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• Multidimensional Thinking–24 Hours of Pass: Celebrating Women in Technology

  - by smisner

  It’s Day 1 of #24HOP and it’s been great to participate in this event with so many women from all over the world in one long training-fest. The SQL community has been abuzz on Twitter with running commentary which is fun to watch while listening to the current speaker. If you missed the fun today because you’re busy with all that work you’ve got to do – don’t despair. All sessions are recorded and will be available soon. Keep an eye on the 24 Hours of Pass page for details. And the fun’s not over today. Rather than run 24 hours consecutively, #24HOP is now broken down into 12-hours over two days, so check out the schedule to see if there’s a session that interests you and fits your schedule. I’m pleased to announce that my business colleague Erika Bakse ( Blog | Twitter) will be presenting on Day 2 – her debut presentation for a PASS event. (And I’m also pleased to say she’s my daughter!) Multidimensional Thinking: The Presentation My contribution to this lineup of terrific speakers was Multidimensional Thinking. Here’s the abstract: “Whether you’re developing Analysis Services cubes or creating PowerPivot workbooks, you need to get into a multidimensional frame of mind to produce a model that best enables users to answer their business questions on their own. Many database professionals struggle initially with multidimensional models because the data modeling process is much different than the one they use to produce traditional, third normal form databases. In this session, I’ll introduce you to the terminology of multidimensional modeling and step through the process of translating business requirements into a viable model.” If you watched the presentation and want a copy of the slides, you can download a copy here. And you’re welcome to download the slides even if you didn’t watch the presentation, but they’ll make more sense if you did! Kimball All the Way There’s only so much I can cover in the time allotted, but I hope that I succeeded in my attempt to build a foundation that prepares you for starting out in business intelligence. One of my favorite resources that will get into much more detail about all kinds of scenarios (well beyond the basics!) is The Data Warehouse Toolkit (Second Edition) by Ralph Kimball. Anything from Kimball or the Kimball Group is worth reading. Kimball material might take reading and re-reading a few times before it makes sense. From my own experience, I found that I actually had to just build my first data warehouse using dimensional modeling on faith that I was going the right direction because it just didn’t click with me initially. I’ve had years of practice since then and I can say it does get easier with practice. The most important thing, in my opinion, is that you simply must prototype a lot and solicit user feedback, because ultimately the model needs to make sense to them. They will definitely make sure you get it right! Schema Generation One question came up after the presentation about whether we use SQL Server Management Studio or Business Intelligence Development Studio (BIDS) to build the tables for the dimensional model. My answer? It really doesn’t matter how you create the tables. Use whatever method that you’re comfortable with. But just so happens that it IS possible to set up your design in BIDS as part of an Analysis Services project and to have BIDS generate the relational schema for you. I did a Webcast last year called Building a Data Mart with Integration Services that demonstrated how to do this. Yes, the subject was Integration Services, but as part of that presentation, I showed how to leverage Analysis Services to build the tables, and then I showed how to use Integration Services to load those tables. I blogged about this presentation in September 2010 and included downloads of the project that I used. In the blog post, I explained that I missed a step in the demonstration. Oops. Just as an FYI, there were two more Webcasts to finish the story begun with the data – Accelerating Answers with Analysis Services and Delivering Information with Reporting Services. If you want to just cut to the chase and learn how to use Analysis Services to build the tables, you can see the Using the Schema Generation Wizard topic in Books Online.

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• Shared Data Source name error underscore characters added

  - by mick

  The name of our shared data source in RS (report server) is "AF1 Live Database" (no underscore characters - just spaces between words) and is the same in report builder in VS. However, the following error pops up when the RDL of this report is uploaded onto our company site and run. (error we are receiving...) The report server cannot process the report or shared dataset. The shared data source 'AF1_Live_Database' for the report server or SharePoint site is not valid. Browse to the server or site and select a shared data source. (rsInvalidDataSourceReference) We have no idea why the error reports the shared data source as 'AF1_Live_Database' with underscore characters? As this appears to be the problem that keeps the report from running we are seeking your help, thanks.

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• Working with Reporting Services Filters – Part 3: The TOP and BOTTOM Operators

  - by smisner

  Thus far in this series, I have described using the IN operator and the LIKE operator. Today, I’ll continue the series by reviewing the TOP and BOTTOM operators. Today, I happened to be working on an example of using the TOP N operator and was not successful on my first try because the behavior is just a bit different than we find when using an “equals” comparison as I described in my first post in this series. In my example, I wanted to display a list of the top 5 resellers in the United States for AdventureWorks, but I wanted it based on a filter. I started with a hard-coded filter like this: Expression Data Type Operator Value [ResellerSalesAmount] Float Top N 5 And received the following error: A filter value in the filter for tablix 'Tablix1' specifies a data type that is not supported by the 'TopN' operator. Verify that the data type for each filter value is Integer. Well, that puzzled me. Did I really have to convert ResellerSalesAmount to an integer to use the Top N operator? Just for kicks, I switched to the Top % operator like this: Expression Data Type Operator Value [ResellerSalesAmount] Float Top % 50 This time, I got exactly the results I expected – I had a total of 10 records in my dataset results, so 50% of that should yield 5 rows in my tablix. So thinking about the problem with Top N some  more, I switched the Value to an expression, like this: Expression Data Type Operator Value [ResellerSalesAmount] Float Top N =5 And it worked! So the value for Top N or Top % must reflect a number to plug into the calculation, such as Top 5 or Top 50%, and the expression is the basis for determining what’s in that group. In other words, Reporting Services will sort the rows by the expression – ResellerSalesAmount in this case – in descending order, and then filter out everything except the topmost rows based on the operator you specify. The curious thing is that, if you’re going to hard-code the value, you must enter the value for Top N with an equal sign in front of the integer, but you can omit the equal sign when entering a hard-coded value for Top %. This experience is why working with Reporting Services filters is not always intuitive! When you use a report parameter to set the value, you won’t have this problem. Just be sure that the data type of the report parameter is set to Integer. Jessica Moss has an example of using a Top N filter in a tablix which you can view here. Working with Bottom N and Bottom % works similarly. You just provide a number for N or for the percentage and Reporting Services works from the bottom up to determine which rows are kept and which are excluded.

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• VB.Net Sub reports problem in SS Reporting Services

  - by user65697

  I am trying to transfer over some MS Access reports to VB.Net via sql reporting services. Currently using VB.Net in Visual Studio 2008. I have 5 sub reports that need to run. Depending on the user selection any number of them can show at one time in the report viewer. So I assume I need to use a main report which holds the sub reports. How do I populate the data for each sub report when the main container report loads? Do I need to set the datasource of each subreport dynamically? Do I also need to dynamically load the subreports into the report viewer? Any code appreciated. Thanks

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• Here Comes the FY11 Earmarks Database

  - by Mike C

  I'm really interested in politics (don't worry, I'm not going to start bashing politicians and hammering you with political rage). The point is when the U.S. FY11 Omnibus Spending Bill (the bill to fund the U.S. Government for another year) was announced it piqued my interest. I'm fascinated by " earmarks " (also affectionally known as " pork "). For those who aren't familiar with U.S. politics, "earmark" is a slang term for "Congressionally Directed Spending". It's basically the set of provisions...(read more)

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• Possible SWITCH Optimization in DAX – #powerpivot #dax #tabular

  - by Marco Russo (SQLBI)

  In one of the Advanced DAX Workshop I taught this year, I had an interesting discussion about how to optimize a SWITCH statement (which could be frequently used checking a slicer, like in the Parameter Table pattern). Let’s start with the problem. What happen when you have such a statement? Sales :=     SWITCH (         VALUES ( Period[Period] ),         "Current", [Internet Total Sales],         "MTD", [MTD Sales],         "QTD", [QTD Sales],         "YTD", [YTD Sales],          BLANK ()     ) The SWITCH statement is in reality just syntax sugar for a nested IF statement. When you place such a measure in a pivot table, for every cell of the pivot table the IF options are evaluated. In order to optimize performance, the DAX engine usually does not compute cell-by-cell, but tries to compute the values in bulk-mode. However, if a measure contains an IF statement, every cell might have a different execution path, so the current implementation might evaluate all the possible IF branches in bulk-mode, so that for every cell the result from one of the branches will be already available in a pre-calculated dataset. The price for that could be high. If you consider the previous Sales measure, the YTD Sales measure could be evaluated for all the cells where it’s not required, and also when YTD is not selected at all in a Pivot Table. The actual optimization made by the DAX engine could be different in every build, and I expect newer builds of Tabular and Power Pivot to be better than older ones. However, we still don’t live in an ideal world, so it could be better trying to help the engine finding a better execution plan. One student (Niek de Wit) proposed this approach: Selection := IF (     HASONEVALUE ( Period[Period] ),     VALUES ( Period[Period] ) ) Sales := CALCULATE (     [Internet Total Sales],     FILTER (         VALUES ( 'Internet Sales'[Order Quantity] ),         'Internet Sales'[Order Quantity]             = IF (                 [Selection] = "Current",                 'Internet Sales'[Order Quantity],                 -1             )     ) )     + CALCULATE (         [MTD Sales],         FILTER (             VALUES ( 'Internet Sales'[Order Quantity] ),             'Internet Sales'[Order Quantity]                 = IF (                     [Selection] = "MTD",                     'Internet Sales'[Order Quantity],                     -1                 )         )     )     + CALCULATE (         [QTD Sales],         FILTER (             VALUES ( 'Internet Sales'[Order Quantity] ),             'Internet Sales'[Order Quantity]                 = IF (                     [Selection] = "QTD",                     'Internet Sales'[Order Quantity],                     -1                 )         )     )     + CALCULATE (         [YTD Sales],         FILTER (             VALUES ( 'Internet Sales'[Order Quantity] ),             'Internet Sales'[Order Quantity]                 = IF (                     [Selection] = "YTD",                     'Internet Sales'[Order Quantity],                     -1                 )         )     ) At first sight, you might think it’s impossible that this approach could be faster. However, if you examine with the profiler what happens, there is a different story. Every original IF’s execution branch is now a separate CALCULATE statement, which applies a filter that does not execute the required measure calculation if the result of the FILTER is empty. I used the ‘Internet Sales’[Order Quantity] column in this example just because in Adventure Works it has only one value (every row has 1): in the real world, you should use a column that has a very low number of distinct values, or use a column that has always the same value for every row (so it will be compressed very well!). Because the value –1 is never used in this column, the IF comparison in the filter discharge all the values iterated in the filter if the selection does not match with the desired value. I hope to have time in the future to write a longer article about this optimization technique, but in the meantime I’ve seen this optimization has been useful in many other implementations. Please write your feedback if you find scenarios (in both Power Pivot and Tabular) where you obtain performance improvements using this technique!

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• Applying Interactive Sorting to Multiple Columns in Reporting Services

  - by smisner

  A nice feature that appeared first in SQL Server 2008 is the ability to allow the user to click a column header to sort that column. It defaults to an ascending sort first, but you can click the column again to switch to a descending sort. You can learn more about interactive sorts in general at the Adding Interactive Sort to a Data Region in Books Online. Not mentioned in the article is how to apply interactive sorting to multiple columns, hence the reason for this post! Let’s say that I have a simple table like this: To enable interactive sorting, I open the Text Box properties for each of the column headers – the ones in the top row. Here’s an example of how I set up basic interactive sorting: Now when I preview the report, I see icons appear in each text box on the header row to indicate that interactive sorting is enabled. The initial sort order that displays when you preview the report depends on how you design the report. In this case, the report sorts by Sales Territory Group first, and then by Calendar Year. Interactive sorting overrides the report design. So let’s say that I want to sort first by Calendar Year, and then by Sales Territory Group. To do this, I click the arrow to the right of Calendar Year, and then, while pressing the Shift key, I click the arrow to the right of Sales Territory Group twice (once for ascending order and then a second time for descending order). Now my report looks like this: This technique only seems to work when you have a minimum of three columns configured with interactive sorting. If I remove the property from one of the columns in the above example, and try to use the interactive sorting on the remaining two columns, I can sort only the first column. The sort on the second column gets ignored. I don’t know if that’s by design or a bug, but I do know that’s what I’m experiencing when I try it out!

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• The Case of the Missing Date/Time Stamp: Reporting Services 2008 R2 Snapshots

  - by smisner

  This week I stumbled upon an undocumented “feature” in SQL Server 2008 R2 Reporting Services as I was preparing a demonstration on how to set up and use report snapshots. If you’re familiar with the main changes in this latest release of Reporting Services, you probably already know that Report Manager got a facelift this time around. Although this facelift was generally a good thing, one of the casualties – in my opinion – is the loss of the snapshot label that served two purposes… First, it flagged the report as a snapshot. Second, it let you know when that snapshot was created. As part of my standard operating procedure when demonstrating report snapshots, I point out this label, so I was rather taken aback when I didn’t see it in the demonstration I was preparing. It sort of upset my routine, and I’m rather partial to my routines. I thought perhaps I wasn’t looking in the right place and changed Report Manager from Tile View to Detail View, but no – that label was still missing. In the grand scheme of life, it’s not an earth-shattering change, but you’ll have to look at the Modified Date in Details View to know when the snapshot was run. Or hope that the report developer included a textbox to show the execution time in the report. (Hint: this is a good time to add this to your list of report development best practices, whether a report gets set up as a report snapshot or not!) A snapshot from the past In case you don’t remember how a snapshot appeared in Report Manager back in the old days (of SQL Server 2008 and earlier), here’s an image I snagged from my Reporting Services 2008 Step by Step manuscript: A snapshot in the present A report server running in SharePoint integrated mode had no such label. There you had to rely on the Report Modified date-time stamp to know the snapshot execution time. So I guess all platforms are now consistent. Here’s a screenshot of Report Manager in the 2008 R2 version. One of these is a snapshot and the rest execute on demand. Can you tell which is the snapshot? Consider descriptions as an alternative So my report snapshot demonstration has one less step, and I’ll need to edit the Denali version of the Step by Step book. Things are simpler this way, but I sure wish we had an easier way to identify the execution methods of the reports. Consider using the description field to alert users that the report is a snapshot. It might save you a few questions about why the data isn’t up-to-date if the users know that something changed in the source of the report. Notice that the full description doesn’t display in Tile View, so keep it short and sweet or instruct users to open Details View to see the entire description.

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• Working with Reporting Services Filters–Part 5: OR Logic

  - by smisner

  When you combine multiple filters, Reporting Services uses AND logic. Once upon a time, there was actually a drop-down list for selecting AND or OR between filters which was very confusing to people because often it was grayed out. Now that selection is gone, but no matter. It wouldn’t help us solve the problem that I want to describe today. As with many problems, Reporting Services gives us more than one way to apply OR logic in a filter. If I want a filter to include this value OR that value for the same field, one approach is to set up the filter is to use the IN operator as I explained in Part 1 of this series. But what if I want to base the filter on two different fields? I  need a different solution. Using the AdventureWorksDW2008R2 database, I have a report that lists product sales: Let’s say that I want to filter this report to show only products that are Bikes (a category) OR products for which sales were greater than $1,000 in a year. If I set up the filter like this: Expression Data Type Operator Value [Category] Text = Bikes [SalesAmount]   > 1000 Then AND logic is used which means that both conditions must be true. That’s not the result I want. Instead, I need to set up the filter like this: Expression Data Type Operator Value =Fields!EnglishProductCategoryName.Value = "Bikes" OR Fields!SalesAmount.Value > 1000 Boolean = =True The OR logic needs to be part of the expression so that it can return a Boolean value that we test against the Value. Notice that I have used =True rather than True for the value. The filtered report appears below. Any non-bike product appears only if the total sales exceed $1,000, whereas Bikes appear regardless of sales. (You can’t see it in this screenshot, but Mountain-400-W Silver, 38 has sales of $923 in 2007 but gets included because it is in the Bikes category.)

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• Working with Reporting Services Filters–Part 5: OR Logic

  - by smisner

  When you combine multiple filters, Reporting Services uses AND logic. Once upon a time, there was actually a drop-down list for selecting AND or OR between filters which was very confusing to people because often it was grayed out. Now that selection is gone, but no matter. It wouldn’t help us solve the problem that I want to describe today. As with many problems, Reporting Services gives us more than one way to apply OR logic in a filter. If I want a filter to include this value OR that value for the same field, one approach is to set up the filter is to use the IN operator as I explained in Part 1 of this series. But what if I want to base the filter on two different fields? I  need a different solution. Using the AdventureWorksDW2008R2 database, I have a report that lists product sales: Let’s say that I want to filter this report to show only products that are Bikes (a category) OR products for which sales were greater than $1,000 in a year. If I set up the filter like this: Expression Data Type Operator Value [Category] Text = Bikes [SalesAmount]   > 1000 Then AND logic is used which means that both conditions must be true. That’s not the result I want. Instead, I need to set up the filter like this: Expression Data Type Operator Value =Fields!EnglishProductCategoryName.Value = "Bikes" OR Fields!SalesAmount.Value > 1000 Boolean = =True The OR logic needs to be part of the expression so that it can return a Boolean value that we test against the Value. Notice that I have used =True rather than True for the value. The filtered report appears below. Any non-bike product appears only if the total sales exceed $1,000, whereas Bikes appear regardless of sales. (You can’t see it in this screenshot, but Mountain-400-W Silver, 38 has sales of $923 in 2007 but gets included because it is in the Bikes category.)

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• SQL Server Reporting Services using of pictures with dynamic links

  - by YvesR

  I have setup a SSRS 2008 and building reports. So far so good. Now there is a picture control in SSRS where you can set the picture as external link reference. There you can choose to use a link. When I use a weblink (http://anyurl/download_picture.aspx?id=123) it dont' work for me. Calling the url in the web browser (all tested IE, Safari, Chrome, FF) the pictures is delivered, Header is ok, content type, too. Does it work in general in SSRS ? Or do I have to copy the picture to a temp folder and link the url like http://anyurl/mypicture.jpg.

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• Filtering SQLAlchemy query on attribute_mapped_collection field of relationship

  - by bsa

  I have two classes, Tag and Hardware, defined with a simple parent-child relationship (see the full definition at the end). Now I want to filter a query on Tag using the version field in Hardware through an attribute_mapped_collection, eg: def get_tags(order_code=None, hardware_filters=None): session = Session() query = session.query(Tag) if order_code: query = query.filter(Tag.order_code == order_code) if hardware_filters: for k, v in hardware_filters.iteritems(): query = query.filter(getattr(Tag.hardware, k).version == v) return query.all() But I get: AttributeError: Neither 'InstrumentedAttribute' object nor 'Comparator' object associated with Tag.hardware has an attribute 'baseband The same thing happens if I strip it back by hard-coding the attribute, eg: query.filter(Tag.hardware.baseband.version == v) I can do it this way: query = query.filter(Tag.hardware.any(artefact=k, version=v)) But why can't I filter directly through the attribute? Class definitions class Tag(Base): __tablename__ = 'tag' tag_id = Column(Integer, primary_key=True) order_code = Column(String, nullable=False) version = Column(String, nullable=False) status = Column(String, nullable=False) comments = Column(String) hardware = relationship( "Hardware", backref="tag", collection_class=attribute_mapped_collection('artefact'), ) __table_args__ = ( UniqueConstraint('order_code', 'version'), ) class Hardware(Base): __tablename__ = 'hardware' hardware_id = Column(Integer, primary_key=True) tag_id = Column(String, ForeignKey('tag.tag_id')) product_id = Column(String, nullable=True) artefact = Column(String, nullable=False) version = Column(String, nullable=False)

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• SQL SERVER – What is Spatial Database? – Developing with SQL Server Spatial and Deep Dive into Spati

  - by pinaldave

  What is Spatial Database? A spatial database is a database that is optimized to store and query data related to objects in space, including points, lines and polygons. While typical databases can understand various numeric and character types of data, additional functionality needs to be added for databases to process spatial data types. (Source: Wikipedia) Today I will be talking about the same subject at Microsoft TechEd India. If you want to learn about how to spatial aspect of data and how to integrate them with SQL Server this is the perfect session for you. Spatial is very special concept of SQL Server and I really like how it is implemented in SQL Server. In general Performance Tuning and Query Optimization is something I always have enjoyed in my professional life. Index are my best friends and many time, by implementing and many time by removing I have improved the performance of the system. In this session, I will be talking about Index along with Spatial Data. As Spatial Database is very interesting concept, I will cover super short but very interesting 10 quick slides about this subject. I will make sure in very first 20 mins, you will understand following topics Introduction to Spatial Database One line definition Understanding Spatial Indexing Index Internals Query/Performance Tuning Query Hinting/Cost Analysis Spatial Index Catalog Views Performance Troubleshooting Finding Optimal Index using Spatial Index SP Common Errors Index Maintenance This slides decks will be followed by around 30 mins demo which will have story of geometry, geography, index internals and performance tuning. If you are interested in learning how GIS works and how SQL Server out of the box supports this wonderful tools, you will really like how the story is told. I am sure all people who attend the event will know how the Bangalore is positioned on the map of India. I will take example of Bangalore and Hyderabad and demonstrate how index can improve the performance. Well there are lots of story to tell in the session, and I will be opening this session with the beautiful script of Botticelli’s Birth of Venus created by Michael J. Swart. I will also demonstrate few real life scenario where I will be talking about Spatial Database and its usage. Do not miss this session. At the end of session there will be book awarded to best participant. My session details: Session 3: Developing with SQL Server Spatial and Deep Dive into Spatial Indexing Date: April 14, 2010 Time: 5:00pm-6:00pm Microsoft SQL Server 2008 delivers new spatial data types that enable you to consume, use, and extend location-based data through spatial-enabled applications. Attend this session to learn how to use spatial functionality in next version of SQL Server to build and optimize spatial queries. This session outlines the new geography data type to store geodetic spatial data and perform operations on it, use the new geometry data type to store planar spatial data and perform operations on it, take advantage of new spatial indexes for high performance queries, use the new spatial results tab to quickly and easily view spatial query results directly from within Management Studio, extend spatial data capabilities by building or integrating location-enabled applications through support for spatial standards and specifications and much more. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Index, SQL Optimization, SQL Performance, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority Author Visit, T SQL, Technology Tagged: Spatial Database

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• SQL SERVER – SOS_SCHEDULER_YIELD – Wait Type – Day 8 of 28

  - by pinaldave

  This is a very interesting wait type and quite often seen as one of the top wait types. Let us discuss this today. From Book On-Line: Occurs when a task voluntarily yields the scheduler for other tasks to execute. During this wait the task is waiting for its quantum to be renewed. SOS_SCHEDULER_YIELD Explanation: SQL Server has multiple threads, and the basic working methodology for SQL Server is that SQL Server does not let any “runnable” thread to starve. Now let us assume SQL Server OS is very busy running threads on all the scheduler. There are always new threads coming up which are ready to run (in other words, runnable). Thread management of the SQL Server is decided by SQL Server and not the operating system. SQL Server runs on non-preemptive mode most of the time, meaning the threads are co-operative and can let other threads to run from time to time by yielding itself. When any thread yields itself for another thread, it creates this wait. If there are more threads, it clearly indicates that the CPU is under pressure. You can fun the following DMV to see how many runnable task counts there are in your system. SELECT scheduler_id, current_tasks_count, runnable_tasks_count, work_queue_count, pending_disk_io_count FROM sys.dm_os_schedulers WHERE scheduler_id < 255 GO If you notice a two-digit number in runnable_tasks_count continuously for long time (not once in a while), you will know that there is CPU pressure. The two-digit number is usually considered as a bad thing; you can read the description of the above DMV over here. Additionally, there are several other counters (%Processor Time and other processor related counters), through which you can refer to so you can validate CPU pressure along with the method explained above. Reducing SOS_SCHEDULER_YIELD wait: This is the trickiest part of this procedure. As discussed, this particular wait type relates to CPU pressure. Increasing more CPU is the solution in simple terms; however, it is not easy to implement this solution. There are other things that you can consider when this wait type is very high. Here is the query where you can find the most expensive query related to CPU from the cache Note: The query that used lots of resources but is not cached will not be caught here. SELECT SUBSTRING(qt.TEXT, (qs.statement_start_offset/2)+1, ((CASE qs.statement_end_offset WHEN -1 THEN DATALENGTH(qt.TEXT) ELSE qs.statement_end_offset END - qs.statement_start_offset)/2)+1), qs.execution_count, qs.total_logical_reads, qs.last_logical_reads, qs.total_logical_writes, qs.last_logical_writes, qs.total_worker_time, qs.last_worker_time, qs.total_elapsed_time/1000000 total_elapsed_time_in_S, qs.last_elapsed_time/1000000 last_elapsed_time_in_S, qs.last_execution_time, qp.query_plan FROM sys.dm_exec_query_stats qs CROSS APPLY sys.dm_exec_sql_text(qs.sql_handle) qt CROSS APPLY sys.dm_exec_query_plan(qs.plan_handle) qp ORDER BY qs.total_worker_time DESC -- CPU time You can find the most expensive queries that are utilizing lots of CPU (from the cache) and you can tune them accordingly. Moreover, you can find the longest running query and attempt to tune them if there is any processor offending code. Additionally, pay attention to total_worker_time because if that is also consistently higher, then  the CPU under too much pressure. You can also check perfmon counters of compilations as they tend to use good amount of CPU. Index rebuild is also a CPU intensive process but we should consider that main cause for this query because that is indeed needed on high transactions OLTP system utilized to reduce fragmentations. Note: The information presented here is from my experience and there is no way that I claim it to be accurate. I suggest reading Book OnLine for further clarification. All of the discussions of Wait Stats in this blog is generic and varies from system to system. It is recommended that you test this on a development server before implementing it to a production server. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Wait Stats, SQL Wait Types, T SQL, Technology

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• SQL SERVER – Error: Fix – Msg 208 – Invalid object name ‘dbo.backupset’ – Invalid object name ‘dbo.backupfile’

  - by pinaldave

  Just a day before I got a very interesting email. Here is the email (modified a bit to make it relevant to this blog post). “Pinal, We are facing a very strange issue. One of our query  related to backup files and backup set has stopped working suddenly in SSMS. It works fine in application where we have and in the stored procedure but when we have it in our SSMS it gives following error. Msg 208, Level 16, State 1, Line 1 Invalid object name ‘dbo.backupfile’. Here are our queries which we are trying to execute. SELECT name, database_name, backup_size, TYPE, compatibility_level, backup_set_id FROM dbo.backupset; SELECT logical_name, backup_size, file_type FROM dbo.backupfile; This query gives us details related to backupset and backup files when the backup was taken.” When I receive this kind of email, usually I have no answers directly. The claim that it works in stored procedure and in application but not in SSMS gives me no real data. I have requested him to very first check following two things: If he is connected to correct server? His answer was yes. If he has enough permissions? His answer was he was logged in as an admin. This means there was something more to it and I requested him to send me a screenshot of the his SSMS. He promptly sends that to me and as soon as I receive the screen shot I knew what was going on. Before I say anything take a look at the screenshot yourself and see if you can figure out why his queries are not working in SSMS. Just to make your life a bit easy, I have already given a hint in the image. The answer is very simple, the context of the database is master database. To execute above two queries the context of the database has to be msdb. Tables backupset and backupfile belong to the database msdb only. Here are two workaround or solution to above problem: 1) Change context to MSDB Above two queries when they will run as following they will not error out and will give the accurate desired result. USE msdb GO SELECT name, database_name, backup_size, TYPE, compatibility_level, backup_set_id FROM dbo.backupset; SELECT logical_name, backup_size, file_type FROM dbo.backupfile; 2) Prefix the query with msdb There are cases above script used in stored procedure or part of big query, it is not possible to change the context of the whole query to any specific database. Use three part naming convention and prefix them with msdb. SELECT name, database_name, backup_size, TYPE, compatibility_level, backup_set_id FROM msdb.dbo.backupset; SELECT logical_name, backup_size, file_type FROM msdb.dbo.backupfile; Very simple solution but sometime keeps people wondering for an answer. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Error Messages, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• SQL SERVER – Data Pages in Buffer Pool – Data Stored in Memory Cache

  - by pinaldave

  This will drop all the clean buffers so we will be able to start again from there. Now, run the following script and check the execution plan of the query. Have you ever wondered what types of data are there in your cache? During SQL Server Trainings, I am usually asked if there is any way one can know how much data in a table is stored in the memory cache? The more detailed question I usually get is if there are multiple indexes on table (and used in a query), were the data of the single table stored multiple times in the memory cache or only for a single time? Here is a query you can run to figure out what kind of data is stored in the cache. USE AdventureWorks GO SELECT COUNT(*) AS cached_pages_count, name AS BaseTableName, IndexName, IndexTypeDesc FROM sys.dm_os_buffer_descriptors AS bd INNER JOIN ( SELECT s_obj.name, s_obj.index_id, s_obj.allocation_unit_id, s_obj.OBJECT_ID, i.name IndexName, i.type_desc IndexTypeDesc FROM ( SELECT OBJECT_NAME(OBJECT_ID) AS name, index_id ,allocation_unit_id, OBJECT_ID FROM sys.allocation_units AS au INNER JOIN sys.partitions AS p ON au.container_id = p.hobt_id AND (au.type = 1 OR au.type = 3) UNION ALL SELECT OBJECT_NAME(OBJECT_ID) AS name, index_id, allocation_unit_id, OBJECT_ID FROM sys.allocation_units AS au INNER JOIN sys.partitions AS p ON au.container_id = p.partition_id AND au.type = 2 ) AS s_obj LEFT JOIN sys.indexes i ON i.index_id = s_obj.index_id AND i.OBJECT_ID = s_obj.OBJECT_ID ) AS obj ON bd.allocation_unit_id = obj.allocation_unit_id WHERE database_id = DB_ID() GROUP BY name, index_id, IndexName, IndexTypeDesc ORDER BY cached_pages_count DESC; GO Now let us run the query above and observe the output of the same. We can see in the above query that there are four columns. Cached_Pages_Count lists the pages cached in the memory. BaseTableName lists the original base table from which data pages are cached. IndexName lists the name of the index from which pages are cached. IndexTypeDesc lists the type of index. Now, let us do one more experience here. Please note that you should not run this test on a production server as it can extremely reduce the performance of the database. DBCC DROPCLEANBUFFERS This will drop all the clean buffers and we will be able to start again from there. Now run following script and check the execution plan for the same. USE AdventureWorks GO SELECT UnitPrice, ModifiedDate FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail WHERE SalesOrderDetailID BETWEEN 1 AND 100 GO The execution plans contain the usage of two different indexes. Now, let us run the script that checks the pages cached in SQL Server. It will give us the following output. 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. Let me know what you think of this article. I had a great pleasure while writing this article because I was able to write on this subject, which I like the most. In the next article, we will exactly see what data are cached and those that are not cached, using a few undocumented commands. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: DMV, Pinal Dave, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Optimization, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology Tagged: SQL DMV

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• SQL SERVER – Maximize Database Performance with DB Optimizer – SQL in Sixty Seconds #054

  - by Pinal Dave

  Performance tuning is an interesting concept and everybody evaluates it differently. Every developer and DBA have different opinion about how one can do performance tuning. I personally believe performance tuning is a three step process Understanding the Query Identifying the Bottleneck Implementing the Fix While, we are working with large database application and it suddenly starts to slow down. We are all under stress about how we can get back the database back to normal speed. Most of the time we do not have enough time to do deep analysis of what is going wrong as well what will fix the problem. Our primary goal at that time is to just fix the database problem as fast as we can. However, here is one very important thing which we need to keep in our mind is that when we do quick fix, it should not create any further issue with other parts of the system. When time is essence and we want to do deep analysis of our system to give us the best solution we often tend to make mistakes. Sometimes we make mistakes as we do not have proper time to analysis the entire system. Here is what I do when I face such a situation – I take the help of DB Optimizer. It is a fantastic tool and does superlative performance tuning of the system. Everytime when I talk about performance tuning tool, the initial reaction of the people is that they do not want to try this as they believe it requires lots of the learning of the tool before they use it. It is absolutely not true with the case of the DB optimizer. It is a very easy to use and self intuitive tool. Once can get going with the product, in no time. Here is a quick video I have build where I demonstrate how we can identify what index is missing for query and how we can quickly create the index. Entire three steps of the query tuning are completed in less than 60 seconds. If you are into performance tuning and query optimization you should download DB Optimizer and give it a go. Let us see the same concept in following SQL in Sixty Seconds Video: You can Download DB Optimizer and reproduce the same Sixty Seconds experience. Related Tips in SQL in Sixty Seconds: Performance Tuning – Part 1 of 2 – Getting Started and Configuration Performance Tuning – Part 2 of 2 – Analysis, Detection, Tuning and Optimizing What would you like to see in the next SQL in Sixty Seconds video? Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Database, Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL in Sixty Seconds, SQL Interview Questions and Answers, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology, Video Tagged: Identity

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• SQL SERVER – Introduction to CUME_DIST – Analytic Functions Introduced in SQL Server 2012

  - by pinaldave

  This blog post is written in response to the T-SQL Tuesday post of Prox ‘n’ Funx. This is a very interesting subject. By the way Brad Schulz is my favorite guy when it is about blogging. I respect him as well learn a lot from him. Everybody is writing something new his subject, I decided to start SQL Server 2012 analytic functions series. SQL Server 2012 introduces new analytical function CUME_DIST(). This function provides cumulative distribution value. It will be very difficult to explain this in words so I will attempt small example to explain you this function. Instead of creating new table, I will be using AdventureWorks sample database as most of the developer uses that for experiment. Let us fun following query. USE AdventureWorks GO SELECT SalesOrderID, OrderQty, CUME_DIST() OVER(ORDER BY SalesOrderID) AS CDist FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail WHERE SalesOrderID IN (43670, 43669, 43667, 43663) ORDER BY CDist DESC GO Above query will give us following result. Now let us understand what is the formula behind CUME_DIST and why the values in SalesOrderID = 43670 are 1. Let us take more example and be clear about why the values in SalesOrderID = 43667 are 0.5. Now let us enhence the same example and use PARTITION BY into the OVER clause and see the results. Run following query in SQL Server 2012. USE AdventureWorks GO SELECT SalesOrderID, OrderQty, ProductID, CUME_DIST() OVER(PARTITION BY SalesOrderID ORDER BY ProductID ) AS CDist FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail s WHERE SalesOrderID IN (43670, 43669, 43667, 43663) ORDER BY s.SalesOrderID DESC, CDist DESC GO Now let us see the result of this query. We are have changed the ORDER BY clause as well partitioning by SalesOrderID. You can see that CUME_DIST() function provides us different results. Additionally now we see value 1 multiple times. As we are using partitioning for each group of SalesOrderID we get the CUME_DIST() value. CUME_DIST() was long awaited Analytical function and I am glad to see it in SQL Server 2012. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Function, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• SQL SERVER – Validating Spatial Object with IsValidDetailed Function

  - by pinaldave

  What do you prefer – error or warning indicating error may happen with the reason for the error. While writing the previous statement I remember the movie “Minory Report”. This blog post is not about minority report but I will still cover the concept in a single statement “Let us predict the future and prevent the crime which is about to happen in future”. (Please feel free to correct me if I am wrong about the movie concept, I really do not want to hurt your sentiment if you are dedicated fan). Let us switch to the SQL Server world. Spatial data types are interesting concepts. I love writing about spatial data types because it allows me to be creative with shapes (just like toddlers). When working with Spatial Datatypes it is all good when the spatial object works fine. However, when the spatial object has issue or it is created with invalid coordinates it used to give a simple error that there is an issue with the object but did not provide much information. This made it very difficult to debug. If this spatial object was used in the big procedure and while this big procedural error out because of the invalid spatial object, it is indeed very difficult to debug it. I always wished that the more information provided regarding what is the problem with spatial datatype. SQL Server 2012 has introduced the new function IsValidDetailed(). This function has made my life very easy. In simple words this function will check if the spatial object passed is valid or not. If it is valid it will give information that it is valid. If the spatial object is not valid it will return the answer that it is not valid and the reason for the same. This makes it very easy to debug the issue and make the necessary correction. DECLARE @p GEOMETRY = 'Polygon((2 2, 6 6, 4 2, 2 2))' SELECT @p.IsValidDetailed() GO DECLARE @p GEOMETRY = 'Polygon((2 2, 3 3, 4 4, 5 5, 6 6, 2 2))' SELECT @p.IsValidDetailed() GO DECLARE @p GEOMETRY = 'Polygon((2 2, 4 4, 4 2, 2 3, 2 2))' SELECT @p.IsValidDetailed() GO DECLARE @p GEOMETRY = 'CIRCULARSTRING(2 2, 4 4, 0 0)' SELECT @p.IsValidDetailed() GO DECLARE @p GEOMETRY = 'CIRCULARSTRING(2 2, 4 4, 0 0)' SELECT @p.IsValidDetailed() GO DECLARE @p GEOMETRY = 'LINESTRING(2 2, 4 4, 0 0)' SELECT @p.IsValidDetailed() GO Here is the resultset of the above query. You can see any valid query and some invalid query. If the query is invalid it also demonstrates the reason along with the error message. 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: Spatial Database, SQL Spatial

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• SQL SERVER – Fix: Error: 147 An aggregate may not appear in the WHERE clause unless it is in a subquery contained in a HAVING clause or a select list, and the column being aggregated is an outer reference

  - by pinaldave

  Everybody was beginner once and I always like to get involved in the questions from beginners. There is a big difference between the question from beginner and question from advanced user. I have noticed that if an advanced user gets an error, they usually need just a small hint to resolve the problem. However, when a beginner gets error he sometimes sits on the error for a long time as he/she has no idea about how to solve the problem as well have no idea regarding what is the capability of the product. I recently received a very novice level question. When I received the problem I quickly see how the user was stuck. When I replied him with the solution, he wrote a long email explaining how he was not able to solve the problem. He thanked multiple times in the email. This whole thing inspired me to write this quick blog post. I have modified the user’s question to match the code with AdventureWorks as well simplified so it contains the core content which I wanted to discuss. Problem Statement: Find all the details of SalesOrderHeaders for the latest ShipDate. He comes up with following T-SQL Query: SELECT * FROM [Sales].[SalesOrderHeader] WHERE ShipDate = MAX(ShipDate) GO When he executed above script it gave him following error: Msg 147, Level 15, State 1, Line 3 An aggregate may not appear in the WHERE clause unless it is in a subquery contained in a HAVING clause or a select list, and the column being aggregated is an outer reference. He was not able to resolve this problem, even though the solution was given in the query description itself. Due to lack of experience he came up with another version of above query based on the error message. SELECT * FROM [Sales].[SalesOrderHeader] HAVING ShipDate = MAX(ShipDate) GO When he ran above query it produced another error. Msg 8121, Level 16, State 1, Line 3 Column ‘Sales.SalesOrderHeader.ShipDate’ is invalid in the HAVING clause because it is not contained in either an aggregate function or the GROUP BY clause. What he wanted actually was the SalesOrderHeader all the Sales shipped on the last day. Based on the problem statement what the right solution is as following, which does not generate error. SELECT * FROM [Sales].[SalesOrderHeader] WHERE ShipDate = (SELECT MAX(ShipDate) FROM [Sales].[SalesOrderHeader]) Well, that’s it! Very simple. With SQL Server there are always multiple solution to a single problem. Is there any other solution available to the problem stated? Please share in the comment. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Error Messages, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• Licensing SQL Server 2012 Reporting Services w/ SharePoint 2010

  - by Evan M.

  Here's my situation: I have 1 VM that is running SharePoint 2010 SP1. I have a different physical server that is running SQL Server 2008 R2 that hosts all the configuration and content database for SharePoint. Now, we want to start providing BI capabilities to our users with SharePoint and SQL Server. With it's new features, 2012 is the obvious way to go. To support this, I'm looking to build a new VM that will have SQL Server 2012 installed w/ Analysis services and SSIS, which will be the platform that gets our data from our Oracle databases, puts it in a warehouse hosted by the SQL 2012 instance, and is put into cubes. What's getting me about the platform is licensing for Reporting Services and PowerPivot. My plan was to install SSRS and PowerPivot on the current SharePoint server. But my understanding of the licensing means that instead of the new SQL server being licensed, I'd have to license both new server, and the SharePoint server. Conversely, I could install SharePoint onto the SQL server, and only have to get a second SP license, but then I'd have the added complexity of deploying a separated application server, and combines my data and application servers. Is my licensing understanding correct, or can I have SSRS and PowerPivot installed separately without incurring additional licensing costs?

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• SQL SERVER – Four Posts on Removing the Bookmark Lookup – Key Lookup

  - by pinaldave

  In recent times I have observed that not many people have proper understanding of what is bookmark lookup or key lookup. Increasing numbers of the questions tells me that this is something developers are encountering every single day but have no idea how to deal with it. I have previously written three articles on this subject. I want to point all of you looking for further information on the same post. SQL SERVER – Query Optimization – Remove Bookmark Lookup – Remove RID Lookup – Remove Key Lookup SQL SERVER – Query Optimization – Remove Bookmark Lookup – Remove RID Lookup – Remove Key Lookup – Part 2 SQL SERVER – Query Optimization – Remove Bookmark Lookup – Remove RID Lookup – Remove Key Lookup – Part 3 SQL SERVER – Interesting Observation – Execution Plan and Results of Aggregate Concatenation Queries In one of my recent class we had in depth conversation about what are the alternative of creating covering indexes to remove the bookmark lookup. I really want to this question open to all of you and see what community thinks about the same. Is there any other way then creating covering index or included index to remove his expensive keylookup? Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Backup and Restore, SQL Index, SQL Optimization, SQL Performance, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority News, SQLServer, T SQL, Technology

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• SQL SERVER – Solution – Challenge – Puzzle – Usage of FAST Hint

  - by pinaldave

  Earlier I had posted quick puzzle and I had received wonderful response to the same from Brad Schulz. Today we will go over the solution. The puzzle was posted here: SQL SERVER – Challenge – Puzzle – Usage of FAST Hint The question was in what condition the hint FAST will be useful. In the response to this puzzle blog post here is what SQL Server Expert Brad Schulz has pointed me to his blog post where he explain how FAST hint can be useful. I strongly recommend to read his blog post over here. With the permission of the Brad, I am reproducing following queries here. He has come up with example where FAST hint improves the performance. USE AdventureWorks GO DECLARE @DesiredDateAtMidnight DATETIME = '20010709' DECLARE @NextDateAtMidnight DATETIME = DATEADD(DAY,1,@DesiredDateAtMidnight) -- Query without FAST SELECT OrderID=h.SalesOrderID ,h.OrderDate ,h.TerritoryID ,TerritoryName=t.Name ,c.CardType ,c.CardNumber ,CardExpire=RIGHT(STR(100+ExpMonth),2)+'/'+STR(ExpYear,4) ,h.TotalDue FROM Sales.SalesOrderHeader h LEFT JOIN Sales.SalesTerritory t ON h.TerritoryID=t.TerritoryID LEFT JOIN Sales.CreditCard c ON h.CreditCardID=c.CreditCardID WHERE OrderDate>=@DesiredDateAtMidnight AND OrderDate<@NextDateAtMidnight ORDER BY h.SalesOrderID; -- Query with FAST(10) SELECT OrderID=h.SalesOrderID ,h.OrderDate ,h.TerritoryID ,TerritoryName=t.Name ,c.CardType ,c.CardNumber ,CardExpire=RIGHT(STR(100+ExpMonth),2)+'/'+STR(ExpYear,4) ,h.TotalDue FROM Sales.SalesOrderHeader h LEFT JOIN Sales.SalesTerritory t ON h.TerritoryID=t.TerritoryID LEFT JOIN Sales.CreditCard c ON h.CreditCardID=c.CreditCardID WHERE OrderDate>=@DesiredDateAtMidnight AND OrderDate<@NextDateAtMidnight ORDER BY h.SalesOrderID OPTION(FAST 10) Now when you check the execution plan for the same, you will find following visible difference. You will find query with FAST returns results with much lower cost. Thank you Brad for excellent post and teaching us something. I request all of you to read original blog post written by Brad for much more information. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, Readers Contribution, Readers Question, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Puzzle, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• SQL SERVER – Weekly Series – Memory Lane – #033

  - 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 Spatial Database Definition and Research Documents Here is the definition from Wikipedia about spatial database : A spatial database is a database that is optimized to store and query data related to objects in space, including points, lines and polygons. While typical databases can understand various numeric and character types of data, additional functionality needs to be added for databases to process spatial data types. Select Only Date Part From DateTime – Best Practice A very common question which I receive is how to only get Date or Time part from datetime value. In this blog post I explain the same in very simple words. T-SQL Paging Query Technique Comparison (OVER and ROW_NUMBER()) – CTE vs. Derived Table I have received few emails and comments about my post SQL SERVER – T-SQL Paging Query Technique Comparison – SQL 2000 vs SQL 2005. The main question was is this can be done using CTE? Absolutely! What about Performance? It is identical! Please refer above mentioned article for the history of paging. SQL SERVER – Cannot resolve collation conflict for equal to operation One of the very first error I ever encountered in my career was to resolve this conflict. I have blogged about it and I have realized that many others like me who are facing this error. LEN and DATALENGTH of NULL Simple Example Here is the question for you what is the LEN of NULL value? Well it is very easy – just read the blog. Recovery Models and Selection Very simple and easy explanation of the Database Backup Recovery Model and how to select the best option for you. Explanation SQL SERVER Hash Join Hash join gives best performance when two more join tables are joined and at-least one of them have no index or is not sorted. It is also expected that smaller of the either of table can be read in memory completely (though not necessary). Easy Sequence of SELECT FROM JOIN WHERE GROUP BY HAVING ORDER BY SELECT yourcolumns FROM tablenames JOIN tablenames WHERE condition GROUP BY yourcolumns HAVING aggregatecolumn condition ORDER BY yourcolumns NorthWind Database or AdventureWorks Database – Samples Databases In this blog post we learn how to install Northwind database. I also shared the source where one can download this database as that is used in many examples on MSDN help files. sp_HelpText for sp_HelpText – Puzzle A simple quick puzzle – do you know the answer of it? If not, go ahead and read the blog. 2008 SQL SERVER – 2008 – Step By Step Installation Guide With Images When SQL Server 2008 was newly introduced lots of people had no clue how to install SQL Server 2008 and the amount of the question which I used to receive were so much. I wrote this blog post with the spirit that this will help all the newbies to install SQL Server 2008 with the help of images. Still today this blog post has been bible for all of the people who are confused with SQL Server installation. Inline Variable Assignment I loved this feature. I have always wanted this feature to be present in SQL Server. The last time when I met developers from Microsoft SQL Server, I had talked about this feature. I think this feature saves some time but make the code more readable. Introduction to Policy Management – Enforcing Rules on SQL Server If our company policy is to create all the Stored Procedure with prefix ‘usp’ that developers should be just prevented to create Stored Procedure with any other prefix. Let us see a small tutorial how to create conditions and policy which will prevent any future SP to be created with any other prefix. 2009 Performance Counters from System Views – By Kevin Mckenna Many of you are not aware of this fact that access to performance information is readily available in SQL Server and that too without querying performance counters using a custom application or via perfmon. Till now, this fact has remained undisclosed but through this post I would like to explain you can easily access SQL Server performance counter information. Without putting much effort you will come across the system viewsys.dm_os_performance_counters. As the name suggests, this provides you easy access to the SQL Server performance counter information that is passed on to perfmon, but you can get at it via tsql. Customize Toolbar – Remove Debug Button from Toolbar I was fond of SQL Server Debugger feature in SQL Server 2000. To my utter disappointment, this feature was withdrawn from SQL Server 2005. The button of the debugger is similar to a play button and is used to run debugging commands of Visual Studio. Because of this reason, it gets very much infuriating for developers when they are developing on both – Visual Studio and SSMS. Let us now see how we can remove debugging button from SQL Server Management Studio. Effect of Normalization on Index and Performance A very interesting conversation which started from twitter. If you want to read one link this is the link I encourage you to read it. SSMS Feature – Multi-server Queries Using SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) DBAs can now query multiple servers from one window. It is quite common for DBAs with large amount of servers to maintain and gather information from multiple SQL Servers and create report. This feature is a blessing for the DBAs, as they can now assemble all the information instantaneously without going anywhere. Query Optimizer Hint ROBUST PLAN – Question to You “ROBUST PLAN” is a kind of query hint which works quite differently than other hints. It does not improve join or force any indexes to use; it just makes sure that a query does not crash due to over the limit size of row. Let me elaborate upon it in the blog post. 2010 Do you really know the difference between various date functions available in SQL Server 2012? Here is a three part story where we explored the same with examples: Fastest Way to Restore the Database Difference Between DATETIME and DATETIME2 Difference Between DATETIME and DATETIME2 – WITH GETDATE Shrinking NDF and MDF Files – Readers’ Opinion Shrinking Database always creates performance degradation and increases fragmentation in the database. I suggest that you keep that in mind before you start reading the following comment. If you are going to say Shrinking Database is bad and evil, here I am saying it first and loud. Now, the comment of Imran is written while keeping in mind only the process showing how the Shrinking Database Operation works. Imran has already explained his understanding and requests further explanation. I have removed the Best Practices section from Imran’s comments, as there are a few corrections. 2011 Solution – Puzzle – SELECT * vs SELECT COUNT(*) This is very interesting question and I am very confident that not every one knows the answer to this question. Let me ask you again – Which will be faster SELECT* or SELECT COUNT (*) or do you think this is apples and oranges comparison. 2012 Service Broker and CAP_CPU_PERCENT – Limiting SQL Server Instances to CPU Usage In SQL Server 2012 there are a few enhancements with regards to SQL Server Resource Governor. One of the enhancement is how the resources are allocated. Let me explain you with examples. Let us understand the entire discussion with the help of three different examples. Finding Size of a Columnstore Index Using DMVs One of the very common question I often see is need of the list of columnstore index along with their size and corresponding table name. I quickly re-wrote a script using DMVs sys.indexes and sys.dm_db_partition_stats. This script gives the size of the columnstore index on disk only. I am sure there will be advanced script to retrieve details related to components associated with the columnstore index. However, I believe following script is sufficient to start getting an idea of columnstore index size. Developer Training Resources and Summary Roundup Developer Training - Importance and Significance - Part 1 In this part we discussed the importance of training in the real world. The most important and valuable resource any company is its employee. Employees who have been well-trained will be better at their jobs and produce a better product.  An employee who is well trained obviously knows more about their job and all the technical aspects. I have a very high opinion about training employees and it is the most important task. Developer Training – Employee Morals and Ethics – Part 2 In this part we discussed the most crucial components of training. Often employees are expecting the company to pay for their training and the company expresses no interest in training the employee. Quite often training expenses are the real issue for both the employee and employer. Developer Training – Difficult Questions and Alternative Perspective - Part 3 This part was the most difficult to write as I tried to address a few difficult questions and answers. Training is such a sensitive issue that many developers when not receiving chance for training think about leaving the organization. Developer Training – Various Options for Developer Training – Part 4 In this part I tried to explore a few methods and options for training. The generic feedback I received on this blog post was short and I should have explored each of the subject of the training in details. I believe there are two big buckets of training 1) Instructor Lead Training and 2) Self Lead Training. Developer Training – A Conclusive Summary- Part 5 There is no better motivation than a personal desire to learn new technology. Honestly there is nothing more personal learning. That “change is the only constant” and “adapt & overcome” are the essential lessons of life. One cannot stop the learning and resist the change. In the IT industry “ego of knowing all” and the “resistance to change” are the most challenging issues. A Quick Look at Logging and Ideas around Logging Question: What is the first thing comes to your mind when you hear the word “Logging”? Strange enough I got a different answer every single time. Let me just list what answer I got from my friends. Let us go over them one by one. Beginning Performance Tuning with SQL Server Execution Plan Solution of Puzzle – Swap Value of Column Without Case Statement Earlier this week I asked a question where I asked how to Swap Values of the column without using CASE Statement. Read here: SQL SERVER – A Puzzle – Swap Value of Column Without Case Statement. I have proposed 3 different solutions in the blog posts itself. I had requested the help of the community to come up with alternate solutions and honestly I am stunned and amazed by the qualified entries. 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 – Introduction to PERCENTILE_CONT() – Analytic Functions Introduced in SQL Server 2012

  - by pinaldave

  SQL Server 2012 introduces new analytical function PERCENTILE_CONT(). The book online gives following definition of this function: Computes a specific percentile for sorted values in an entire rowset or within distinct partitions of a rowset in Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Release Candidate 0 (RC 0). For a given percentile value P, PERCENTILE_DISC sorts the values of the expression in the ORDER BY clause and returns the value with the smallest CUME_DIST value (with respect to the same sort specification) that is greater than or equal to P. If you are clear with understanding of the function – no need to read further. If you got lost here is the same in simple words – it is lot like finding median with percentile value. Now let’s have fun following query: USE AdventureWorks GO SELECT SalesOrderID, OrderQty, ProductID, PERCENTILE_CONT(0.5) WITHIN GROUP (ORDER BY ProductID) OVER (PARTITION BY SalesOrderID) AS MedianCont FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail WHERE SalesOrderID IN (43670, 43669, 43667, 43663) ORDER BY SalesOrderID DESC GO The above query will give us the following result: You can see that I have used PERCENTILE_COUNT(0.5) in query, which is similar to finding median. Let me explain above diagram with little more explanation. The defination of median is as following: In case of Even Number of elements = In ordered list add the two digits from the middle and devide by 2 In case of Odd Numbers of elements = In ordered list select the digits from the middle I hope this example gives clear idea how PERCENTILE_CONT() works. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Function, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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