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• PASS Virtual Chapter: Powershell today - Aaron Nelson

  - by dbaduck

  Just a reminder about the Virtual Chapter today at 12:00 Noon Eastern Time we will have a meeting with Aaron Nelson presenting a Grab Bag of Powershell stuff for SQL Server. The link below is the attendee link. This is our regularly scheduled program each month, and the website is http://powershell.sqlpass.org . http://bit.ly/gQJ5PM Hope you can make it. There was standing room only in Aarons SQL PASS presentation in Seattle, so you won't want to miss this if you can make it....(read more)

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• Review the New Migration Guide to SQL Server 2012 Always On

  - by KKline

  I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Cephas Lin, of Microsoft, last year at the SQL Saturday in Indianapolis and then later at the PASS Summit in the fall. Cephas has been writing content for SQL Server 2012 Always On. Cephas has recently published his first whitepaper, a migration guide to SQL Server AlwaysOn. Read it and then pass along any feedback: HERE Enjoy, -Kev - Follow me on Twitter !...(read more)

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• Forcing an External Activation with Service Broker

  - by Davide Mauri

  In these last days I’ve been working quite a lot with Service Broker, a technology I’m really happy to work with, since it can give a lot of satisfaction. The scale-out solution one can easily build is simply astonishing. I’m helping a company to build a very scalable and – yet almost inexpensive – invoicing system that has to be able to scale out using commodity hardware. To offload the work from the main server to satellite “compute nodes” (yes, I’ve borrowed this term from PDW) we’re using Service Broker and the External Activator application available in the SQL Server Feature Pack. For those who are not used to work with SSB, the External Activation is a feature that allows you to intercept the arrival of a message in a queue right from your application code. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms171617.aspx (Look for “Event-Based Activation”) In order to make life even more easier, Microsoft released the External Activation application that saves you even from writing even this code. http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sql_service_broker/archive/tags/external+activator/ The External Activator application can be configured to execute your own application so that each time a message – an invoice in my case – arrives in the target queue, the invoking application is executed and the invoice is calculated. The very nice feature of External Activator is that it can automatically execute as many configured application in order to process as many messages as your system can handle.  This also a lot of create a scale-out solution, leaving to the developer only a fraction of the problems that usually came with asynchronous programming. Developers are also shielded from Service Broker since everything can be encapsulated in Stored Procedures, so that – for them – developing such scale-out asynchronous solution is not much more complex than just executing a bunch of Stored Procedures. Now, if everything works correctly, you don’t have to bother of anything else. You put messages in the queue and your application, invoked by the External Activator, process them. But what happen if for some reason your application fails to process the messages. For examples, it crashes? The message is safe in the queue so you just need to process it again. But your application is invoked by the External Activator application, so now the question is, how do you wake up that app? Service Broker will engage the activation process only if certain conditions are met: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms171601.aspx But how we can invoke the activation process manually, without having to wait for another message to arrive (the arrival of a new message is a condition that can fire the activation process)? The “trick” is to do manually with the activation process does: sending a system message to a queue in charge of handling External Activation messages: declare @conversationHandle uniqueidentifier; declare @n xml = N' <EVENT_INSTANCE>   <EventType>QUEUE_ACTIVATION</EventType>   <PostTime>' + CONVERT(CHAR(24),GETDATE(),126) + '</PostTime>   <SPID>' + CAST(@@SPID AS VARCHAR(9)) + '</SPID>   <ServerName>[your_server_name]</ServerName>   <LoginName>[your_login_name]</LoginName>   <UserName>[your_user_name]</UserName>   <DatabaseName>[your_database_name]</DatabaseName>   <SchemaName>[your_queue_schema_name]</SchemaName>   <ObjectName>[your_queue_name]</ObjectName>   <ObjectType>QUEUE</ObjectType> </EVENT_INSTANCE>' begin dialog conversation     @conversationHandle from service        [<your_initiator_service_name>] to service          '<your_event_notification_service>' on contract         [http://schemas.microsoft.com/SQL/Notifications/PostEventNotification] with     encryption = off,     lifetime = 6000 ; send on conversation     @conversationHandle message type     [http://schemas.microsoft.com/SQL/Notifications/EventNotification] (@n) ;     end conversation @conversationHandle; That’s it! Put the code in a Stored Procedure and you can add to your application a button that says “Force Queue Processing” (or something similar) in order to start the activation process whenever you need it (which should not occur too frequently but it may happen). PS I know that the “fire-and-forget” (ending the conversation without waiting for an answer) technique is not a best practice, but in this case I don’t see how it can hurts so I decided to stay very close to the KISS principle []

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• Making meetings much more efficient

  - by John Paul Cook

  Water. Yes, that’s simple. There needs to be a rule that whoever convenes a meeting be required to drink water. Half a liter of water when the meeting begins and another half a liter every half hour thereafter. That simple rule will motivate the meeting organizer to find closure quickly – and the exit. What day did I post this? Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!...(read more)

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• Windows Azure End to End Examples

  - by BuckWoody

  I’m fascinated by the way people learn. I’m told there are several methods people use to understand new information, from reading to watching, from experiencing to exploring. Personally, I use multiple methods of learning when I encounter a new topic, usually starting with reading a bit about the concepts. I quickly want to put those into practice, however, especially in the technical realm. I immediately look for examples where I can start trying out the concepts. But I often want a “real” example – not just something that represents the concept, but something that is real-world, showing some feature I could actually use. And it’s no different with the Windows Azure platform – I like finding things I can do now, and actually use. So when I started learning Windows Azure, I of course began with the Windows Azure Training Kit – which has lots of examples and labs, presentations and so on. But from there, I wanted more examples I could learn from, and eventually teach others with. I was asked if I would write a few of those up, so here are the ones I use. CodePlex CodePlex is Microsoft’s version of an “Open Source” repository. Anyone can start a project, add code, documentation and more to it and make it available to the world, free of charge, using various licenses as they wish. Microsoft also uses this location for most of the examples we publish, and sample databases for SQL Server. If you search in CodePlex for “Azure”, you’ll come back with a list of projects that folks have posted, including those of us at Microsoft. The source code and documentation are there, so you can learn using actual examples of code that will do what you need. There’s everything from a simple table query to a full project that is sort of a “Corporate Dropbox” that uses Windows Azure Storage. The advantage is that this code is immediately usable. It’s searchable, and you can often find a complete solution to meet your needs. The disadvantage is that the code is pretty specific – it may not cover a huge project like you’re looking for. Also, depending on the author(s), you might not find the documentation level you want. Link: http://azureexamples.codeplex.com/site/search?query=Azure&ac=8    Tailspin Microsoft Patterns and Practices is a group here that does an amazing job at sharing standard ways of doing IT – from operations to coding. If you’re not familiar with this resource, make sure you read up on it. Long before I joined Microsoft I used their work in my daily job – saved a ton of time. It has resources not only for Windows Azure but other Microsoft software as well. The Patterns and Practices group also publishes full books – you can buy these, but many are also online for free. There’s an end-to-end example for Windows Azure using a company called “Tailspin”, and the work covers not only the code but the design of the full solution. If you really want to understand the thought that goes into a Platform-as-a-Service solution, this is an excellent resource. The advantages are that this is a book, it’s complete, and it includes a discussion of design decisions. The disadvantage is that it’s a little over a year old – and in “Cloud” years that’s a lot. So many things have changed, improved, and have been added that you need to treat this as a resource, but not the only one. Still, highly recommended. Link: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff728592.aspx Azure Stock Trader Sometimes you need a mix of a CodePlex-style application, and a little more detail on how it was put together. And it would be great if you could actually play with the completed application, to see how it really functions on the actual platform. That’s the Azure Stock Trader application. There’s a place where you can read about the application, and then it’s been published to Windows Azure – the production platform – and you can use it, explore, and see how it performs. I use this application all the time to demonstrate Windows Azure, or a particular part of Windows Azure. The advantage is that this is an end-to-end application, and online as well. The disadvantage is that it takes a bit of self-learning to work through.  Links: Learn it: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/netframework/bb499684 Use it: https://azurestocktrader.cloudapp.net/

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• The Case of the Extra Page: Rendering Reporting Services as PDF

  - by smisner

  I had to troubleshoot a problem with a mysterious extra page appearing in a PDF this week. My first thought was that it was likely to caused by one of the most common problems that people encounter when developing reports that eventually get rendered as PDF is getting blank pages inserted into the PDF document. The cause of the blank pages is usually related to sizing. You can learn more at Understanding Pagination in Reporting Services in Books Online. When designing a report, you have to be really careful with the layout of items in the body. As you move items around, the body will expand to accommodate the space you're using and you might eventually tighten everything back up again, but the body doesn't automatically collapse. One of my favorite things to do in Reporting Services 2005 - which I dubbed the "vacu-pack" method - was to just erase the size property of the Body and let it auto-calculate the new size, squeezing out all the extra space. Alas, that method no longer works beginning with Reporting Services 2008. Even when you make sure the body size is as small as possible (with no unnecessary extra space along the top, bottom, left, or right side of the body), it's important to calculate the body size plus header plus footer plus the margins and ensure that the calculated height and width do not exceed the report's height and width (shown as the page in the illustration above). This won't matter if users always render reports online, but they'll get extra pages in a PDF document if the report's height and width are smaller than the calculate space. Beginning the Investigation In the situation that I was troubleshooting, I checked the properties: Item Property Value Body Height 6.25in   Width 10.5in Page Header Height 1in Page Footer Height 0.25in Report Left Margin 0.1in   Right Margin 0.1in   Top Margin 0.05in   Bottom Margin 0.05in   Page Size - Height 8.5in   Page Size - Width 11in So I calculated the total width using Body Width + Left Margin + Right Margin and came up with a value of 10.7 inches. And then I calculated the total height using Body Height + Page Header Height + Page Footer Height + Top Margin + Bottom Margin and got 7.6 inches. Well, page sizing couldn't be the reason for the extra page in my report because 10.7 inches is smaller than the report's width of 11 inches and 7.6 inches is smaller than the report's height of 8.5 inches. I had to look elsewhere to find the culprit. Conducting the Third Degree My next thought was to focus on the rendering size of the items in the report. I've adapted my problem to use the Adventure Works database. At the top of the report are two charts, and then below each chart is a rectangle that contains a table. In the real-life scenario, there were some graphics present as a background for the tables which fit within the rectangles that were about 3 inches high so the visual space of the rectangles matched the visual space of the charts - also about 3 inches high. But there was also a huge amount of white space at the bottom of the page, and as I mentioned at the beginning of this post, a second page which was blank except for the footer that appeared at the bottom. Placing a textbox beneath the rectangles to see if they would appear on the first page resulted the textbox's appearance on the second page. For some reason, the rectangles wanted a buffer zone beneath them. What's going on? Taking the Suspect into Custody My next step was to see what was really going on with the rectangle. The graphic appeared to be correctly sized, but the behavior in the report indicated the rectangle was growing. So I added a border to the rectangle to see what it was doing. When I added borders, I could see that the size of each rectangle was growing to accommodate the table it contains. The rectangle on the right is slightly larger than the one on the left because the table on the right contains an extra row. The rectangle is trying to preserve the whitespace that appears in the layout, as shown below. Closing the Case Now that I knew what the problem was, what could I do about it? Because of the graphic in the rectangle (not shown), I couldn't eliminate the use of the rectangles and just show the tables. But fortunately, there is a report property that comes to the rescue: ConsumeContainerWhitespace (accessible only in the Properties window). I set the value of this property to True. Problem solved. Now the rectangles remain fixed at the configured size and don't grow vertically to preserve the whitespace. Case closed.

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• Data, Log and Temp file placement

  - by jchang

  First especially for all the people with SAN storage, drive letters are of no consequence. What matters is the actual physical disk layout. Forget capacity, pay attention to the number of spindles supporting each RAID group. If the RAID group is shared with other application, make sure there the SLA guarantees read and write latency. One very large company conducted a stress test in the QA environment. The SAN admin carved the LUNs from the same pool of disks as production, but thought he had a really...(read more)

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• Community Events and Workshops in November 2012 #ssas #tabular #powerpivot

  - by Marco Russo (SQLBI)

  I and Alberto have a busy agenda until the end of the month, but if you are based in Northern Europe there are many chance to meet one of us in the next couple of weeks! Belgium, 20 November 2012 – SQL Server Days 2012 with Marco Russo I will present two sessions in this conference, “Data Modeling for Tabular” and “Querying and Optimizing DAX” Copenhagen, 21-22 November, 2012 – SSAS Tabular Workshop with Alberto Ferrari Alberto will be the speaker for 2 days – you can still register if you want a full immersion! Copenhagen, 21 November 2012 – Free Community Event with Alberto Ferrari (hosted in Microsoft Hellerup) In the evening Alberto will present “Excel 2013 PowerPivot in Action” Munich, 27-28 November 2012 - SSAS Tabular Workshop with Alberto Ferrari The SSAS workshop will run also in Germany, this time in Munich. Also here there is still some seat still available. Munich, 27 November 2012 - Free Community Event with Alberto Ferrari (hosted in Microsoft ) In the evening Alberto will present “Excel 2013 PowerPivot in Action” Moscow, 27-28 November 2012 – TechEd Russia 2012 with Marco Russo I will speak during the keynote on November 27 and I will present two session the day after, “Developing an Analysis Services Tabular Project BI Semantic Model” and “Excel 2013 PowerPivot in Action” Stockholm, 29-30 November 2012 - SSAS Tabular Workshop with Marco Russo I will run this workshop in Stockholm – if you want to register here, hurry up! Few seats still available! Stockholm, 29 November 2012 - Free Community Event with Marco Russo In the evening I will present “Excel 2013 PowerPivot in Action” If you want to attend a SSAS Tabular Workshop online, you can also register to the Online edition of December 5-6, 2012, which is still in early bird and is scheduled with a friendly time zone for America’s countries (which could be good for Europe too, in case you don’t mind attending a workshop until midnight!).

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• Cumulative Updates available for SQL Server 2008 SP2 & SP3

  - by AaronBertrand

  Today Microsoft has released two new cumulative updates for SQL Server 2008. Cumulative Update #10 for SQL Server 2008 Service Pack 2 Knowledge Base Article: KB #2696625 At the time of writing, there is one fix listed The build number is 10.00.4332 Cumulative Update #5 for SQL Server 2008 Service Pack 3 Knowledge Base Article: KB #2696626 At the time of writing, there are four fixes listed The build number is 10.00.5785 As usual, I'll post my standard disclaimer here: these updates are NOT for SQL...(read more)

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• Prologue…

  - by Chris Stewart

  Hi all,                 This is the beginning of my blog. I have been a software developer for going on 11 years using the Microsoft toolset (primarily VB 5, VB 6, VB.net and SQL Server 6, 7, 2000, 2005, 2008). My coding interests are C#, ASP.net, SQL and XNA. Here I will post my musings, things of interest, techie babble and sometimes random gibberish. My hope for this blog is to document my learning experiences with C#, help, encourage and in some way be useful to those who come after me. Thanks for reading!

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• Learning PostgreSql: Reading and Writing From .Net

  - by Alexander Kuznetsov

  In this post we shall do some setup tasks, save a few rows of data from a .Net client to PostgreSql, and read it back. Setting up We have set up a virtual machine running Red Hat Linux, installed PostgreSql 9.3 on it, and made sure there is enough disk space. 9.3 is a very recent version, released this September. Because PostgreSqlis not known for releasing before the full testing is complete, we did not have to wait for the next service pack or something like that. Smoke test On the client machine...(read more)

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• SQL SERVER – Weekly Series – Memory Lane – #039

  - 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 FQL – Facebook Query Language Facebook list following advantages of FQL: Condensed XML reduces bandwidth and parsing costs. More complex requests can reduce the number of requests necessary. Provides a single consistent, unified interface for all of your data. It’s fun! UDF – Get the Day of the Week Function The day of the week can be retrieved in SQL Server by using the DatePart function. The value returned by the function is between 1 (Sunday) and 7 (Saturday). To convert this to a string representing the day of the week, use a CASE statement. UDF – Function to Get Previous And Next Work Day – Exclude Saturday and Sunday While reading ColdFusion blog of Ben Nadel Getting the Previous Day In ColdFusion, Excluding Saturday And Sunday, I realize that I use similar function on my SQL Server Database. This function excludes the Weekends (Saturday and Sunday), and it gets previous as well as next work day. Complete Series of SQL Server Interview Questions and Answers Data Warehousing Interview Questions and Answers – Introduction Data Warehousing Interview Questions and Answers – Part 1 Data Warehousing Interview Questions and Answers – Part 2 Data Warehousing Interview Questions and Answers – Part 3 Data Warehousing Interview Questions and Answers Complete List Download 2008 Introduction to Log Viewer In SQL Server all the windows event logs can be seen along with SQL Server logs. Interface for all the logs is same and can be launched from the same place. This log can be exported and filtered as well. DBCC SHRINKFILE Takes Long Time to Run If you are DBA who are involved with Database Maintenance and file group maintenance, you must have experience that many times DBCC SHRINKFILE operations takes a long time but any other operations with Database are relatively quicker. mssqlsystemresource – Resource Database The purpose of resource database is to facilitates upgrading to the new version of SQL Server without any hassle. In previous versions whenever version of SQL Server was upgraded all the previous version system objects needs to be dropped and new version system objects to be created. 2009 Puzzle – Write Script to Generate Primary Key and Foreign Key In SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS), there is no option to script all the keys. If one is required to script keys they will have to manually script each key one at a time. If database has many tables, generating one key at a time can be a very intricate task. I want to throw a question to all of you if any of you have scripts for the same purpose. Maximizing View of SQL Server Management Studio – Full Screen – New Screen I had explained the following two different methods: 1) Open Results in Separate Tab - This is a very interesting method as result pan shows up in a different tab instead of the splitting screen horizontally. 2) Open SSMS in Full Screen - This works always and to its best. Not many people are aware of this method; hence, very few people use it to enhance performance. 2010 Find Queries using Parallelism from Cached Plan T-SQL script gets all the queries and their execution plan where parallelism operations are kicked up. Pay attention there is TOP 10 is used, if you have lots of transactional operations, I suggest that you change TOP 10 to TOP 50 This is the list of the all the articles in the series of computed columns. SQL SERVER – Computed Column – PERSISTED and Storage This article talks about how computed columns are created and why they take more storage space than before. SQL SERVER – Computed Column – PERSISTED and Performance This article talks about how PERSISTED columns give better performance than non-persisted columns. SQL SERVER – Computed Column – PERSISTED and Performance – Part 2 This article talks about how non-persisted columns give better performance than PERSISTED columns. SQL SERVER – Computed Column and Performance – Part 3 This article talks about how Index improves the performance of Computed Columns. SQL SERVER – Computed Column – PERSISTED and Storage – Part 2 This article talks about how creating index on computed column does not grow the row length of table. SQL SERVER – Computed Columns – Index and Performance This article summarized all the articles related to computed columns. 2011 SQL SERVER – Interview Questions and Answers – Frequently Asked Questions – Data Warehousing Concepts – Day 21 of 31 What is Data Warehousing? What is Business Intelligence (BI)? What is a Dimension Table? What is Dimensional Modeling? What is a Fact Table? What are the Fundamental Stages of Data Warehousing? What are the Different Methods of Loading Dimension tables? Describes the Foreign Key Columns in Fact Table and Dimension Table? What is Data Mining? What is the Difference between a View and a Materialized View? SQL SERVER – Interview Questions and Answers – Frequently Asked Questions – Data Warehousing Concepts – Day 22 of 31 What is OLTP? What is OLAP? What is the Difference between OLTP and OLAP? What is ODS? What is ER Diagram? SQL SERVER – Interview Questions and Answers – Frequently Asked Questions – Data Warehousing Concepts – Day 23 of 31 What is ETL? What is VLDB? Is OLTP Database is Design Optimal for Data Warehouse? If denormalizing improves Data Warehouse Processes, then why is the Fact Table is in the Normal Form? What are Lookup Tables? What are Aggregate Tables? What is Real-Time Data-Warehousing? What are Conformed Dimensions? What is a Conformed Fact? How do you Load the Time Dimension? What is a Level of Granularity of a Fact Table? What are Non-Additive Facts? What is a Factless Facts Table? What are Slowly Changing Dimensions (SCD)? SQL SERVER – Interview Questions and Answers – Frequently Asked Questions – Data Warehousing Concepts – Day 24 of 31 What is Hybrid Slowly Changing Dimension? What is BUS Schema? What is a Star Schema? What Snow Flake Schema? Differences between the Star and Snowflake Schema? What is Difference between ER Modeling and Dimensional Modeling? What is Degenerate Dimension Table? Why is Data Modeling Important? What is a Surrogate Key? What is Junk Dimension? What is a Data Mart? What is the Difference between OLAP and Data Warehouse? What is a Cube and Linked Cube with Reference to Data Warehouse? What is Snapshot with Reference to Data Warehouse? What is Active Data Warehousing? What is the Difference between Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence? What is MDS? Explain the Paradigm of Bill Inmon and Ralph Kimball. SQL SERVER – Azure Interview Questions and Answers – Guest Post by Paras Doshi – Day 25 of 31 Paras Doshi has submitted 21 interesting question and answers for SQL Azure. 1.What is SQL Azure? 2.What is cloud computing? 3.How is SQL Azure different than SQL server? 4.How many replicas are maintained for each SQL Azure database? 5.How can we migrate from SQL server to SQL Azure? 6.Which tools are available to manage SQL Azure databases and servers? 7.Tell me something about security and SQL Azure. 8.What is SQL Azure Firewall? 9.What is the difference between web edition and business edition? 10.How do we synchronize On Premise SQL server with SQL Azure? 11.How do we Backup SQL Azure Data? 12.What is the current pricing model of SQL Azure? 13.What is the current limitation of the size of SQL Azure DB? 14.How do you handle datasets larger than 50 GB? 15.What happens when the SQL Azure database reaches Max Size? 16.How many databases can we create in a single server? 17.How many servers can we create in a single subscription? 18.How do you improve the performance of a SQL Azure Database? 19.What is code near application topology? 20.What were the latest updates to SQL Azure service? 21.When does a workload on SQL Azure get throttled? SQL SERVER – Interview Questions and Answers – Guest Post by Malathi Mahadevan – Day 26 of 31 Malachi had asked a simple question which has several answers. Each answer makes you think and ponder about the reality of the IT world. Look at the simple question – ‘What is the toughest challenge you have faced in your present job and how did you handle it’? and its various answers. Each answer has its own story. SQL SERVER – Interview Questions and Answers – Guest Post by Rick Morelan – Day 27 of 31 Rick Morelan of Joes2Pros has written an excellent blog post on the subject how to find top N values. Most people are fully aware of how the TOP keyword works with a SELECT statement. After years preparing so many students to pass the SQL Certification I noticed they were pretty well prepared for job interviews too. Yes, they would do well in the interview but not great. There seemed to be a few questions that would come up repeatedly for almost everyone. Rick addresses similar questions in his lucid writing skills. 2012 Observation of Top with Index and Order of Resultset SQL Server has lots of things to learn and share. It is amazing to see how people evaluate and understand different techniques and styles differently when implementing. The real reason may be absolutely different but we may blame something totally different for the incorrect results. Read the blog post to learn more. How do I Record Video and Webcast How to Convert Hex to Decimal or INT Earlier I asked regarding a question about how to convert Hex to Decimal. I promised that I will post an answer with Due Credit to the author but never got around to post a blog post around it. Read the original post over here SQL SERVER – Question – How to Convert Hex to Decimal. Query to Get Unique Distinct Data Based on Condition – Eliminate Duplicate Data from Resultset The natural reaction will be to suggest DISTINCT or GROUP BY. However, not all the questions can be solved by DISTINCT or GROUP BY. Let us see the following example, where a user wanted only latest records to be displayed. Let us see the example to understand further. 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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• Linux Mint is Brilliant

  - by Simon Moon

  Most of my blog posts sound way too whiny. I'm not that guy. (Am I?) I've been using SUSE-flavored Linux for personal projects since 2002 (SUSE Linux 8.1). This past weekend, I made the heart-wrenching decision to abandon openSUSE (version 12.1) in favor of Linux Mint (version Maya). OpenSUSE had just become too burdensome. Packages that installed easily on RedHat or Debian always had issues running on top of OpenSUSE. And I never could get the Heroku Toolbelt installed in any kind of usable state.And so, ...I'm beginning again with this enticing young thing -- Mint with the Cinnamon window environment. Delicious. And while I'll always have fond memories of my years with openSUSE, I've got to admit that Mint makes running Linux feel good again. http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=2031

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• SQLOS and Cloud Infrastructure sessions at PASS Summit 2012

  - by SQLOS Team

  The SQL Pass Summit 2012, the largest yet, is in full swing. Here's a summary of the sessions this week on cloud infrastructure and SQLOS topics. Some of these were today, and you can catch the recordings. One more session takes place on Friday covering SQL Server solution patterns in Windows Azure VMs... Also, catch Thursday's keynote with Quentin Clark which will feature a cool IaaS demo!   SQL Server in Windows Azure VM Sessions CLD-309-A SQLCAT: Best Practices and Lessons Learned on SQL Server in an Azure VM Steve Howard, Arvind Ranasaria - Wednesday 11/6 10:15 This session looked at some best practices to optimize Networking, Memory, Disk IO and high availability based on lessons learned during SQLCat work with customer deployments. Well worth catching the recording.   SQL Server in Azure VM patterns: Hybrid Disaster Recovery, data movement and BI Guy Bowerman, Peter Saddow, Michael Washam, Ross LoForte - Friday 11/9 9:45 Rm 613 [Note: In the guides this has an outdated title.] This session has a focus on SQL Server Azure VM solutions. Starting with the basics and then going deeper into: - New features in the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit 8.0 to help plan and size SQL VM migrations.- A Look at a Windows Azure VM SQL Server app making use of load balancing and SQL Server high availability features.- A BI case study running SQL BI components in Azure VMs and making use of Windows 8 tiles.- A training class in a VM case study.   SQLOS Sessions DBA-500-HD Inside SQLOS 2012 (half-day session) Bob Ward - Wednesday 11/6 1:30pm Bob Ward from CSS applies his wealth of experience to look at the internals of SQLOS and what's changed in the various SQL 2012 components, including memory, resource governor, scheduler.   DBA-403-M: SQLCAT: Memory Manager Changes in SQL Server 2012 Gus Apostol, Jerome Halmans - 1:30pm Covers the redesigned SQLOS memory manager in SQL Server 2012 including the new page allocator for any size pages (and all that implies), DMVs, demo's. Not sure why this was placed at the same time as the SQLOS half-day session, but since it's recorded it's available for catch-up.   - Guy   Originally posted at http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sqlosteam/

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• Windows Azure Virtual Machine Readiness and Capacity Assessment for SQL Server

  - by SQLOS Team

  Windows Azure Virtual Machine Readiness and Capacity Assessment for Windows Server Machine Running SQL Server With the release of MAP Toolkit 8.0 Beta, we have added a new scenario to assess your Windows Azure Virtual Machine Readiness. The MAP 8.0 Beta performs a comprehensive assessment of Windows Servers running SQL Server to determine you level of readiness to migrate an on-premise physical or virtual machine to Windows Azure Virtual Machines. The MAP Toolkit then offers suggested changes to prepare the machines for migration, such as upgrading the operating system or SQL Server. MAP Toolkit 8.0 Beta is available for download here Your participation and feedback is very important to make the MAP Toolkit work better for you. We encourage you to participate in the beta program and provide your feedback at [email protected] or through one of our surveys. Now, let’s walk through the MAP Toolkit task for completing the Windows Azure Virtual Machine assessment and capacity planning. The tasks include the following: Perform an inventory View the Windows Azure VM Readiness results and report Collect performance data for determine VM sizing View the Windows Azure Capacity results and report Perform an inventory: 1. To perform an inventory against a single machine or across a complete environment, choose Perform an Inventory to launch the Inventory and Assessment Wizard as shown below: 2. After the Inventory and Assessment Wizard launches, select either the Windows computers or SQL Server scenario to inventory Windows machines. HINT: If you don’t care about completely inventorying a machine, just select the SQL Server scenario. Click Next to Continue. 3. On the Discovery Methods page, select how you want to discover computers and then click Next to continue. Description of Discovery Methods: Use Active Directory Domain Services -- This method allows you to query a domain controller via the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) and select computers in all or specific domains, containers, or OUs. Use this method if all computers and devices are in AD DS. Windows networking protocols --  This method uses the WIN32 LAN Manager application programming interfaces to query the Computer Browser service for computers in workgroups and Windows NT 4.0–based domains. If the computers on the network are not joined to an Active Directory domain, use only the Windows networking protocols option to find computers. System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) -- This method enables you to inventory computers managed by System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM). You need to provide credentials to the System Center Configuration Manager server in order to inventory the managed computers. When you select this option, the MAP Toolkit will query SCCM for a list of computers and then MAP will connect to these computers. Scan an IP address range -- This method allows you to specify the starting address and ending address of an IP address range. The wizard will then scan all IP addresses in the range and inventory only those computers. Note: This option can perform poorly, if many IP addresses aren’t being used within the range. Manually enter computer names and credentials -- Use this method if you want to inventory a small number of specific computers. Import computer names from a files -- Using this method, you can create a text file with a list of computer names that will be inventoried. 4. On the All Computers Credentials page, enter the accounts that have administrator rights to connect to the discovered machines. This does not need to a domain account, but needs to be a local administrator. I have entered my domain account that is an administrator on my local machine. Click Next after one or more accounts have been added. NOTE: The MAP Toolkit primarily uses Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) to collect hardware, device, and software information from the remote computers. In order for the MAP Toolkit to successfully connect and inventory computers in your environment, you have to configure your machines to inventory through WMI and also allow your firewall to enable remote access through WMI. The MAP Toolkit also requires remote registry access for certain assessments. In addition to enabling WMI, you need accounts with administrative privileges to access desktops and servers in your environment. 5. On the Credentials Order page, select the order in which want the MAP Toolkit to connect to the machine and SQL Server. Generally just accept the defaults and click Next. 6. On the Enter Computers Manually page, click Create to pull up at dialog to enter one or more computer names. 7. On the Summary page confirm your settings and then click Finish. After clicking Finish the inventory process will start, as shown below: Windows Azure Readiness results and report After the inventory progress has completed, you can review the results under the Database scenario. On the tile, you will see the number of Windows Server machine with SQL Server that were analyzed, the number of machines that are ready to move without changes and the number of machines that require further changes. If you click this Azure VM Readiness tile, you will see additional details and can generate the Windows Azure VM Readiness Report. After the report is generated, select View | Saved Reports and Proposals to view the location of the report. Open up WindowsAzureVMReadiness* report in Excel. On the Windows tab, you can see the results of the assessment. This report has a column for the Operating System and SQL Server assessment and provides a recommendation on how to resolve, if there a component is not supported. Collect Performance Data Launch the Performance Wizard to collect performance information for the Windows Server machines that you would like the MAP Toolkit to suggest a Windows Azure VM size for. Windows Azure Capacity results and report After the performance metrics are collected, the Azure VM Capacity title will display the number of Virtual Machine sizes that are suggested for the Windows Server and Linux machines that were analyzed. You can then click on the Azure VM Capacity tile to see the capacity details and generate the Windows Azure VM Capacity Report. Within this report, you can view the performance data that was collected and the Virtual Machine sizes.   MAP Toolkit 8.0 Beta is available for download here Your participation and feedback is very important to make the MAP Toolkit work better for you. We encourage you to participate in the beta program and provide your feedback at [email protected] or through one of our surveys. Useful References: Windows Azure Homepage How to guides for Windows Azure Virtual Machines Provisioning a SQL Server Virtual Machine on Windows Azure Windows Azure Pricing     Peter Saddow Senior Program Manager – MAP Toolkit Team

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• Query Tuning Mastery at PASS Summit 2012: The Video

  - by Adam Machanic

  An especially clever community member was kind enough to reverse-engineer the video stream for me, and came up with a direct link to the PASS TV video stream for my Query Tuning Mastery: The Art and Science of Manhandling Parallelism talk, delivered at the PASS Summit last Thursday. I'm not sure how long this link will work , but I'd like to share it for my readers who were unable to see it in person or live on the stream. Start here. Skip past the keynote, to the 149 minute mark. Enjoy!...(read more)

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• Can you over-normalize?

  - by drsql

  Now, don’t get too excited and grab your pitchforks and torches. Clearly, it is extremely possible to overdo something in the design, but very often normalization takes the rap as being the culprit. In my “Database Design Fundamentals” presentation, one of my favorite things to do is ask “What is the most important normal form?” 9 out of 10 times, someone answers “Third”. When I ask what they have against fourth, the usually say that it makes the database work too slow. But when they find out that...(read more)

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• Windows Azure Learning Plan - Architecture

  - by BuckWoody

  This is one in a series of posts on a Windows Azure Learning Plan. You can find the main post here. This one deals with what an Architect needs to know about Windows Azure.   General Architectural Guidance Overview and general  information about Azure - what it is, how it works, and where you can learn more. Cloud Computing, A Crash Course for Architects (Video) http://www.msteched.com/2010/Europe/ARC202 Patterns and Practices for Cloud Development http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff898430.aspx Design Patterns, Anti-Patterns and Windows Azure http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ignitionshowcase/archive/2010/11/27/design-patterns-anti-patterns-and-windows-azure.aspx Application Patterns for the Cloud http://blogs.msdn.com/b/kashif/archive/2010/08/07/application-patterns-for-the-cloud.aspx Architecting Applications for High Scalability (Video) http://www.msteched.com/2010/Europe/ARC309 David Aiken on Azure Architecture Patterns (Video) http://blogs.msdn.com/b/architectsrule/archive/2010/09/09/arcast-tv-david-aiken-on-azure-architecture-patterns.aspx Cloud Application Architecture Patterns (Video) http://blogs.msdn.com/b/bobfamiliar/archive/2010/10/19/cloud-application-architecture-patterns-by-david-platt.aspx 10 Things Every Architect Needs to Know about Windows Azure http://geekswithblogs.net/iupdateable/archive/2010/10/20/slides-and-links-for-windows-azure-platform-session-at-software.aspx Key Differences Between Public and Private Clouds http://blogs.msdn.com/b/kadriu/archive/2010/10/24/key-differences-between-public-and-private-clouds.aspx Microsoft Application Platform at a Glance http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jmeier/archive/2010/10/30/microsoft-application-platform-at-a-glance.aspx Windows Azure is not just about Roles http://vikassahni.wordpress.com/2010/11/17/windows-azure-is-not-just-about-roles/ Example Application for Windows Azure http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff966482.aspx Implementation Guidance Practical applications for the architect to consider 5 Enterprise steps for adopting a Platform as a Service http://blogs.msdn.com/b/davidmcg/archive/2010/12/02/5-enterprise-steps-for-adopting-a-platform-as-a-service.aspx?wa=wsignin1.0 Performance-Based Scaling in Windows Azure http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/gg232759.aspx Windows Azure Guidance for the Development Process http://blogs.msdn.com/b/eugeniop/archive/2010/04/01/windows-azure-guidance-development-process.aspx Microsoft Developer Guidance Maps http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jmeier/archive/2010/10/04/developer-guidance-ia-at-a-glance.aspx How to Build a Hybrid On-Premise/In Cloud Application http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ignitionshowcase/archive/2010/11/09/how-to-build-a-hybrid-on-premise-in-cloud-application.aspx A Common Scenario of Multi-instances in Windows Azure http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windows-azure-support/archive/2010/11/03/a-common-scenario-of-multi_2d00_instances-in-windows-azure-.aspx Slides and Links for Windows Azure Platform Best Practices http://geekswithblogs.net/iupdateable/archive/2010/09/29/slides-and-links-for-windows-azure-platform-best-practices-for.aspx AppFabric Architecture and Deployment Topologies guide http://blogs.msdn.com/b/appfabriccat/archive/2010/09/10/appfabric-architecture-and-deployment-topologies-guide-now-available-via-microsoft-download-center.aspx Windows Azure Platform Appliance http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/appliance/ Integrating Cloud Technologies into Your Organization Interoperability with Open Source and other applications; business and cost decisions Interoperability Labs at Microsoft http://www.interoperabilitybridges.com/ Windows Azure Service Level Agreements http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/sla/

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• Joins in single-table queries

  - by Rob Farley

  Tables are only metadata. They don’t store data. I’ve written something about this before, but I want to take a viewpoint of this idea around the topic of joins, especially since it’s the topic for T-SQL Tuesday this month. Hosted this time by Sebastian Meine (@sqlity), who has a whole series on joins this month. Good for him – it’s a great topic. In that last post I discussed the fact that we write queries against tables, but that the engine turns it into a plan against indexes. My point wasn’t simply that a table is actually just a Clustered Index (or heap, which I consider just a special type of index), but that data access always happens against indexes – never tables – and we should be thinking about the indexes (specifically the non-clustered ones) when we write our queries. I described the scenario of looking up phone numbers, and how it never really occurs to us that there is a master list of phone numbers, because we think in terms of the useful non-clustered indexes that the phone companies provide us, but anyway – that’s not the point of this post. So a table is metadata. It stores information about the names of columns and their data types. Nullability, default values, constraints, triggers – these are all things that define the table, but the data isn’t stored in the table. The data that a table describes is stored in a heap or clustered index, but it goes further than this. All the useful data is going to live in non-clustered indexes. Remember this. It’s important. Stop thinking about tables, and start thinking about indexes. So let’s think about tables as indexes. This applies even in a world created by someone else, who doesn’t have the best indexes in mind for you. I’m sure you don’t need me to explain Covering Index bit – the fact that if you don’t have sufficient columns “included” in your index, your query plan will either have to do a Lookup, or else it’ll give up using your index and use one that does have everything it needs (even if that means scanning it). If you haven’t seen that before, drop me a line and I’ll run through it with you. Or go and read a post I did a long while ago about the maths involved in that decision. So – what I’m going to tell you is that a Lookup is a join. When I run SELECT CustomerID FROM Sales.SalesOrderHeader WHERE SalesPersonID = 285; against the AdventureWorks2012 get the following plan: I’m sure you can see the join. Don’t look in the query, it’s not there. But you should be able to see the join in the plan. It’s an Inner Join, implemented by a Nested Loop. It’s pulling data in from the Index Seek, and joining that to the results of a Key Lookup. It clearly is – the QO wouldn’t call it that if it wasn’t really one. It behaves exactly like any other Nested Loop (Inner Join) operator, pulling rows from one side and putting a request in from the other. You wouldn’t have a problem accepting it as a join if the query were slightly different, such as SELECT sod.OrderQty FROM Sales.SalesOrderHeader AS soh JOIN Sales.SalesOrderDetail as sod on sod.SalesOrderID = soh.SalesOrderID WHERE soh.SalesPersonID = 285; Amazingly similar, of course. This one is an explicit join, the first example was just as much a join, even thought you didn’t actually ask for one. You need to consider this when you’re thinking about your queries. But it gets more interesting. Consider this query: SELECT SalesOrderID FROM Sales.SalesOrderHeader WHERE SalesPersonID = 276 AND CustomerID = 29522; It doesn’t look like there’s a join here either, but look at the plan. That’s not some Lookup in action – that’s a proper Merge Join. The Query Optimizer has worked out that it can get the data it needs by looking in two separate indexes and then doing a Merge Join on the data that it gets. Both indexes used are ordered by the column that’s indexed (one on SalesPersonID, one on CustomerID), and then by the CIX key SalesOrderID. Just like when you seek in the phone book to Farley, the Farleys you have are ordered by FirstName, these seek operations return the data ordered by the next field. This order is SalesOrderID, even though you didn’t explicitly put that column in the index definition. The result is two datasets that are ordered by SalesOrderID, making them very mergeable. Another example is the simple query SELECT CustomerID FROM Sales.SalesOrderHeader WHERE SalesPersonID = 276; This one prefers a Hash Match to a standard lookup even! This isn’t just ordinary index intersection, this is something else again! Just like before, we could imagine it better with two whole tables, but we shouldn’t try to distinguish between joining two tables and joining two indexes. The Query Optimizer can see (using basic maths) that it’s worth doing these particular operations using these two less-than-ideal indexes (because of course, the best indexese would be on both columns – a composite such as (SalesPersonID, CustomerID – and it would have the SalesOrderID column as part of it as the CIX key still). You need to think like this too. Not in terms of excusing single-column indexes like the ones in AdventureWorks2012, but in terms of having a picture about how you’d like your queries to run. If you start to think about what data you need, where it’s coming from, and how it’s going to be used, then you will almost certainly write better queries. …and yes, this would include when you’re dealing with regular joins across multiples, not just against joins within single table queries.

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• Book Review: Poke the Box

  - by andyleonard

  Introduction Seth Godin's latest book is called Poke the Box . I'm still reading it, but I have these thoughts to share: Initiate The theme of the book is to start something. Initiate. Engage. Don't wait to be picked - pick yourself. I so identify with this sentiment. It's a driving tenet behind SQLPeople . Seth points out the (dying) manufacturing mindset in the US has led many to wait for approval, wait to be picked, wait for someone else to initiate - and then dive in. It's safer that way: the...(read more)

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• SQL Server 2008 R2 still requires a trace flag for Lock Pages in Memory

  - by AaronBertrand

  Almost two years ago, I blogged that Lock Pages in Memory was finally available to Standard Edition customers (Enterprise Edition customers had long been deemed smart enough to not abuse this feature). In addition to applying a cumulative update (2005 SP3 CU4 or 2008 SP1 CU2), in order to take advantage of LPIM, you also had to enable trace flag 845. Since the trace flag isn't documented for SQL Server 2008 R2, several of us in the community assumed that it was no longer required (since it was introduced...(read more)

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• Refreshing imported MySQL data with MySQL for Excel

  - by Javier Rivera

  Welcome to another blog post from the MySQL for Excel Team. Today we're going to talk about a new feature included since MySQL for Excel 1.3.0, you can install the latest GA or maintenance version using the MySQL Installer or optionally you can download directly any GA or non-GA version from the MySQL Developer Zone.As some users suggested in our forums we should be maintaining the link between tables and Excel not only when editing data through the Edit MySQL Data option, but also when importing data via Import MySQL Data. Before 1.3.0 this process only provided you with an offline copy of the Table's data into Excel and you had no way to refresh that information from the DB later on. Now, with this new feature we'll show you how easy is to work with the latest available information at all times. This feature is transparent to you (it doesn't require additional steps to work as long as the users had the Create an Excel Table for the imported MySQL table data option enabled. To ensure you have this option checked, click over Advanced Options... after the Import Data dialog is displayed). The current blog post assumes you already know how to import data into excel, you could always take a look at our previous post How To - Guide to Importing Data from a MySQL Database to Excel using MySQL for Excel if you need further reference on that topic. After importing Data from a MySQL Table into Excel, you can refresh the data in 3 ways.1. Simply right click over the range of the imported data, to show the pop-up menu: Click over the Refresh button to obtain the latest copy of the data in the table. 2. Click the Refresh button on the Data ribbon: 3. Click the Refresh All button in the Data ribbon (beware this will refresh all Excel tables in the Workbook): Please take a note of a couple of details here, the first one is about the size of the table. If by the time you refresh the table new columns had been added to it, and you originally have imported all columns, the table will grow to the right. The same applies to rows, if the table has new rows and you did not limit the results , the table will grow to to the bottom of the sheet in Excel. The second detail you should take into account is this operation will overwrite any changes done to the cells after the table was originally imported or previously refreshed: Now with this new feature, imported data remains linked to the data source and is available to be updated at all times. It empowers the user to always be able to work with the latest version of the imported MySQL data. We hope you like this this new feature and give it a try! Remember that your feedback is very important for us, so drop us a message with your comments, suggestions for this or other features and follow us at our social media channels: MySQL on Windows (this) Blog: https://blogs.oracle.com/MySqlOnWindows/ MySQL for Excel forum: http://forums.mysql.com/list.php?172 Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/mysql YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/MySQLChannel Thanks!

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• Security updates for all supported versions of SQL Server

  - by AaronBertrand

  It's patch Tuesday! [ UPDATE June 19 : Please see my follow-up post about this security update.] Today Microsoft released a security bulletin covering several issues that could potentially affect SQL Server; these exploits include remote code execution, denial of service, information disclosure and elevation of privilege. You should test these patches on all machines running SQL Server, including those running only client tools (e.g. Management Studio or Management Studio Express). The updates affect...(read more)

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• An XEvent a Day (31 of 31) – Event Session DDL Events

  - by Jonathan Kehayias

  To close out this month’s series on Extended Events we’ll look at the DDL Events for the Event Session DDL operations, and how those can be used to track changes to Event Sessions and determine all of the possible outputs that could exist from an Extended Event Session.  One of my least favorite quirks about Extended Events is that there is no way to determine the Events and Actions that may exist inside a Target, except to parse all of the the captured data.  Information about the Event...(read more)

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• Toad Just Keeps Getting Better

  - by KKline

  Toad for SQL Server just keeps getting better. And with its win as Best of TechEd in the Database Development category, there's even more to love....(read more)

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