 KB Whenever I see this error I wonder why someone is trying to attempt a database which is extremely small. Anyway, it does not matter what I think I keep on seeing this error often in industries. Anyway the solution of the error is equally interesting – just created larger database. Dilbert Humor This was very first encounter with database humor and I started to love it. It does not matter how many time we read this cartoon it does not get old. Generate Script with Data from Database – Database Publishing Wizard Generating schema script with data is one of the most frequently performed tasks among SQL Server Data Professionals. There are many ways to do the same. In the above article I demonstrated that how we can use the Database Publishing Wizard to accomplish the same. It was new to me at that time but I have not seen much of the adoption of the same still in the industry. Here is one of my videos where I demonstrate how we can generate data with schema. 2008 Delete Backup History – Cleanup Backup History Deleting backup history is important too but should be done carefully. If this is not carried out at regular interval there is good chance that MSDB will be filled up with all the old history. Every organization is different. Some would like to keep the history for 30 days and some for a year but there should be some limit. One should regularly archive the database backup history. South Asia MVP Open Days 2008 This was my very first year Microsoft MVP. I had Indeed big blast at the event and the fun was incredible. After this event I have attended many different MVP events but the fun and learning this particular event presented was amazing and just like me many others are not able to forget the same. Here are other links related to the event: South Asia MVP Open Day 2008 – Goa South Asia MVP Open Day 2008 – Goa – Day 1 South Asia MVP Open Day 2008 – Goa – Day 2 South Asia MVP Open Day 2008 – Goa – Day 3 2009 Enable or Disable Constraint  This is very simple script but I personally keep on forgetting it so I had blogged it. Till today, I keep on referencing this again and again as sometime a very little thing is hard to remember. Policy Based Management – Create, Evaluate and Fix Policies This article will cover the most spectacular feature of SQL 2008 – Policy-based management and how the configuration of SQL Server with policy-based management architecture can make a powerful difference. Policy based management is loaded with several advantages. It can help you implement various policies for reliable configuration of the system. It also provides additional administrative assistance to DBAs and helps them effortlessly manage various tasks of SQL Server across the enterprise. SQLPASS 2009 – My Very First SQPASS Experience Just Brilliant! I never had an experience such a thing in my life. SQL SQL and SQL – all around SQL! I am listing my own reasons here in order of importance to me. Networking with SQL fellows and experts Putting face to the name or avatar Learning and improving my SQL skills Understanding the structure of the largest SQL Server Professional Association Attending my favorite training sessions Since last time I have never missed a single time this event. This event is my favorite event and something keeps me going. Here are additional post related SQLPASS 2009. SQL PASS Summit, Seattle 2009 – Day 1 SQL PASS Summit, Seattle 2009 – Day 2 SQL PASS Summit, Seattle 2009 – Day 3 SQL PASS Summit, Seattle 2009 – Day 4 2010 Get All the Information of Database using sys.databases Even though we believe that we know everything about our database, we do not know a lot of things about our database. This little script enables us to know so many details about databases which we may not be familiar with. Run this on your server today and see how much you know your database. Reducing CXPACKET Wait Stats for High Transactional Database While engaging in a performance tuning consultation for a client, a situation occurred where they were facing a lot of CXPACKET Waits Stats. The client asked me if I could help them reduce this huge number of wait stats. I usually receive this kind of request from other client as well, but the important thing to understand is whether this question has any merits or benefits, or not. I discusses the same in this article – a bit long but insightful for sure. Error related to Database in Use There are so many database management operations in SQL Server which requires exclusive access to the database and it is not always possible to get it. When any database is online in SQL Server it either applications or system thread often accesses them. This means database can’t have exclusive access and the operations which required this access throws an error. There is very easy method to overcome this minor issue – a single line script can give you exclusive access to the database. Difference between DATETIME and DATETIME2 Developers have found the root reason of the problem when dealing with Date Functions – when data time values are converted (implicit or explicit) between different data types, which would lose some precision, so the result cannot match each other as expected. In this blog post I go over very interesting details and difference between DATETIME and DATETIME2 History of SQL Server Database Encryption I recently met Michael Coles and Rodeney Landrum the author of one of the kind book Expert SQL Server 2008 Encryption at SQLPASS in Seattle. During the conversation we ended up how Microsoft is evolving encryption technology. The same discussion lead to talking about history of encryption tools in SQL Server. Michale pointed me to page 18 of his book of encryption. He explicitly gave me permission to re-produce relevant part of history from his book. 2011 Functions FIRST_VALUE and LAST_VALUE with OVER clause and ORDER BY Some time an interesting feature and smart audience make a total difference in places. From last two days, I have been writing on SQL Server 2012 feature FIRST_VALUE and LAST_VALUE. I created a puzzle which was very interesting and got many people attempt to resolve it. It was based on following two articles: Introduction to FIRST_VALUE and LAST_VALUE Introduction to FIRST_VALUE and LAST_VALUE with OVER clause I even provided the hint about how one can solve this problem. The best part was many people solved the problem without using hints! Try your luck!  A Real Story of Book Getting ‘Out of Stock’ to A 25% Discount Story Available This is a great problem and everybody would love to have it. We had it and we loved it. Our book got out of stock in 48 hours of releasing and stocks were empty. We faced many issues and learned many valuable lessons. Some we were able to avoid in the future and some we are still facing it as those problems have no solutions. However, since that day – our books never gone out of stock. This inspiring learning story for us and I am confident that you will love to read it as well. Introduction to LEAD and LAG – Analytic Functions Introduced in SQL Server 2012 SQL Server 2012 introduces new analytical function LEAD() and LAG(). This function accesses data from a subsequent row (for lead) and previous row (for lag) in the same result set without the use of a self-join . It will be very difficult to explain this in words so I will attempt small example to explain you this function. I had a fantastic time writing this blog post and I am very confident when you read it, you will like the same. 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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• Logparser and Powershell

  - by Michel Klomp

  Logparser in powershell One of the few examples how to use logparser in powershell is from the Microsoft.com Operations blog. This script is a good base to create more advanced logparser scripts: $myQuery = new-object -com MSUtil.LogQuery $szQuery = “Select top 10 * from r:\ex07011210.log”; $recordSet = $myQuery.Execute($szQuery) for(; !$recordSet.atEnd(); $recordSet.moveNext()) {             $record=$recordSet.getRecord();             write-host ($record.GetValue(0) + “,”+ $record.GetValue(1)); } $recordSet.Close(); Logparser input formats The previous example uses the default logparser object, you can extent this with the logparser input formats. with this formats get information from the event-log, different types of logfiles, the Active Directory, the registry and XML files. Here are the different ProgId’s you can use. Input Format ProgId ADS MSUtil.LogQuery.ADSInputFormat BIN MSUtil.LogQuery.IISBINInputFormat CSV MSUtil.LogQuery.CSVInputFormat ETW MSUtil.LogQuery.ETWInputFormat EVT MSUtil.LogQuery.EventLogInputFormat FS MSUtil.LogQuery.FileSystemInputFormat HTTPERR MSUtil.LogQuery.HttpErrorInputFormat IIS MSUtil.LogQuery.IISIISInputFormat IISODBC MSUtil.LogQuery.IISODBCInputFormat IISW3C MSUtil.LogQuery.IISW3CInputFormat NCSA MSUtil.LogQuery.IISNCSAInputFormat NETMON MSUtil.LogQuery.NetMonInputFormat REG MSUtil.LogQuery.RegistryInputFormat TEXTLINE MSUtil.LogQuery.TextLineInputFormat TEXTWORD MSUtil.LogQuery.TextWordInputFormat TSV MSUtil.LogQuery.TSVInputFormat URLSCAN MSUtil.LogQuery.URLScanLogInputFormat W3C MSUtil.LogQuery.W3CInputFormat XML MSUtil.LogQuery.XMLInputFormat Using logparser to parse IIS logs if you use the IISW3CinputFormat you can use the field names instead of de row number to get the information from an IIS logfile, it also skips the comment rows in the logfile. $ObjLogparser = new-object -com MSUtil.LogQuery $objInputFormat = new-object -com MSUtil.LogQuery.IISW3CInputFormat $Query = “Select top 10 * from c:\temp\hb\ex071002.log”; $recordSet = $ObjLogparser.Execute($Query, $objInputFormat) for(; !$recordSet.atEnd(); $recordSet.moveNext()) {     $record=$recordSet.getRecord();     write-host ($record.GetValue(“s-ip”) + “,”+ $record.GetValue(“cs-uri-query”)); } $recordSet.Close();

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• Why does display:table-cell not center content without display:table?

  - by Samuel

  I'm looking for the most efficient (or elegant) way to vertically and horizontally center content of variable height. I've come up with this: http://cssdeck.com/t/2veysdkg/16, which uses css tables to vertically center the main content. My demands for writing this particular piece of code were: Must be able to center variable and fixed width content vertically and horizontally Centered content must be inside the normal document flow (so no overlapping) Sticky footer and normal header of 100% width As few hacks, ugly code or non-semantic html as possible I didn't care about support for IE6, IE7 (I'll use a different stylesheet for them) The weird thing is that the demands above are only met when the header and footer are set to table-row, and the body-tag to display:table. Which is weird because as I understand it the css will generate anonymous table elements when parent table elements are missing. So table-cell should work without all the surrounding elements, but yet I've not been able to make it work. If it were up to me I would prefer to not mess with the display mode for the body tag, and leave the header and footer on display:block. But I've not been able to make it work. Does anyone understand why this doesn't work?

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• Document-oriented vs Column-oriented database fit

  - by user1007922

  I have a data-intensive application that desperately needs a database make-over. The general data model: There are records with RIDs, grouped together by group IDs (GID). The records have arbitrary data fields, (maybe 5-15) with a few of them mandatory and the rest optional, and thus sparse. The general use model: There are LOTS and LOTS of Writes. Millions to Billions of records are stored. Very often, they are associated with new GIDs, but sometimes, they are associated with existing GIDs. There aren't as many reads, but when they happen, they need to be pretty fast or at least constant speed regardless of the database size. And when the reads happen, it will need to retrieve all the records/RIDs with a certain GID. I don't have a need to search by the record field values. Primarily, I will need to query by the GID and maybe RID. What database implementation should I use? I did some initial research between document-oriented and column-oriented databases and it seems the document-oriented ones are a good fit, model-wise. I could store all the records together under the same document key using the GID. But I don't really have any use for their ability to search the document contents itself. I like the simplicity and scalability of column-oriented databases like Cassandra, but how should I model my data in this paradigm for optimal performance? Should my key be the GID and should I create a column for each record/RID? (there maybe thousands or hundreds of thousands of records in a group/GID). Or should my key be the RID and ensure each row has a column for the GID value? What results in faster writes and reads under this model?

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• BPM 11g and Human Workflow Shadow Rows by Adam Desjardin

  - by JuergenKress

  During the OFM Forum last week, there were a few discussions around the relationship between the Human Workflow (WF_TASK*) tables in the SOA_INFRA schema and BPMN processes.  It is important to know how these are related because it can have a performance impact.  We have seen this performance issue several times when BPMN processes are used to model high volume system integrations without knowing all of the implications of using BPMN in this pattern. Most people assume that BPMN instances and their related data are stored in the CUBE_*, DLV_*, and AUDIT_* tables in the same way that BPEL instances are stored, with additional data in the BPM_* tables as well.  The group of tables that is not usually considered though is the WF* tables that are used for Human Workflow.  The WFTASK table is used by all BPMN processes in order to support features such as process level comments and attachments, whether those features are currently used in the process or not. For a standard human task that is created from a BPMN process, the following data is stored in the WFTASK table: One row per human task that is created The COMPONENTTYPE = "Workflow" TASKDEFINITIONID = Human Task ID (partition/CompositeName!Version/TaskName) ACCESSKEY = NULL Read the complete article here. SOA & BPM Partner Community For regular information on Oracle SOA Suite become a member in the SOA & BPM Partner Community for registration please visit www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Facebook Wiki

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• Getting really weird entries in Apache log from Baidu.com?

  - by Undo

  I was looking through my server logs today, and I noticed this: (it's all one row) 118.244.179.250 - - [16/Oct/2013:20:59:25 +0000] "GET http://www.baidu.comhttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttp/www.baidu.comhttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttp/www.baidu.comhttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttp/www.baidu.comhttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttp/www.baidu.comhttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttp/www.baidu.comhttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttp/www.baidu.comhttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttp/www.baidu.comhttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttp/www.baidu.comhttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttp/www.baidu.comhttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttp/www.baidu.comhttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttp/www.baidu.comhttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttp/www.baidu.comhttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttp/www.baidu.comhttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttp/www.baidu.comhttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttp/www.baidu.comhttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttp/www.baidu.comhttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttp/www.baidu.comhttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttp/www.baidu.comhttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttp/www.baidu.comhttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttp/www.baidu.comhttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttp/www.baidu.comhttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttp/www.baidu.comhttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttp/www.baidu.comhttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttp/www.baidu.comhttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttp/www.baidu.comhttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttp/www.baidu.comhttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttp/www.baidu.comhttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttp/www.baidu.comhttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttp/www.baidu.comhttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttp/www.baidu.comhttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttp/www.baidu.comhttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttp/www.baidu.comhttphttphttphttphttphttphttphttp/www.baidu.comhttphttphttphttphttphttphttp/www.baidu.comhttphttphttphttphttphttp/www.baidu.comhttphttphttphttphttp/www.baidu.comhttphttphttphttp/www.baidu.comhttphttphttp/www.baidu.comhttphttp/www.baidu.comhttp/www.baidu.com/ HTTP/1.1" 301 4605 "http://www.baidu.com/" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/5.0; SLCC2; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET CLR 3.0.30729; Media Center PC 6.0; .NET4.0C; .NET4.0E)" "GET http://www.baidu.comhttphttphttphttphttp...? Am I doing something wrong? Am I hosting someone else's website without knowing it? Is a guy named baidu trying to drive me crazy?

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• Unused Indexes Gotcha

  - by DavidWimbush

  I'm currently looking into dropping unused indexes to reduce unnecessary overhead and I came across a very good point in the excellent SQL Server MVP Deep Dives book that I haven't seen highlighted anywhere else. I was thinking it was simply a case of dropping indexes that didn't show as being used in DMV sys.dm_db_index_usage_stats (assuming a solid representative workload had been run since the last service start). But Rob Farley points out that the DMV only shows indexes whose pages have been read or updated. An index that isn't listed in the DMV might still be useful by providing metadata to the Query Optimizer and thus streamlining query plans. For example, if you have a query like this: select  au.author_name         , count(*) as books from    books b         inner join authors au on au.author_id = b.author_id group by au.author_name If you have a unique index on authors.author_name the Query Optimizer will realise that each author_id will have a different author_name so it can produce a plan that just counts the books by author_id and then adds the author name to each row in that small table. If you delete that index the query will have to join all the books with their authors and then apply the GROUP BY - a much more expensive query. So be cautious about dropping apparently unused unique indexes.

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• Tutorial: Getting Started with the NoSQL JavaScript / Node.js API for MySQL Cluster

  - by Mat Keep

  Tutorial authored by Craig Russell and JD Duncan  The MySQL Cluster team are working on a new NoSQL JavaScript connector for MySQL. The objectives are simplicity and high performance for JavaScript users: - allows end-to-end JavaScript development, from the browser to the server and now to the world's most popular open source database - native "NoSQL" access to the storage layer without going first through SQL transformations and parsing. Node.js is a complete web platform built around JavaScript designed to deliver millions of client connections on commodity hardware. With the MySQL NoSQL Connector for JavaScript, Node.js users can easily add data access and persistence to their web, cloud, social and mobile applications. While the initial implementation is designed to plug and play with Node.js, the actual implementation doesn't depend heavily on Node, potentially enabling wider platform support in the future. Implementation The architecture and user interface of this connector are very different from other MySQL connectors in a major way: it is an asynchronous interface that follows the event model built into Node.js. To make it as easy as possible, we decided to use a domain object model to store the data. This allows for users to query data from the database and have a fully-instantiated object to work with, instead of having to deal with rows and columns of the database. The domain object model can have any user behavior that is desired, with the NoSQL connector providing the data from the database. To make it as fast as possible, we use a direct connection from the user's address space to the database. This approach means that no SQL (pun intended) is needed to get to the data, and no SQL server is between the user and the data. The connector is being developed to be extensible to multiple underlying database technologies, including direct, native access to both the MySQL Cluster "ndb" and InnoDB storage engines. The connector integrates the MySQL Cluster native API library directly within the Node.js platform itself, enabling developers to seamlessly couple their high performance, distributed applications with a high performance, distributed, persistence layer delivering 99.999% availability. The following sections take you through how to connect to MySQL, query the data and how to get started. Connecting to the database A Session is the main user access path to the database. You can get a Session object directly from the connector using the openSession function: var nosql = require("mysql-js"); var dbProperties = {     "implementation" : "ndb",     "database" : "test" }; nosql.openSession(dbProperties, null, onSession); The openSession function calls back into the application upon creating a Session. The Session is then used to create, delete, update, and read objects. Reading data The Session can read data from the database in a number of ways. If you simply want the data from the database, you provide a table name and the key of the row that you want. For example, consider this schema: create table employee (   id int not null primary key,   name varchar(32),   salary float ) ENGINE=ndbcluster; Since the primary key is a number, you can provide the key as a number to the find function. function onSession = function(err, session) {   if (err) {     console.log(err);     ... error handling   }   session.find('employee', 0, onData); }; function onData = function(err, data) {   if (err) {     console.log(err);     ... error handling   }   console.log('Found: ', JSON.stringify(data));   ... use data in application }; If you want to have the data stored in your own domain model, you tell the connector which table your domain model uses, by specifying an annotation, and pass your domain model to the find function. var annotations = new nosql.Annotations(); function Employee = function(id, name, salary) {   this.id = id;   this.name = name;   this.salary = salary;   this.giveRaise = function(percent) {     this.salary *= percent;   } }; annotations.mapClass(Employee, {'table' : 'employee'}); function onSession = function(err, session) {   if (err) {     console.log(err);     ... error handling   }   session.find(Employee, 0, onData); }; Updating data You can update the emp instance in memory, but to make the raise persistent, you need to write it back to the database, using the update function. function onData = function(err, emp) {   if (err) {     console.log(err);     ... error handling   }   console.log('Found: ', JSON.stringify(emp));   emp.giveRaise(0.12); // gee, thanks!   session.update(emp); // oops, session is out of scope here }; Using JavaScript can be tricky because it does not have the concept of block scope for variables. You can create a closure to handle these variables, or use a feature of the connector to remember your variables. The connector api takes a fixed number of parameters and returns a fixed number of result parameters to the callback function. But the connector will keep track of variables for you and return them to the callback. So in the above example, change the onSession function to remember the session variable, and you can refer to it in the onData function: function onSession = function(err, session) {   if (err) {     console.log(err);     ... error handling   }   session.find(Employee, 0, onData, session); }; function onData = function(err, emp, session) {   if (err) {     console.log(err);     ... error handling   }   console.log('Found: ', JSON.stringify(emp));   emp.giveRaise(0.12); // gee, thanks!   session.update(emp, onUpdate); // session is now in scope }; function onUpdate = function(err, emp) {   if (err) {     console.log(err);     ... error handling   } Inserting data Inserting data requires a mapped JavaScript user function (constructor) and a session. Create a variable and persist it: function onSession = function(err, session) {   var data = new Employee(999, 'Mat Keep', 20000000);   session.persist(data, onInsert);   } }; Deleting data To remove data from the database, use the session remove function. You use an instance of the domain object to identify the row you want to remove. Only the key field is relevant. function onSession = function(err, session) {   var key = new Employee(999);   session.remove(Employee, onDelete);   } }; More extensive queries We are working on the implementation of more extensive queries along the lines of the criteria query api. Stay tuned. How to evaluate The MySQL Connector for JavaScript is available for download from labs.mysql.com. Select the build: MySQL-Cluster-NoSQL-Connector-for-Node-js You can also clone the project on GitHub Since it is still early in development, feedback is especially valuable (so don't hesitate to leave comments on this blog, or head to the MySQL Cluster forum). Try it out and see how easy (and fast) it is to integrate MySQL Cluster into your Node.js platforms. You can learn more about other previewed functionality of MySQL Cluster 7.3 here

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• Sesame Data Browser: filtering, sorting, selecting and linking

  - by Fabrice Marguerie

  I have deferred the post about how Sesame is built in favor of publishing a new update.This new release offers major features such as the ability to quickly filter and sort data, select columns, and create hyperlinks to OData. Filtering, sorting, selecting In order to filter data, you just have to use the filter row, which becomes available when you click on the funnel button: You can then type some text and select an operator: The data grid will be refreshed immediately after you apply a filter. It works in the same way for sorting. Clicking on a column will immediately update the query and refresh the grid.Note that multi-column sorting is possible by using SHIFT-click: Viewing data is not enough. You can also view and copy the query string that returns that data: One more thing you can to shape data is to select which columns are displayed. Simply use the Column Chooser and you'll be done: Again, this will update the data and query string in real time: Linking to Sesame, linking to OData The other main feature of this release is the ability to create hyperlinks to Sesame. That's right, you can ask Sesame to give you a link you can display on a webpage, send in an email, or type in a chat session. You can get a link to a connection: or to a query: You'll note that you can also decide to embed Sesame in a webpage... Here are some sample links created via Sesame: Netflix movies with high ratings, sorted by release year Netflix horror movies from the 21st century Northwind discontinued products with remaining stock Netflix empty connection I'll give more examples in a post to follow. There are many more minor improvements in this release, but I'll let you find out about them by yourself :-)Please try Sesame Data Browser now and let me know what you think! PS: if you use Sesame from the desktop, please use the "Remove this application" command in the context menu of the destkop app and then "Install on desktop" again in your web browser. I'll activate automatic updates with the next release.

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• How to Transpose Rows and Columns in Excel 2013

  - by Lori Kaufman

  You’ve setup your worksheet with all your row and column headings and you’ve entered all your data. Then, you discover that it would look better if the rows were the columns and the columns were the rows. How do you accomplish this easily? There is an easy way to convert your rows to columns and vice versa using the Transpose feature in Excel. We’ll show you how. Select the cells containing the headings and data you want to transpose. Click Copy or press Ctrl + C. Click in a blank cell on the spreadsheet. This cell will be the top, left corner of the new table of data. Click the down arrow on the Paste button and select Paste Special from the drop-down menu. On the Paste Special dialog box, select the Transpose check box so there is a check mark in the box and click OK. The rows become the columns and the columns become the rows. The original set of data still exists. You can select those cells and delete the headings and data, if desired. Isn’t that a lot easier and faster than retyping all your data?     

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• My experience working with Teradata SQL Assistant

  - by Kevin Shyr

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/LifeLongTechie/archive/2014/05/28/my-experience-working-with-teradata-sql-assistant.aspx To this date, I still haven't figure out how to "toggle" between my query windows. It seems like unless I click on that "new" button on top, whatever SQL I generate from right-click just overrides the current SQL in the window. I'm probably missing a "generate new sql in new window" setting The default Teradata SQL Assistant doesn't execute just the SQL query I highlighted. There is a setting I have to change first. I'm not really happy that the SQL assistant and SQL admin are different app. Still trying to get used to the fact that I can't quickly look up a table's keys/relationships while writing query. I have to switch between windows. LOVE the execution plan / explanation. I think that part is better done than MS SQL in some ways. The error messages can be better. I feel that Teradata .NET provider sends smaller query command over than others. I don't have any hard data to support my claim. One of my query in SSRS was passing multi-valued parameters to another query, and got error "Teradata 3577 row size or sort key size overflow". The search on this error says the solution is to cast result column into smaller data type, but I found that the problem was that the parameter passed into the where clause could not be too large. I wish Teradata SQL Assistant would remember the window size I just adjusted to. Every time I execute the query, the result set, query, and exec log auto re-adjust back to the default size. In SSMS, if I adjust the result set area to be smaller, it would stay like that if I execute query in the same window.

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• Silverlight 4, MVVM and Test-Driven Development

  - by Martin Hinshelwood

  As part of his UK tour Microsoft's Jesse Liberty will be talking in Edinburgh for an evening on Silverlight 4. [Register Now, there are some places left]  The Talk MVVM and Silverlight to build test-driven programs Understanding Refactoring and Dependency Injection A Walk through of a non-trivial application The Speaker Jesse Liberty, Silverlight Geek, is a Developer Community Program Manager for Microsoft (US). Lately he has been focused on Component-based, Test-Driven, Cross-platform line-of-business application development, and has led the development of the open source  Silverlight HyperVideo Platform. Liberty is the author of over two dozen books, and his blog is a required resource for Silverlight programmers. His twenty years of programming experience include stints as a Distinguished Software Engineer at AT&T; Vice President of Human-Computer Interaction at Citibank and Software Architect at PBS/Learning Link. The Venue We are meeting at Microsoft's offices in Edinburgh in Waterloo Place. This is the building on the corner of North Bridge at the east end of Princes Street. Parking can be found at the nearby Greenside Row car park which is just off Leith Walk (used for the Omni Centre). The venue is approximately 2-3 minutes walk away from Edinburgh Waverly train station. The Agenda 18:30 Doors open 19:00 Welcome 19:10 Part 1 20:00 Break 20:10 Part 2 20:50 Feedback and Prizes 21:00 End   [Register Now, there are some places left] Technorati Tags: Silverlight,MVVM,TDD

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• Table Variables: an empirical approach.

  - by Phil Factor

  It isn’t entirely a pleasant experience to publish an article only to have it described on Twitter as ‘Horrible’, and to have it criticized on the MVP forum. When this happened to me in the aftermath of publishing my article on Temporary tables recently, I was taken aback, because these critics were experts whose views I respect. What was my crime? It was, I think, to suggest that, despite the obvious quirks, it was best to use Table Variables as a first choice, and to use local Temporary Tables if you hit problems due to these quirks, or if you were doing complex joins using a large number of rows. What are these quirks? Well, table variables have advantages if they are used sensibly, but this requires some awareness by the developer about the potential hazards and how to avoid them. You can be hit by a badly-performing join involving a table variable. Table Variables are a compromise, and this compromise doesn’t always work out well. Explicit indexes aren’t allowed on Table Variables, so one cannot use covering indexes or non-unique indexes. The query optimizer has to make assumptions about the data rather than using column distribution statistics when a table variable is involved in a join, because there aren’t any column-based distribution statistics on a table variable. It assumes a reasonably even distribution of data, and is likely to have little idea of the number of rows in the table variables that are involved in queries. However complex the heuristics that are used might be in determining the best way of executing a SQL query, and they most certainly are, the Query Optimizer is likely to fail occasionally with table variables, under certain circumstances, and produce a Query Execution Plan that is frightful. The experienced developer or DBA will be on the lookout for this sort of problem. In this blog, I’ll be expanding on some of the tests I used when writing my article to illustrate the quirks, and include a subsequent example supplied by Kevin Boles. A simplified example. We’ll start out by illustrating a simple example that shows some of these characteristics. We’ll create two tables filled with random numbers and then see how many matches we get between the two tables. We’ll forget indexes altogether for this example, and use heaps. We’ll try the same Join with two table variables, two table variables with OPTION (RECOMPILE) in the JOIN clause, and with two temporary tables. It is all a bit jerky because of the granularity of the timing that isn’t actually happening at the millisecond level (I used DATETIME). However, you’ll see that the table variable is outperforming the local temporary table up to 10,000 rows. Actually, even without a use of the OPTION (RECOMPILE) hint, it is doing well. What happens when your table size increases? The table variable is, from around 30,000 rows, locked into a very bad execution plan unless you use OPTION (RECOMPILE) to provide the Query Analyser with a decent estimation of the size of the table. However, if it has the OPTION (RECOMPILE), then it is smokin’. Well, up to 120,000 rows, at least. It is performing better than a Temporary table, and in a good linear fashion. What about mixed table joins, where you are joining a temporary table to a table variable? You’d probably expect that the query analyzer would throw up its hands and produce a bad execution plan as if it were a table variable. After all, it knows nothing about the statistics in one of the tables so how could it do any better? Well, it behaves as if it were doing a recompile. And an explicit recompile adds no value at all. (we just go up to 45000 rows since we know the bigger picture now)   Now, if you were new to this, you might be tempted to start drawing conclusions. Beware! We’re dealing with a very complex beast: the Query Optimizer. It can come up with surprises What if we change the query very slightly to insert the results into a Table Variable? We change nothing else and just measure the execution time of the statement as before. Suddenly, the table variable isn’t looking so much better, even taking into account the time involved in doing the table insert. OK, if you haven’t used OPTION (RECOMPILE) then you’re toast. Otherwise, there isn’t much in it between the Table variable and the temporary table. The table variable is faster up to 8000 rows and then not much in it up to 100,000 rows. Past the 8000 row mark, we’ve lost the advantage of the table variable’s speed. Any general rule you may be formulating has just gone for a walk. What we can conclude from this experiment is that if you join two table variables, and can’t use constraints, you’re going to need that Option (RECOMPILE) hint. Count Dracula and the Horror Join. These tables of integers provide a rather unreal example, so let’s try a rather different example, and get stuck into some implicit indexing, by using constraints. What unusual words are contained in the book ‘Dracula’ by Bram Stoker? Here we get a table of all the common words in the English language (60,387 of them) and put them in a table. We put them in a Table Variable with the word as a primary key, a Table Variable Heap and a Table Variable with a primary key. We then take all the distinct words used in the book ‘Dracula’ (7,558 of them). We then create a table variable and insert into it all those uncommon words that are in ‘Dracula’. i.e. all the words in Dracula that aren’t matched in the list of common words. To do this we use a left outer join, where the right-hand value is null. The results show a huge variation, between the sublime and the gorblimey. If both tables contain a Primary Key on the columns we join on, and both are Table Variables, it took 33 Ms. If one table contains a Primary Key, and the other is a heap, and both are Table Variables, it took 46 Ms. If both Table Variables use a unique constraint, then the query takes 36 Ms. If neither table contains a Primary Key and both are Table Variables, it took 116383 Ms. Yes, nearly two minutes!! If both tables contain a Primary Key, one is a Table Variables and the other is a temporary table, it took 113 Ms. If one table contains a Primary Key, and both are Temporary Tables, it took 56 Ms.If both tables are temporary tables and both have primary keys, it took 46 Ms. Here we see table variables which are joined on their primary key again enjoying a  slight performance advantage over temporary tables. Where both tables are table variables and both are heaps, the query suddenly takes nearly two minutes! So what if you have two heaps and you use option Recompile? If you take the rogue query and add the hint, then suddenly, the query drops its time down to 76 Ms. If you add unique indexes, then you've done even better, down to half that time. Here are the text execution plans.So where have we got to? Without drilling down into the minutiae of the execution plans we can begin to create a hypothesis. If you are using table variables, and your tables are relatively small, they are faster than temporary tables, but as the number of rows increases you need to do one of two things: either you need to have a primary key on the column you are using to join on, or else you need to use option (RECOMPILE) If you try to execute a query that is a join, and both tables are table variable heaps, you are asking for trouble, well- slow queries, unless you give the table hint once the number of rows has risen past a point (30,000 in our first example, but this varies considerably according to context). Kevin’s Skew In describing the table-size, I used the term ‘relatively small’. Kevin Boles produced an interesting case where a single-row table variable produces a very poor execution plan when joined to a very, very skewed table. In the original, pasted into my article as a comment, a column consisted of 100000 rows in which the key column was one number (1) . To this was added eight rows with sequential numbers up to 9. When this was joined to a single-tow Table Variable with a key of 2 it produced a bad plan. This problem is unlikely to occur in real usage, and the Query Optimiser team probably never set up a test for it. Actually, the skew can be slightly less extreme than Kevin made it. The following test showed that once the table had 54 sequential rows in the table, then it adopted exactly the same execution plan as for the temporary table and then all was well. Undeniably, real data does occasionally cause problems to the performance of joins in Table Variables due to the extreme skew of the distribution. We've all experienced Perfectly Poisonous Table Variables in real live data. As in Kevin’s example, indexes merely make matters worse, and the OPTION (RECOMPILE) trick does nothing to help. In this case, there is no option but to use a temporary table. However, one has to note that once the slight de-skew had taken place, then the plans were identical across a huge range. Conclusions Where you need to hold intermediate results as part of a process, Table Variables offer a good alternative to temporary tables when used wisely. They can perform faster than a temporary table when the number of rows is not great. For some processing with huge tables, they can perform well when only a clustered index is required, and when the nature of the processing makes an index seek very effective. Table Variables are scoped to the batch or procedure and are unlikely to hang about in the TempDB when they are no longer required. They require no explicit cleanup. Where the number of rows in the table is moderate, you can even use them in joins as ‘Heaps’, unindexed. Beware, however, since, as the number of rows increase, joins on Table Variable heaps can easily become saddled by very poor execution plans, and this must be cured either by adding constraints (UNIQUE or PRIMARY KEY) or by adding the OPTION (RECOMPILE) hint if this is impossible. Occasionally, the way that the data is distributed prevents the efficient use of Table Variables, and this will require using a temporary table instead. Tables Variables require some awareness by the developer about the potential hazards and how to avoid them. If you are not prepared to do any performance monitoring of your code or fine-tuning, and just want to pummel out stuff that ‘just runs’ without considering namby-pamby stuff such as indexes, then stick to Temporary tables. If you are likely to slosh about large numbers of rows in temporary tables without considering the niceties of processing just what is required and no more, then temporary tables provide a safer and less fragile means-to-an-end for you.

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• Microsoft MVP 2013 - ASP.NET/IIS

  - by hajan

  Microsoft MVP 2013 I AM VERY PLEASED TO ANNOUNCE THAT I'VE BEEN AWARDED MICROSOFT MVP 2013 - ASP.NET/IIS I'm honored and it feels great to see this kind of appreciation for what we do in community.This is my third year in a row being Microsoft MVP and getting the email from Microsoft feels exactly the same as the very first one... I'm pleased and really happy to be awarded again.And, here is part of the email message I got: Dear Hajan Selmani, Congratulations! We are pleased to present you with the 2013 Microsoft® MVP Award! This award is given to exceptional technical community leaders who actively share their high quality, real world expertise with others. We appreciate your outstanding contributions in ASP.NET/IIS technical communities during the past year. I would like to say a great THANK YOU to everyone who supports me in the quest of sharing and caring about others in community. A special THANK YOU to Microsoft who brings us this opportunity to encourage our work and increase our enthusiasm to create better community and make great impact through the products and technologies they innovate. Thanks to Yulia Belyanina & Alessandro Teglia for their leadership! Thanks to my family, friends, colleagues, students, acquaintances and all stakeholders who are directly or indirectly involved in my network and deserve respect for my success to getting awarded again with the most prestigious award in community, Microsoft MVP. THANK YOU! Hajan

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• Designing a large database with multiple sources

  - by CatchingMonkey

  I have been tasked with redesigning, or at worst optimising the structure of a database for a data warehouse. Currently, the database has 4 other source databases (which is due to expand to X number of others), all of which have their own data structures, naming conventions etc. At the moment an overnight SSIS package pulls the data from the various source and then for each source coverts the data into a standardised, usable format. These tables are then appended to each other creating a 60m row, 40 column beast!. This table is then used in a variety of ways from an OLAP cube to a web front end. The structure has been in place for a very long time, and the work I have been able to prove the advantages of normalisation, and this is the way I would like to go. The problem for me is that the overnight process takes so long I don't then want to spend additional time normalising the last table into something usable. Can anyone offer any insight or ideas into the best way to restructure or optimise the database efficiently? Edit: All the databases are MS SQL Server 2008 R2 Thanks in advance CM

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• Final Release of Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio 2010 Released

  - by dwahlin

  If you haven’t already heard the news, the final release of the Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio 2010 have been released! That’s great news for Silverlight developers and to top it off the crew up at Microsoft even snuck in a few new features including intellisense for styles (a big deal in my opinion) and the ability to easily manipulate Grid rows and columns.  One of the most time consuming (and boring) tasks experienced by developers is also covered with the new “Go To Value Definition” feature that allows you to jump directly to style definitions with ease.  That feature alone is worth the upgrade especially if you’re working with a large application that uses a lot of styles. Here’s a quick run-down of the features provided by the latest release from the Microsoft team: Support for targeting Silverlight 4 in the Silverlight designer and project system RIA Services application templates and libraries to simplify access to your data services (check out this Silverlight.tv video and whitepaper giving full details) Support for Silverlight 4 elevated trust and out-of-browser applications Enhanced support for other new Silverlight 4 features, including: Working with Implicit Styles Go To Value Definition - navigate directly from controls on your page to styles that are applied to them. Style Intellisense - easily modify styles you already have in XAML Working with Data Source Window outputs Data Source Selector - easily select and modify your data source information Grid Row and Column context menu - Add, remove, and re-sort DSW outputs and other Grid layouts Thickness Editor for editing Margins, Padding etc. Sample Data Support -  see your item templates and bindings light up at design time Working with Silverlight 4 Out-of-Browser applications Automatically launch and debug your OOB app from inside the IDE Specify XAP signing for trusted OOB apps Set the OOB window characteristics If you’d like to see some of the new features in action check out this Channel 9 video with Mark Wilson-Thomas and John Papa.

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• How to slow down a sprite that updates every frame?

  - by xiaohouzi79

  I am going through a Allegro 5 tutorial which has a game loop. There is also a variable "active" which determines if a key is being held down. Thus if the left key is being held down active is on and it begins looping through the row on the sprite sheet that corresponds to moving left. The problem is that this logic is checked everytime the loop is performed thus at approximately 60 fps the three images that are used to do the left walking animation cycle round super fast which means my character looks like it is in a rush. Total beginner question: so what is the correct way to slow down the transition between sprites so that the walking looks like it is done at a moderate pace. Here is the code used to transition across the sprite between the three different phases of the person walking: if (active) { sourceX += al_get_bitmap_width(player) / 3; } else { sourceX = 32; } if (sourceX >= al_get_bitmap_width(player)) { sourceX = 0; } I can kind of guess what it should be in plain English: update sourceX only every certain part of a second but I can't think of how to put this into code.

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• Data structure for pattern matching.

  - by alvonellos

  Let's say you have an input file with many entries like these: date, ticker, open, high, low, close, <and some other values> And you want to execute a pattern matching routine on the entries(rows) in that file, using a candlestick pattern, for example. (See, Doji) And that pattern can appear on any uniform time interval (let t = 1s, 5s, 10s, 1d, 7d, 2w, 2y, and so on...). Say a pattern matching routine can take an arbitrary number of rows to perform an analysis and contain an arbitrary number of subpatterns. In other words, some patterns may require 4 entries to operate on. Say also that the routine (may) later have to find and classify extrema (local and global maxima and minima as well as inflection points) for the ticker over a closed interval, for example, you could say that a cubic function (x^3) has the extrema on the interval [-1, 1]. (See link) What would be the most natural choice in terms of a data structure? What about an interface that conforms a Ticker object containing one row of data to a collection of Ticker so that an arbitrary pattern can be applied to the data. What's the first thing that comes to mind? I chose a doubly-linked circular linked list that has the following methods: push_front() push_back() pop_front() pop_back() [] //overloaded, can be used with negative parameters But that data structure seems very clumsy, since so much pushing and popping is going on, I have to make a deep copy of the data structure before running an analysis on it. So, I don't know if I made my question very clear -- but the main points are: What kind of data structures should be considered when analyzing sequential data points to conform to a pattern that does NOT require random access? What kind of data structures should be considered when classifying extrema of a set of data points?

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• SQL SERVER – Weekly Series – Memory Lane – #037

  - 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 Convert Text to Numbers (Integer) – CAST and CONVERT If table column is VARCHAR and has all the numeric values in it, it can be retrieved as Integer using CAST or CONVERT function. List All Stored Procedure Modified in Last N Days If SQL Server suddenly start behaving in un-expectable behavior and if stored procedure were changed recently, following script can be used to check recently modified stored procedure. If a stored procedure was created but never modified afterwards modified date and create a date for that stored procedure are same. Count Duplicate Records – Rows Validate Field For DATE datatype using function ISDATE() We always checked DATETIME field for incorrect data type. One of the user input date as 30/2/2007. The date was sucessfully inserted in the temp table but while inserting from temp table to final table it crashed with error. We had now task to validate incorrect date value before we insert in final table. Jr. Developer asked me how can he do that? We check for incorrect data type (varchar, int, NULL) but this is incorrect date value. Regular expression works fine with them because of mm/dd/yyyy format. 2008 Find Space Used For Any Particular Table It is very simple to find out the space used by any table in the database. Two Convenient Features Inline Assignment – Inline Operations Here is the script which does both – Inline Assignment and Inline Operation DECLARE @idx INT = 0 SET @idx+=1 SELECT @idx Introduction to SPARSE Columns SPARSE column are better at managing NULL and ZERO values in SQL Server. It does not take any space in database at all. If column is created with SPARSE clause with it and it contains ZERO or NULL it will be take lesser space then regular column (without SPARSE clause). SP_CONFIGURE – Displays or Changes Global Configuration Settings If advanced settings are not enabled at configuration level SQL Server will not let user change the advanced features on server. Authorized user can turn on or turn off advance settings. 2009 Standby Servers and Types of Standby Servers Standby Server is a type of server that can be brought online in a situation when Primary Server goes offline and application needs continuous (high) availability of the server. There is always a need to set up a mechanism where data and objects from primary server are moved to secondary (standby) server. BLOB – Pointer to Image, Image in Database, FILESTREAM Storage When it comes to storing images in database there are two common methods. I had previously blogged about the same subject on my visit to Toronto. With SQL Server 2008, we have a new method of FILESTREAM storage. However, the answer on when to use FILESTREAM and when to use other methods is still vague in community. 2010 Upper Case Shortcut SQL Server Management Studio I select the word and hit CTRL+SHIFT+U and it SSMS immediately changes the case of the selected word. Similar way if one want to convert cases to lower case, another short cut CTRL+SHIFT+L is also available. The Self Join – Inner Join and Outer Join Self Join has always been a noteworthy case. It is interesting to ask questions about self join in a room full of developers. I often ask – if there are three kinds of joins, i.e.- Inner Join, Outer Join and Cross Join; what type of join is Self Join? The usual answer is that it is an Inner Join. However, the reality is very different. Parallelism – Row per Processor – Row per Thread – Thread 0  If you look carefully in the Properties window or XML Plan, there is “Thread 0?. What does this “Thread 0” indicate? Well find out from the blog post. How do I Learn and How do I Teach The blog post has raised three very interesting questions. How do you learn? How do you teach? What are you learning or teaching? Let me try to answer the same. 2011 SQL SERVER – Interview Questions and Answers – Frequently Asked Questions – Day 7 of 31 What are Different Types of Locks? What are Pessimistic Lock and Optimistic Lock? When is the use of UPDATE_STATISTICS command? What is the Difference between a HAVING clause and a WHERE clause? What is Connection Pooling and why it is Used? What are the Properties and Different Types of Sub-Queries? What are the Authentication Modes in SQL Server? How can it be Changed? SQL SERVER – Interview Questions and Answers – Frequently Asked Questions – Day 8 of 31 Which Command using Query Analyzer will give you the Version of SQL Server and Operating System? What is an SQL Server Agent? Can a Stored Procedure call itself or a Recursive Stored Procedure? How many levels of SP nesting is possible? What is Log Shipping? Name 3 ways to get an Accurate Count of the Number of Records in a Table? What does it mean to have QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON? What are the Implications of having it OFF? What is the Difference between a Local and a Global Temporary Table? What is the STUFF Function and How Does it Differ from the REPLACE Function? What is PRIMARY KEY? What is UNIQUE KEY Constraint? What is FOREIGN KEY? SQL SERVER – Interview Questions and Answers – Frequently Asked Questions – Day 9 of 31 What is CHECK Constraint? What is NOT NULL Constraint? What is the difference between UNION and UNION ALL? What is B-Tree? How to get @@ERROR and @@ROWCOUNT at the Same Time? What is a Scheduled Job or What is a Scheduled Task? What are the Advantages of Using Stored Procedures? What is a Table Called, if it has neither Cluster nor Non-cluster Index? What is it Used for? Can SQL Servers Linked to other Servers like Oracle? What is BCP? When is it Used? SQL SERVER – Interview Questions and Answers – Frequently Asked Questions – Day 10 of 31 What Command do we Use to Rename a db, a Table and a Column? What are sp_configure Commands and SET Commands? How to Implement One-to-One, One-to-Many and Many-to-Many Relationships while Designing Tables? What is Difference between Commit and Rollback when Used in Transactions? What is an Execution Plan? When would you Use it? How would you View the Execution Plan? SQL SERVER – Interview Questions and Answers – Frequently Asked Questions – Day 11 of 31 What is Difference between Table Aliases and Column Aliases? Do they Affect Performance? What is the difference between CHAR and VARCHAR Datatypes? What is the Difference between VARCHAR and VARCHAR(MAX) Datatypes? What is the Difference between VARCHAR and NVARCHAR datatypes? Which are the Important Points to Note when Multilanguage Data is Stored in a Table? How to Optimize Stored Procedure Optimization? What is SQL Injection? How to Protect Against SQL Injection Attack? How to Find Out the List Schema Name and Table Name for the Database? What is CHECKPOINT Process in the SQL Server? SQL SERVER – Interview Questions and Answers – Frequently Asked Questions – Day 12 of 31 How does Using a Separate Hard Drive for Several Database Objects Improves Performance Right Away? How to Find the List of Fixed Hard Drive and Free Space on Server? Why can there be only one Clustered Index and not more than one? What is Difference between Line Feed (\n) and Carriage Return (\r)? Is It Possible to have Clustered Index on Separate Drive From Original Table Location? What is a Hint? How to Delete Duplicate Rows? Why the Trigger Fires Multiple Times in Single Login? 2012 CTRL+SHIFT+] Shortcut to Select Code Between Two Parenthesis Shortcut key is CTRL+SHIFT+]. This key can be very useful when dealing with multiple subqueries, CTE or query with multiple parentheses. When exercised this shortcut key it selects T-SQL code between two parentheses. Monday Morning Puzzle – Query Returns Results Sometimes but Not Always I am beginner with SQL Server. I have one query, it sometime returns a result and sometime it does not return me the result. Where should I start looking for a solution and what kind of information I should send to you so you can help me with solving. I have no clue, please guide me. Remove Debug Button in SSMS – SQL in Sixty Seconds #020 – Video Effect of Case Sensitive Collation on Resultset Collation is a very interesting concept but I quite often see it is heavily neglected. I have seen developer and DBA looking for a workaround to fix collation error rather than understanding if the side effect of the workaround. Switch Between Two Parenthesis using Shortcut CTRL+] Earlier this week I wrote a blog post about CTRL+SHIFT+] Shortcut to Select Code Between Two Parenthesis, I received quite a lot of positive feedback from readers. If you are a regular reader of the blog post, you must be aware that I appreciate the learning shared by readers. 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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• Dynamic/Adaptive RLE

  - by Lucius

  So, I'm developing a 2D, tile based game and a map maker thingy - all in Java. The problem is that recently I've been having some memory issues when about 4 maps are loaded. Each one of these maps are composed of 128x128 tiles and have 4 layers (for details and stuff). I already spent a good amount of time searching for solutions and the best thing I found was run-length enconding (RLE). It seems easy enough to use with static data, but is there a way to use it with data that is constantly changing, without a big drop in performance? In my maps, supposing I'm compressing the columns, I would have 128 rows, each with some amount of data (hopefully less than it would be without RLE). Whenever I change a tile, that whole row would have to be checked and I'm affraid that would slow down too much the production (and I'm in a somewhat tight schedule). Well, worst case scenario I work on each map individually, and save them using RLE, but it would be really nice if I could avoind that. EDIT: What I'm currently using to store the data for the tiles is a 2D array of HashMaps that use the layer as key and store the id of the tile in that position - like this: private HashMap< Integer, Integer [][]

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