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• SQL SERVER – Integrate Your Data with Skyvia – Cloud ETL Solution

  - by Pinal Dave

  In our days data integration often becomes a key aspect of business success. For business analysts it’s very important to get integrated data from various sources, such as relational databases, cloud CRMs, etc. to make correct and successful decisions. There are various data integration solutions on market, and today I will tell about one of them – Skyvia. Skyvia is a cloud data integration service, which allows integrating data in cloud CRMs and different relational databases. It is a completely online solution and does not require anything except for a browser. Skyvia provides powerful etl tools for data import, export, replication, and synchronization for SQL Server and other databases and cloud CRMs. You can use Skyvia data import tools to load data from various sources to SQL Server (and SQL Azure). Skyvia supports such cloud CRMs as Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics CRM and such databases as MySQL and PostgreSQL. You even can migrate data from SQL Server to SQL Server, or from SQL Server to other databases and cloud CRMs. Additionally Skyvia supports import of CSV files, either uploaded manually or stored on cloud file storage services, such as Dropbox, Box, Google Drive, or FTP servers. When data import is not enough, Skyvia offers bidirectional data synchronization. With this tool, you can synchronize SQL Server data with other databases and cloud CRMs. After performing the first synchronization, Skyvia tracks data changes in the synchronized data storages. In SQL Server databases (and other relational databases) it creates additional tracking tables and triggers. This allows synchronizing only the changed data. Skyvia also maps records by their primary key values to each other, so it does not require different sources to have the same primary key structure. It still can match the corresponding records without having to add any additional columns or changing data structure. The only requirement for synchronization is that primary keys must be autogenerated. With Skyvia it’s not necessary for data to have the same structure in integrated data storages. Skyvia supports powerful mapping mechanisms that allow synchronizing data with completely different structure. It provides support for complex mathematical and string expressions when mapping data, using lookups, etc. You may use data splitting – loading data from a single CSV file or source table to multiple related target tables. Or you may load data from several source CSV files or tables to several related target tables. In each case Skyvia preserves data relations. It builds corresponding relations between the target data automatically. When you often work with cloud CRM data, native CRM data reporting and analysis tools may be not enough for you. And there is a vast set of professional data analysis and reporting tools available for SQL Server. With Skyvia you can quickly copy your cloud CRM data to an SQL Server database and apply corresponding SQL Server tools to the data. In such case you can use Skyvia data replication tools. It allows you to quickly copy cloud CRM data to SQL Server or other databases without customizing any mapping. You need just to specify columns to copy data from. Target database tables will be created automatically. Skyvia offers powerful filtering settings to replicate only the records you need. Skyvia also provides capability to export data from SQL Server (including SQL Azure) and other databases and cloud CRMs to CSV files. These files can be either downloadable manually or loaded to cloud file storages or FTP server. You can use export, for example, to backup SQL Azure data to Dropbox. Any data integration operation can be scheduled for automatic execution. Thus, you can automate your SQL Azure data backup or data synchronization – just configure it once, then schedule it, and benefit from automatic data integration with Skyvia. Currently registration and using Skyvia is completely free, so you can try it yourself and find out whether its data migration and integration tools suits for you. Visit this link to register on Skyvia: https://app.skyvia.com/register Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL Tagged: Cloud Computing

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• Office 365 Powershell - Export user, license type, and company field to csv file

  - by ASGJim

  I need to be able to export user name or email address (doesn't matter which), company (from the company field under the organization tab in a user account of the exchange admin console), and license type (e.g. exchange online e1, exchange online kiosk etc...) I am able to export both values in two statements into two separate files but that doesn't do me much good. I can export the username and license type with the following: Get-MSOLUser | % { $user=$_; $_.Licenses | Select {$user.displayname},AccountSKuid } | Export-CSV "sample.csv" -NoTypeInformation And, I can get the company values with the following: Get-User | select company | Export-CSV sample.csv Someone on another forum suggested this - $index = @{} Get-User | foreach-object {$index.Add($_.userprincipalname,$_.company)} Get-MsolUser | ForEach-Object { write-host $_.userprincipalname, $index[$_.userprincipalname], $_.licenses.AccountSku.Skupartnumber} That seems like it should work but it doesn't display any license info in my powershell, it's just blank. Also I wouldn't know how to export that to a csv file. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

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• Big Data – Beginning Big Data – Day 1 of 21

  - by Pinal Dave

  What is Big Data? I want to learn Big Data. I have no clue where and how to start learning about it. Does Big Data really means data is big? What are the tools and software I need to know to learn Big Data? I often receive questions which I mentioned above. They are good questions and honestly when we search online, it is hard to find authoritative and authentic answers. I have been working with Big Data and NoSQL for a while and I have decided that I will attempt to discuss this subject over here in the blog. In the next 21 days we will understand what is so big about Big Data. Big Data – Big Thing! Big Data is becoming one of the most talked about technology trends nowadays. The real challenge with the big organization is to get maximum out of the data already available and predict what kind of data to collect in the future. How to take the existing data and make it meaningful that it provides us accurate insight in the past data is one of the key discussion points in many of the executive meetings in organizations. With the explosion of the data the challenge has gone to the next level and now a Big Data is becoming the reality in many organizations. Big Data – A Rubik’s Cube I like to compare big data with the Rubik’s cube. I believe they have many similarities. Just like a Rubik’s cube it has many different solutions. Let us visualize a Rubik’s cube solving challenge where there are many experts participating. If you take five Rubik’s cube and mix up the same way and give it to five different expert to solve it. It is quite possible that all the five people will solve the Rubik’s cube in fractions of the seconds but if you pay attention to the same closely, you will notice that even though the final outcome is the same, the route taken to solve the Rubik’s cube is not the same. Every expert will start at a different place and will try to resolve it with different methods. Some will solve one color first and others will solve another color first. Even though they follow the same kind of algorithm to solve the puzzle they will start and end at a different place and their moves will be different at many occasions. It is  nearly impossible to have a exact same route taken by two experts. Big Market and Multiple Solutions Big Data is exactly like a Rubik’s cube – even though the goal of every organization and expert is same to get maximum out of the data, the route and the starting point are different for each organization and expert. As organizations are evaluating and architecting big data solutions they are also learning the ways and opportunities which are related to Big Data. There is not a single solution to big data as well there is not a single vendor which can claim to know all about Big Data. Honestly, Big Data is too big a concept and there are many players – different architectures, different vendors and different technology. What is Next? In this 31 days series we will be exploring many essential topics related to big data. I do not claim that you will be master of the subject after 31 days but I claim that I will be covering following topics in easy to understand language. Architecture of Big Data Big Data a Management and Implementation Different Technologies – Hadoop, Mapreduce Real World Conversations Best Practices Tomorrow In tomorrow’s blog post we will try to answer one of the very essential questions – What is Big Data? Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Big Data, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

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• SQL SERVER – Discard Results After Query Execution – SSMS

  - by pinaldave

  The first thing I do any day is to turn on the computer. Today I woke up and as soon as I turned on the computer I saw a chat message from a friend. He was a bit confused and wanted me to help him. Just as usual I am keeping the relevant conversation in focus and documenting our conversation as chat. Let us call him Ajit. Ajit: Pinal, every time I run a query there is no result displayed in the SSMS but when I run the query in my application it works and returns an appropriate result. Pinal:  Have you tried with different parameters? Ajit: Same thing. However, it works from another computer when I connect to the same server with the same query parameters? Pinal: What? That is new and I believe it is something to do with SSMS and not with the server. Send me screenshot please. Ajit: I believe so, let me send you a screenshot, Pinal: (looking at the screenshot) Oh man, there is no result-tab at all. Ajit: That is what the problem is. It does not have the tab which displays the result. This works just fine from another computer. Pinal: Have you referred Nakul’s blog post – SSMS – Query result options – Discard result after query executes, that talks about setting which can discard the query results after execution. (After a while) Ajit: I think it seems like on the computer where I am running the query my SSMS seems to have the option enabled related to discarding results. I fixed it by following Nakul’s blog post. Pinal: Great! Quite often I get the question what is the importance of the feature. Let us first see how to turn on or turn off this feature in SQL Server Management Studio 2012. In SSMS 2012 go to Tools >> Options >> Query Results > SQL Server >> Results to Grid >> Discard Results After Query Execution. When enabled this option will discard results after the execution. The advantage of disabling the option is that it will improve the performance by using less memory. However the real question is why would someone enable or disable the option. What are the cases when someone wants to run the query but do not care about the result? Matter of the fact, it does not make sense at all to run query and not care about the result. The matter of the fact, I can see quite a few reasons for using this option. I often enable this option when I am doing performance tuning exercise. During performance tuning exercise when I am working with execution plans and do not need results to verify every time or when I am tuning Indexes and its effect on execution plan I do not need the results. In this kind of situations I do keep this option on and discard the results. It always helps me big time as in most of the performance tuning exercise I am dealing with huge amount of the data and dealing with this data can be expensive. Nakul’s has done the experiment here already but I am going to repeat the same again using AdventureWorks Database. Run following T-SQL Script with and without enabling the option to discard the results. USE AdventureWorks2012 GO SELECT * FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail GO 10 After enabling Discard Results After Query Execution After disabling Discard Results After Query Execution Well, this is indeed a good option when someone is debugging the execution plan or does not want the result to be displayed. Please note that this option does not reduce IO or CPU usage for SQL Server. It just discards the results after execution and a good help for debugging on the development server. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Server Management Studio, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• SQL SERVER – Planned and Unplanned Availablity Group Failovers – Notes from the Field #031

  - by Pinal Dave

  [Note from Pinal]: This is a new episode of Notes from the Fields series. AlwaysOn is a very complex subject and not everyone knows many things about this. The matter of the fact is there is very little information available on this subject online and not everyone knows everything about this. This is why when a very common question related to AlwaysOn comes, people get confused. In this episode of the Notes from the Field series database expert John Sterrett (Group Principal at Linchpin People) explains a very common issue DBAs and Developer faces in their career and is related to Planned and Unplanned Availablity Group Failovers. Linchpin People are database coaches and wellness experts for a data driven world. Read the experience of John in his own words. Whenever a disaster occurs it will be a stressful scenario regardless of how small or big the disaster is. This gets multiplied when it is your first time working with newer technology or the first time you are going through a disaster without a proper run book. Today, were going to help you establish a run book for creating a planned failover with availability groups. To make today’s session simple were going to have two instances of SQL Server 2012 included in an availability group and walk through the steps of doing an unplanned failover.  We will focus on using the user interface and T-SQL to complete the failovers. We are going to use a two replica Availability Group where each replica is in another location. Therefore, we will be covering Asynchronous (non automatic failover) the following is a breakdown of our availability group utilized today. Seeing the following screen might be scary the first time you come across an unplanned failover.  It looks like our test database used in this Availability Group is not functional and it currently isn’t. The database status is not synchronizing which makes sense because the primary replica went down so it couldn’t synchronize. With that said, we can still failover and make it functional while we troubleshoot why we lost our primary replica. To start we are going to right click on the availability group that needs to be restarted and select failover. This will bring up the following wizard, which will walk you through several steps needed to complete the failover using the graphical user interface provided with SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS). You are going to see warning messages simply because we are in Asynchronous commit mode and can not guarantee ‘no data loss’ when we do failover. Just incase you missed it; you get another screen warning you about potential data loss because we are in Asynchronous mode. Next we get to connect to the specific replica we want to become the primary replica after the failover occurs. In our case, we only have two replicas so this is trivial. In order to failover, it’s required to connect to the replica that will become primary.  The following screen shows that the connection has been made successfully. Next, you will see the final summary screen. Once again, this reminds you that the failover action will cause data loss as were using Asynchronous commit mode due to the distance between instances used for disaster recovery. Finally, once the failover is completed you will see the following screen. If you followed along this long you might be wondering what T-SQL scripts are generated for clicking through all the sections of the wizard. If you have used Database Mirroring in the past you might be surprised.  It’s not too different, which makes sense because the data is being replicated via SQL Server endpoints just like the good old database mirroring. Now were going to take a look at how to do a failover with just T-SQL. First, were going to need to open a new query window and run our query in SQLCMD mode. Just incase you haven’t used SQLCMD mode before we will show you how to enable it below. Now you can run the following statement. Notice, we connect to the replica we want to become primary after failover and specify to force failover to allow data loss. We can use the following script to failback over when our primary instance comes back online. -- YOU MUST EXECUTE THE FOLLOWING SCRIPT IN SQLCMD MODE. :Connect SQL2012PROD1 ALTER AVAILABILITY GROUP [AGSQL2] FORCE_FAILOVER_ALLOW_DATA_LOSS; GO Are your servers running at optimal speed or are you facing any SQL Server Performance Problems? If you want to get started with the help of experts read more over here: Fix Your SQL Server. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)Filed under: Notes from the Field, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

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• SQL SERVER – A Puzzle – Swap Value of Column Without Case Statement

  - by pinaldave

  For the last few weeks, I have been doing Friday Puzzles and I am really loving it. Yesterday I received a very interesting question by Navneet Chaurasia on Facebook Page. He was asked this question in one of the interview questions for job. Please read the original thread for a complete idea of the conversation. I am presenting the same question here. Puzzle Let us assume there is a single column in the table called Gender. The challenge is to write a single update statement which will flip or swap the value in the column. For example if the value in the gender column is ‘male’ swap it with ‘female’ and if the value is ‘female’ swap it with ‘male’. Here is the quick setup script for the puzzle. USE tempdb GO CREATE TABLE SimpleTable (ID INT, Gender VARCHAR(10)) GO INSERT INTO SimpleTable (ID, Gender) SELECT 1, 'female' UNION ALL SELECT 2, 'male' UNION ALL SELECT 3, 'male' GO SELECT * FROM SimpleTable GO The above query will return following result set. The puzzle was to write a single update column which will generate following result set. There are multiple answers to this simple puzzle. Let me show you three different ways. I am assuming that the column will have either value ‘male’ or ‘female’ only. Method 1: Using CASE Statement I believe this is going to be the most popular solution as we are all familiar with CASE Statement. UPDATE SimpleTable SET Gender = CASE Gender WHEN 'male' THEN 'female' ELSE 'male' END GO SELECT * FROM SimpleTable GO Method 2: Using REPLACE  Function I totally understand it is the not cleanest solution but it will for sure work in giving situation. UPDATE SimpleTable SET Gender = REPLACE(('fe'+Gender),'fefe','') GO SELECT * FROM SimpleTable GO Method 3: Using IIF in SQL Server 2012 If you are using SQL Server 2012 you can use IIF and get the same effect as CASE statement. UPDATE SimpleTable SET Gender = IIF(Gender = 'male', 'female', 'male') GO SELECT * FROM SimpleTable GO You can read my article series on SQL Server 2012 various functions over here. SQL SERVER – Denali – Logical Function – IIF() – A Quick Introduction SQL SERVER – Detecting Leap Year in T-SQL using SQL Server 2012 – IIF, EOMONTH and CONCAT Function Let us clean up. DROP TABLE SimpleTable GO Question to you: I came up with three simple tricks where there is a single UPDATE statement which swaps the values in the column. Do you know any other simple trick? If yes, please post here in the comments. I will pick two random winners from all the valid answers. Winners will get 1) Print Copy of SQL Server Interview Questions and Answers 2) Free Learning Code for Online Video Courses I will announce the winners on coming Monday. Reference:  Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: CodeProject, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Interview Questions and Answers, SQL Puzzle, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLServer, T SQL, Technology

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• SQL SERVER – Installing SQL Server Data Tools and SSRS

  - by Pinal Dave

  This example is from the Beginning SSRS by Kathi Kellenberger. Supporting files are available with a free download from the www.Joes2Pros.com web site. If you have installed SQL Server, but are missing the Data Tools or Reporting Services Double-click the SQL Server 2012 installation media. Click the Installation link on the left to view the Installation options. Click the top link New SQL Server stand-alone installation or add features to an existing installation. Follow the SQL Server Setup wizard until you get to the Installation Type screen. At that screen, select Add features to an existing instance of SQL Server 2012. Click Next to move to the Feature Selection page. Select Reporting Services – Native and SQL Server Data Tools. If the Management Tools have not been installed, go ahead and choose them as well. Continue through the wizard and reboot the computer at the end of the installation if instructed to do so. Configure Reporting Services If you installed Reporting Services during the installation of the SQL Server instance, SSRS will be configured automatically for you. If you install SSRS later, then you will have to go back and configure it as a subsequent step. Click Start > All Programs > Microsoft SQL Server 2012 > Configuration Tools > Reporting Services Configuration Manager > Connect on the Reporting Services Configuration Connection dialog box. On the left-hand side of the Reporting Services Configuration Manager, click Database. Click the Change Database button on the right side of the screen. Select Create a new report server database and click Next. Click through the rest of the wizard accepting the defaults. This wizard creates two databases: ReportServer, used to store report definitions and security, and ReportServerTempDB which is used as scratch space when preparing reports for user requests. Now click Web Service URL on the left-hand side of the Reporting Services Configuration Manager. Click the Apply button to accept the defaults. If the Apply button has been grayed out, move on to the next step. This step sets up the SSRS web service. The web service is the program that runs in the background that communicates between the web page, which you will set up next, and the databases. The final configuration step is to select the Report Manager URL link on the left. Accept the default settings and click Apply. If the Apply button was already grayed out, this means the SSRS was already configured. This step sets up the Report Manager web site where you will publish reports. You may be wondering if you also must install a web server on your computer. SQL Server does not require that the Internet Information Server (IIS), the Microsoft web server, be installed to run Report Manager. Click Exit to dismiss the Reporting Services Configuration Manager dialog box. Tomorrow’s Post Tomorrow’s blog post will show how to create your first report using the Report Wizard. If you want to learn SSRS in easy to simple words – I strongly recommend you to get Beginning SSRS book from Joes 2 Pros. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL Tagged: Reporting Services, SSRS

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• Anonymous user permission issue in SharePoint Server

  - by George2

  Hello everyone, I am using SharePoint Server 2007 x64 and Windows Server 2008 x64. I have setup a site with template publishing portal. I have grant anonymous access to all the site. My question is, if I create a new page, how to grant permission to anonymous user to access (read permission) the page? I got this confusion because, for the permission setting of a page, a permission is set according to a user name (e.g. read permission for user "foo" of a page). Since anonymous user does not have a related "user name", how could I grant read permission to anonymous user? BTW: I use Windows Forms authentication and Windows NTLM authentication for my sites. Thanks in advance, George

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• SQLAuthority News – Community Service and Public Speaking Engagements

  - by pinaldave

  Today is the last day of the year and I was going over my memories for year 2010. Almost all of them are good and I feel for sure better person in terms of knowledge, nature and overall human being. Looking back at the year, it is very satisfying as I was able to go out in public and help community out at various capacity. Thought, most of the time my contribution was as speaker, many times, I have reached out and helped organized event and worked at any capacity to get the event out. I have taken parts in many TechEds, PASS events, Virtual Tech Days, Various Community Events around the Globe and my contribution is not limited to my country only. Overall – I feel good to be part of this wonderful and supportive community. SQLAuthority News – A Successful Community TechDays at Ahmedabad – December 11, 2010 SQLAuthority News – A Successful Performance Tuning Seminar at Pune – Dec 4-5, 2010 SQL SERVER – A Successful Performance Tuning Seminar – Hyderabad – Nov 27-28, 2010 – Next Pune SQLAuthority News – SQLPASS Nov 8-11, 2010-Seattle – An Alternative Look at Experience SQLAuthority News – Statistics and Best Practices – Virtual Tech Days – Nov 22, 2010 SQLAuthority News – SQL Server Performance Optimizations Seminar – Grand Success – Colombo, Sri Lanka – Oct 4 – 5, 2010 SQL SERVER – Visiting Alma Mater – Delivering Session on Database Performance and Career – Nirma Institute of Technology SQLAuthority News – Feedback Received for Virtual Tech Days Sessions on Spatial Database SQLAuthority News – Community Tech Days, Ahmedabad – July 24, 2010 SQLAuthority News – SQL Data Camp, Chennai, July 17, 2010 – A Huge Success SQLAuthority News – 2 Sessions at TechInsight 2010 – June 29 – July 1, 2010 SQLAuthority News – Author Visit – SQL Server 2008 R2 Launch SQLAuthority News – Professional Development and Community SQLAuthority News – TechEd India – April 12-14, 2010 Bangalore – An Unforgettable Experience – An Opportunity of A Lifetime SQLAuthority News – Speaking Sessions at TechEd India – 3 Sessions – 1 Panel Discussion SQLAuthority News – Meeting with Allen Bailochan Tuladhar – An Unlimited Experience SQLAuthority News – Author Visit Review – TechMela Nepal – March 29-30, 2010 SQLAuthority News – Excellent Event – TechEd Sri Lanka – Feb 8, 2010 SQLAuthority News – Hyderabad Techies February Fever Feb 11, 2010 – Indexing for Performance SQLAuthority News – MUGH – Microsoft User Group Hyderabad – Feb 2, 2010 Session Review SQLAuthority News – Ahmedabad Community Tech Days – Jan 30, 2010 – Huge Success For earlier year’s contribution you can check my webpage over here. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: About Me, Pinal Dave, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority Book Review, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology

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• Big Data – Evolution of Big Data – Day 3 of 21

  - by Pinal Dave

  In yesterday’s blog post we answered what is the Big Data. Today we will understand why and how the evolution of Big Data has happened. Though the answer is very simple, I would like to tell it in the form of a history lesson. Data in Flat File In earlier days data was stored in the flat file and there was no structure in the flat file.  If any data has to be retrieved from the flat file it was a project by itself. There was no possibility of retrieving the data efficiently and data integrity has been just a term discussed without any modeling or structure around. Database residing in the flat file had more issues than we would like to discuss in today’s world. It was more like a nightmare when there was any data processing involved in the application. Though, applications developed at that time were also not that advanced the need of the data was always there and there was always need of proper data management. Edgar F Codd and 12 Rules Edgar Frank Codd was a British computer scientist who, while working for IBM, invented the relational model for database management, the theoretical basis for relational databases. He presented 12 rules for the Relational Database and suddenly the chaotic world of the database seems to see discipline in the rules. Relational Database was a promising land for all the unstructured database users. Relational Database brought into the relationship between data as well improved the performance of the data retrieval. Database world had immediately seen a major transformation and every single vendors and database users suddenly started to adopt the relational database models. Relational Database Management Systems Since Edgar F Codd proposed 12 rules for the RBDMS there were many different vendors who started them to build applications and tools to support the relationship between database. This was indeed a learning curve for many of the developer who had never worked before with the modeling of the database. However, as time passed by pretty much everybody accepted the relationship of the database and started to evolve product which performs its best with the boundaries of the RDBMS concepts. This was the best era for the databases and it gave the world extreme experts as well as some of the best products. The Entity Relationship model was also evolved at the same time. In software engineering, an Entity–relationship model (ER model) is a data model for describing a database in an abstract way. Enormous Data Growth Well, everything was going fine with the RDBMS in the database world. As there were no major challenges the adoption of the RDBMS applications and tools was pretty much universal. There was a race at times to make the developer’s life much easier with the RDBMS management tools. Due to the extreme popularity and easy to use system pretty much every data was stored in the RDBMS system. New age applications were built and social media took the world by the storm. Every organizations was feeling pressure to provide the best experience for their users based the data they had with them. While this was all going on at the same time data was growing pretty much every organization and application. Data Warehousing The enormous data growth now presented a big challenge for the organizations who wanted to build intelligent systems based on the data and provide near real time superior user experience to their customers. Various organizations immediately start building data warehousing solutions where the data was stored and processed. The trend of the business intelligence becomes the need of everyday. Data was received from the transaction system and overnight was processed to build intelligent reports from it. Though this is a great solution it has its own set of challenges. The relational database model and data warehousing concepts are all built with keeping traditional relational database modeling in the mind and it still has many challenges when unstructured data was present. Interesting Challenge Every organization had expertise to manage structured data but the world had already changed to unstructured data. There was intelligence in the videos, photos, SMS, text, social media messages and various other data sources. All of these needed to now bring to a single platform and build a uniform system which does what businesses need. The way we do business has also been changed. There was a time when user only got the features what technology supported, however, now users ask for the feature and technology is built to support the same. The need of the real time intelligence from the fast paced data flow is now becoming a necessity. Large amount (Volume) of difference (Variety) of high speed data (Velocity) is the properties of the data. The traditional database system has limits to resolve the challenges this new kind of the data presents. Hence the need of the Big Data Science. We need innovation in how we handle and manage data. We need creative ways to capture data and present to users. Big Data is Reality! Tomorrow In tomorrow’s blog post we will try to answer discuss Basics of Big Data Architecture. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Big Data, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

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• SQL SERVER – ASYNC_IO_COMPLETION – Wait Type – Day 11 of 28

  - by pinaldave

  For any good system three things are vital: CPU, Memory and IO (disk). Among these three, IO is the most crucial factor of SQL Server. Looking at real-world cases, I do not see IT people upgrading CPU and Memory frequently. However, the disk is often upgraded for either improving the space, speed or throughput. Today we will look at another IO-related wait type. From Book On-Line: Occurs when a task is waiting for I/Os to finish. ASYNC_IO_COMPLETION Explanation: Any tasks are waiting for I/O to finish. If by any means your application that’s connected to SQL Server is processing the data very slowly, this type of wait can occur. Several long-running database operations like BACKUP, CREATE DATABASE, ALTER DATABASE or other operations can also create this wait type. Reducing ASYNC_IO_COMPLETION wait: When it is an issue related to IO, one should check for the following things associated to IO subsystem: Look at the programming and see if there is any application code which processes the data slowly (like inefficient loop, etc.). Note that it should be re-written to avoid this  wait type. Proper placing of the files is very important. We should check the file system for proper placement of the files – LDF and MDF on separate drive, TempDB on another separate drive, hot spot tables on separate filegroup (and on separate disk), etc. Check the File Statistics and see if there is a higher IO Read and IO Write Stall SQL SERVER – Get File Statistics Using fn_virtualfilestats. Check event log and error log for any errors or warnings related to IO. If you are using SAN (Storage Area Network), check the throughput of the SAN system as well as configuration of the HBA Queue Depth. In one of my recent projects, the SAN was performing really badly and so the SAN administrator did not accept it. After some investigations, he agreed to change the HBA Queue Depth on the development setup (test environment). As soon as we changed the HBA Queue Depth to quite a higher value, there was a sudden big improvement in the performance. It is very likely to happen that there are no proper indexes on the system and yet there are lots of table scans and heap scans. Creating proper index can reduce the IO bandwidth considerably. If SQL Server can use appropriate cover index instead of clustered index, it can effectively reduce lots of CPU, Memory and IO (considering cover index has lesser columns than cluster table and all other; it depends upon the situation). You can refer to the following two articles I wrote that talk about how to optimize indexes: Create Missing Indexes Drop Unused Indexes Checking Memory Related Perfmon Counters SQLServer: Memory Manager\Memory Grants Pending (Consistent higher value than 0-2) SQLServer: Memory Manager\Memory Grants Outstanding (Consistent higher value, Benchmark) SQLServer: Buffer Manager\Buffer Hit Cache Ratio (Higher is better, greater than 90% for usually smooth running system) SQLServer: Buffer Manager\Page Life Expectancy (Consistent lower value than 300 seconds) Memory: Available Mbytes (Information only) Memory: Page Faults/sec (Benchmark only) Memory: Pages/sec (Benchmark only) Checking Disk Related Perfmon Counters Average Disk sec/Read (Consistent higher value than 4-8 millisecond is not good) Average Disk sec/Write (Consistent higher value than 4-8 millisecond is not good) Average Disk Read/Write Queue Length (Consistent higher value than benchmark is not good) Read all the post in the Wait Types and Queue series. 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 the discussions of Wait Stats in this blog are generic and vary 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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• How to Print or Save a Directory Listing to a File

  - by Lori Kaufman

  Printing a directory listing is something you may not do often, but when you need to print a listing of a directory with a lot of files in it, you would rather not manually type the filenames. You may want to print a directory listing of your videos, music, ebooks, or other media. Or, someone at work may ask you for a list of test case files you have created for the software you’re developing, or a list of chapter files for the user guide, etc. If the list of files is small, writing it down or manually typing it out is not a problem. However, if you have a lot of files, automatically creating a directory listing would get the task done quickly and easily. This article shows you how to write a directory listing to a file using the command line and how to use a free tool to print or save a directory listing in Windows Explorer. Amazon’s New Kindle Fire Tablet: the How-To Geek Review HTG Explains: How Hackers Take Over Web Sites with SQL Injection / DDoS Use Your Android Phone to Comparison Shop: 4 Scanner Apps Reviewed

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

  - by pinaldave

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

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• SQL SERVER – Another lesser known feature of SQL Server Management Studio 2012 – Guest Post by Balmukund Lakhani

  - by Pinal Dave

  This is a fantastic blog post from my dear friend Balmukund ( blog | twitter | facebook ). He had presented a fantastic session in our last UG and there were lots of requests from attendees that he blogs about it. Well, here is the blog post about the same very popular UG session. Let us read the entire blog post in the voice of the Balmukund himself. In one of my previous guest blog on SQL Authority, I wrote about “Additional Connection Parameter” tab of login screen in SQL Server Management Studio (a.k.a. SSMS). On the similar lines, this blog is going to show little less known new feature of login main screen (“Connect to Server”) of SSMS 2012. You might have seen below screen countless times and you might wonder what is there is blog about in this simple screen. Well, continue reading and you would get the answer. Many times, DBA have to login to production server from non-regular machine, may be a developer’s workstation. Once you login to SQL, do your work and close the management studio. Do you know that your server name is saved in management studio? Of course, very useful feature because you may not like to type server name/IP address every time. Whatever servers you have connected, it would be stored by management studio. But sometime, it’s annoying! What you would do if you want SQL Server Management Studio to forget “all” the servers listed in drop down of Server name? To do that, you need to know how and where it’s stored. You can use one of my favorite tool from sysinternals called Process Monitor (also known as ProcMon) and easily figure out that this is stored in a file under your windows user profile. Below is the file in SQL 2008 R2 Management Studio. %appdata%\Microsoft\Microsoft SQL Server\100\Tools\Shell\SqlStudio.bin For SQL Server 2012, here is what we can see in ProcMon So, the path is %appdata%\Microsoft\Microsoft SQL Server\110\Tools\Shell\SqlStudio.bin So far, you might wonder, where is the new feature? I have been asked by many users to delete entries from SSMS “Connect to Server” server name list. Well, unofficially, you can delete the file directly which we found via ProcMon. Note that delete file to get rid of server list is not officially supported by Microsoft. Better way to achieve this is provided in SSMS 2012. To delete the servers from the list, highlight the name we want to delete (via keyboard or mouse) and then press delete key via keyboard. We can’t be multi-select and has to be done one by one. We can delete as many entries we want. I have delete few from first screenshot taken and here is the modified version. This is not available in SQL 2008 R2 and its previous version. This came from feedback given to SQL Server Product group. Hope you have learned something new today! Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Server Management Studio, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• Add an Image Properties Listing to the Context Menu in Chrome and Iron

  - by Asian Angel

  Is the lack of an Image Properties listing in the Context Menu of your favorite Chromium-based browser driving you crazy? If you have been missing this extremely useful function, then the Image Properties Context Menu extension is here to save the day. As soon as you get the extension installed you can start enjoying access to image property information as seen here. Very nice! Image Properties Context Menu [via Shankar Ganesh (@shankargan)] Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How To Make Hundreds of Complex Photo Edits in Seconds With Photoshop Actions How to Enable User-Specific Wireless Networks in Windows 7 How to Use Google Chrome as Your Default PDF Reader (the Easy Way) How To Remove People and Objects From Photographs In Photoshop Ask How-To Geek: How Can I Monitor My Bandwidth Usage? Internet Explorer 9 RC Now Available: Here’s the Most Interesting New Stuff Never Call Me at Work [Humorous Star Wars Video] Add an Image Properties Listing to the Context Menu in Chrome and Iron Add an Easy to View Notification Badge to Tabs in Firefox SpellBook Parks Bookmarklets in Chrome’s Context Menu Drag2Up Brings Multi-Source Drag and Drop Uploading to Firefox Enchanted Swing in the Forest Wallpaper

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• BASIC on Ubuntu

  - by Tim Lytle

  Was asked by a new Ubuntu user - who also wants to learn about programming - what he could use to run BASIC code. He was working through a BASIC book before trying out Ubuntu, and he'd like to continue without having to switch back to Windows. It looks like there are a few BASIC packages in the standard repositories, as well as projects like Mono which may include some kind of BASIC support. What would be a good recommendation from the standard repositories - or from a deb package - for someone learning the basics of BASIC and new to Ubuntu?

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• SQL SERVER – Expanding Views – Contest Win Joes 2 Pros Combo (USD 198) – Day 4 of 5

  - by pinaldave

  August 2011 we ran a contest where every day we give away one book for an entire month. The contest had extreme success. Lots of people participated and lots of give away. I have received lots of questions if we are doing something similar this month. Absolutely, instead of running a contest a month long we are doing something more interesting. We are giving away USD 198 worth gift every day for this week. We are giving away Joes 2 Pros 5 Volumes (BOOK) SQL 2008 Development Certification Training Kit every day. One copy in India and One in USA. Total 2 of the giveaway (worth USD 198). All the gifts are sponsored from the Koenig Training Solution and Joes 2 Pros. The books are available here Amazon | Flipkart | Indiaplaza How to Win: Read the Question Read the Hints Answer the Quiz in Contact Form in following format Question Answer Name of the country (The contest is open for USA and India residents only) 2 Winners will be randomly selected announced on August 20th. Question of the Day: Which of the following key word will force the query to use indexes created on views? a) ENCRYPTION b) SCHEMABINDING c) NOEXPAND d) CHECK OPTION Query Hints: BIG HINT POST Usually, the assumption is that Index on the table will use Index on the table and Index on view will be used by view. However, that is the misconception. It does not happen this way. In fact, if you notice the image, you will find the both of them (table and view) use both the index created on the table. The index created on the view is not used. The reason for the same as listed in BOL. The cost of using the indexed view may exceed the cost of getting the data from the base tables, or the query is so simple that a query against the base tables is fast and easy to find. This often happens when the indexed view is defined on small tables. You can use the NOEXPAND hint if you want to force the query processor to use the indexed view. This may require you to rewrite your query if you don’t initially reference the view explicitly. You can get the actual cost of the query with NOEXPAND and compare it to the actual cost of the query plan that doesn’t reference the view. If they are close, this may give you the confidence that the decision of whether or not to use the indexed view doesn’t matter. Additional Hints: I have previously discussed various concepts from SQL Server Joes 2 Pros Volume 4. SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Structured Error Handling SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – SQL Server Error Messages SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Table-Valued Functions SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Table-Valued Store Procedure Parameters SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Easy Introduction to CHECK Options SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Introduction to Views SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – All about SQL Constraints Next Step: Answer the Quiz in Contact Form in following format Question Answer Name of the country (The contest is open for USA and India) Bonus Winner Leave a comment with your favorite article from the “additional hints” section and you may be eligible for surprise gift. There is no country restriction for this Bonus Contest. Do mention why you liked it any particular blog post and I will announce the winner of the same along with the main contest. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Joes 2 Pros, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Puzzle, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• SQL SERVER – IO_COMPLETION – Wait Type – Day 10 of 28

  - by pinaldave

  For any good system three things are vital: CPU, Memory and IO (disk). Among these three, IO is the most crucial factor of SQL Server. Looking at real-world cases, I do not see IT people upgrading CPU and Memory frequently. However, the disk is often upgraded for either improving the space, speed or throughput. Today we will look at an IO-related wait types. From Book On-Line: Occurs while waiting for I/O operations to complete. This wait type generally represents non-data page I/Os. Data page I/O completion waits appear as PAGEIOLATCH_* waits. IO_COMPLETION Explanation: Any tasks are waiting for I/O to finish. This is a good indication that IO needs to be looked over here. Reducing IO_COMPLETION wait: When it is an issue concerning the IO, one should look at the following things related to IO subsystem: Proper placing of the files is very important. We should check the file system for proper placement of files – LDF and MDF on a separate drive, TempDB on another separate drive, hot spot tables on separate filegroup (and on separate disk),etc. Check the File Statistics and see if there is higher IO Read and IO Write Stall SQL SERVER – Get File Statistics Using fn_virtualfilestats. Check event log and error log for any errors or warnings related to IO. If you are using SAN (Storage Area Network), check the throughput of the SAN system as well as the configuration of the HBA Queue Depth. In one of my recent projects, the SAN was performing really badly so the SAN administrator did not accept it. After some investigations, he agreed to change the HBA Queue Depth on development (test environment) set up and as soon as we changed the HBA Queue Depth to quite a higher value, there was a sudden big improvement in the performance. It is very possible that there are no proper indexes in the system and there are lots of table scans and heap scans. Creating proper index can reduce the IO bandwidth considerably. If SQL Server can use appropriate cover index instead of clustered index, it can effectively reduce lots of CPU, Memory and IO (considering cover index has lesser columns than cluster table and all other; it depends upon the situation). You can refer to the two articles that I wrote; they are about how to optimize indexes: Create Missing Indexes Drop Unused Indexes Checking Memory Related Perfmon Counters SQLServer: Memory Manager\Memory Grants Pending (Consistent higher value than 0-2) SQLServer: Memory Manager\Memory Grants Outstanding (Consistent higher value, Benchmark) SQLServer: Buffer Manager\Buffer Hit Cache Ratio (Higher is better, greater than 90% for usually smooth running system) SQLServer: Buffer Manager\Page Life Expectancy (Consistent lower value than 300 seconds) Memory: Available Mbytes (Information only) Memory: Page Faults/sec (Benchmark only) Memory: Pages/sec (Benchmark only) Checking Disk Related Perfmon Counters Average Disk sec/Read (Consistent higher value than 4-8 millisecond is not good) Average Disk sec/Write (Consistent higher value than 4-8 millisecond is not good) Average Disk Read/Write Queue Length (Consistent higher value than benchmark is not good) 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 the discussions of Wait Stats in this blog are generic and vary 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 Types, SQL White Papers, T SQL, Technology

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• SQLAuthority News – History of the Database – 5 Years of Blogging at SQLAuthority

  - by pinaldave

  Don’t miss the Contest:Participate in 5th Anniversary Contest   Today is this blog’s birthday, and I want to do a fun, informative blog post. Five years ago this day I started this blog. Intention – my personal web blog. I wrote this blog for me and still today whatever I learn I share here. I don’t want to wander too far off topic, though, so I will write about two of my favorite things – history and databases.  And what better way to cover these two topics than to talk about the history of databases. If you want to be technical, databases as we know them today only date back to the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, when computers began to keep records and store memories.  But the idea of memory storage didn’t just appear 40 years ago – there was a history behind wanting to keep these records. In fact, the written word originated as a way to keep records – ancient man didn’t decide they suddenly wanted to read novels, they needed a way to keep track of the harvest, of their flocks, and of the tributes paid to the local lord.  And that is how writing and the database began.  You could consider the cave paintings from 17,0000 years ago at Lascaux, France, or the clay token from the ancient Sumerians in 8,000 BC to be the first instances of record keeping – and thus databases. If you prefer, you can consider the advent of written language to be the first database.  Many historians believe the first written language appeared in the 37th century BC, with Egyptian hieroglyphics. The ancient Sumerians, not to be outdone, also created their own written language within a few hundred years. Databases could be more closely described as collections of information, in which case the Sumerians win the prize for the first archive.  A collection of 20,000 stone tablets was unearthed in 1964 near the modern day city Tell Mardikh, in Syria.  This ancient database is from 2,500 BC, and appears to be a sort of law library where apprentice-scribes copied important documents.  Further archaeological digs hope to uncover the palace library, and thus an even larger database. Of course, the most famous ancient database would have to be the Royal Library of Alexandria, the great collection of records and wisdom in ancient Egypt.  It was created by Ptolemy I, and existed from 300 BC through 30 AD, when Julius Caesar effectively erased the hard drives when he accidentally set fire to it.  As any programmer knows who has forgotten to hit “save” or has experienced a sudden power outage, thousands of hours of work was lost in a single instant. Databases existed in very similar conditions up until recently.  Cuneiform tablets gave way to papyrus, which led to vellum, and eventually modern paper and the printing press.  Someday the databases we rely on so much today will become another chapter in the history of record keeping.  Who knows what the databases of tomorrow will look like! Reference:  Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: About Me, Database, Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLServer, T SQL, Technology

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• SQL SERVER – Speed Up! – Parallel Processes and Unparalleled Performance – TechEd 2012 India

  - by pinaldave

  TechEd India 2012 is just around the corner and I will be presenting there on two different session. SQL Server Performance Tuning is a very challenging subject that requires expertise in Database Administration and Database Development. I always have enjoyed talking about SQL Server Performance tuning subject. Just like doctors I like to call my every attempt to improve the performance of SQL Server queries and database server as a practice too. I have been working with SQL Server for more than 8 years and I believe that many of the performance tuning concept I have mastered. However, performance tuning is not a simple subject. However there are occasions when I feel stumped, there are occasional when I am not sure what should be the next step. When I face situation where I cannot figure things out easily, it makes me most happy because I clearly see this as a learning opportunity. I have been presenting in TechEd India for last three years. This is my fourth time opportunity to present a technical session on SQL Server. Just like every other year, I decided to present something different, something which I have spend years of learning. This time, I am going to present about parallel processes. It is widely believed that more the CPU will improve performance of the server. It is true in many cases. However, there are cases when limiting the CPU usages have improved overall health of the server. I will be presenting on the subject of Parallel Processes and its effects. I have spent more than a year working on this subject only. After working on various queries on multi-CPU systems I have personally learned few things. In coming TechEd session, I am going to share my experience with parallel processes and performance tuning. Session Details Title: Speed Up! – Parallel Processes and Unparalleled Performance (Add to Calendar) Abstract: “More CPU More Performance” – A  very common understanding is that usage of multiple CPUs can improve the performance of the query. To get maximum performance out of any query – one has to master various aspects of the parallel processes. In this deep dive session, we will explore this complex subject with a very simple interactive demo. An attendee will walk away with proper understanding of CX_PACKET wait types, MAXDOP, parallelism threshold and various other concepts. Date and Time: March 23, 2012, 12:15 to 13:15 Location: Hotel Lalit Ashok - Kumara Krupa High Grounds, Bengaluru – 560001, Karnataka, India. Add to Calendar Please submit your questions in the comments area and I will be for sure discussing them during my session. If I pick your question to discuss during my session, here is your gift I commit right now – SQL Server Interview Questions and Answers Book. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Performance, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Wait Stats, SQL Wait Types, T SQL, Technology Tagged: TechEd, TechEdIn

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• SQL SERVER – Quiz and Video – Introduction to Hierarchical Query using a Recursive CTE

  - by pinaldave

  This blog post is inspired from SQL Queries Joes 2 Pros: SQL Query Techniques For Microsoft SQL Server 2008 – SQL Exam Prep Series 70-433 – Volume 2.[Amazon] | [Flipkart] | [Kindle] | [IndiaPlaza] This is follow up blog post of my earlier blog post on the same subject - SQL SERVER – Introduction to Hierarchical Query using a Recursive CTE – A Primer. In the article we discussed various basics terminology of the CTE. The article further covers following important concepts of common table expression. What is a Common Table Expression (CTE) Building a Recursive CTE Identify the Anchor and Recursive Query Add the Anchor and Recursive query to a CTE Add an expression to track hierarchical level Add a self-referencing INNER JOIN statement Above six are the most important concepts related to CTE and SQL Server.  There are many more things one has to learn but without beginners fundamentals one can’t learn the advanced  concepts. Let us have small quiz and check how many of you get the fundamentals right. Quiz 1) You have an employee table with the following data. EmpID FirstName LastName MgrID 1 David Kennson 11 2 Eric Bender 11 3 Lisa Kendall 4 4 David Lonning 11 5 John Marshbank 4 6 James Newton 3 7 Sally Smith NULL You need to write a recursive CTE that shows the EmpID, FirstName, LastName, MgrID, and employee level. The CEO should be listed at Level 1. All people who work for the CEO will be listed at Level 2. All of the people who work for those people will be listed at Level 3. Which CTE code will achieve this result? WITH EmpList AS (SELECT Boss.EmpID, Boss.FName, Boss.LName, Boss.MgrID, 1 AS Lvl FROM Employee AS Boss WHERE Boss.MgrID IS NULL UNION ALL SELECT E.EmpID, E.FirstName, E.LastName, E.MgrID, EmpList.Lvl + 1 FROM Employee AS E INNER JOIN EmpList ON E.MgrID = EmpList.EmpID) SELECT * FROM EmpList WITH EmpListAS (SELECT EmpID, FirstName, LastName, MgrID, 1 as Lvl FROM Employee WHERE MgrID IS NULL UNION ALL SELECT EmpID, FirstName, LastName, MgrID, 2 as Lvl ) SELECT * FROM BossList WITH EmpList AS (SELECT EmpID, FirstName, LastName, MgrID, 1 as Lvl FROM Employee WHERE MgrID is NOT NULL UNION SELECT EmpID, FirstName, LastName, MgrID, BossList.Lvl + 1 FROM Employee INNER JOIN EmpList BossList ON Employee.MgrID = BossList.EmpID) SELECT * FROM EmpList 2) You have a table named Employee. The EmployeeID of each employee’s manager is in the ManagerID column. You need to write a recursive query that produces a list of employees and their manager. The query must also include the employee’s level in the hierarchy. You write the following code segment: WITH EmployeeList (EmployeeID, FullName, ManagerName, Level) AS ( –PICK ANSWER CODE HERE ) SELECT EmployeeID, FullName, ” AS [ManagerID], 1 AS [Level] FROM Employee WHERE ManagerID IS NULL UNION ALL SELECT emp.EmployeeID, emp.FullName mgr.FullName, 1 + 1 AS [Level] FROM Employee emp JOIN Employee mgr ON emp.ManagerID = mgr.EmployeeId SELECT EmployeeID, FullName, ” AS [ManagerID], 1 AS [Level] FROM Employee WHERE ManagerID IS NULL UNION ALL SELECT emp.EmployeeID, emp.FullName, mgr.FullName, mgr.Level + 1 FROM EmployeeList mgr JOIN Employee emp ON emp.ManagerID = mgr.EmployeeId Now make sure that you write down all the answers on the piece of paper. Watch following video and read earlier article over here. If you want to change the answer you still have chance. Solution 1) 1 2) 2 Now compare let us check the answers and compare your answers to following answers. I am very confident you will get them correct. Available at USA: Amazon India: Flipkart | IndiaPlaza Volume: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Please leave your feedback in the comment area for the quiz and video. Did you know all the answers of the quiz? Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Joes 2 Pros, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• MySQL – Video Course – MySQL Backup and Recovery Fundamentals

  - by Pinal Dave

  Data is the one of the most crucial things for any organization and keeping data safe is the biggest challenge for any DBA. This is true for any organizations. Think about the scenario that you have a database which is extremely important and suddenly you accidently delete the most important table from that database. I am sure this is a very difficult time. In times like this people often get stressed or just make even second mistake. In my career of 10 years I have done often this mistake and often got stressed out due to un-availability of the database backup. In the SQL Server field, we have plenty of the help on this subject, but in MySQL domain there is not enough help. For the same reason I have build this MySQL course on Backup and Recovery. Course Outline Data is very important to any application and business. It is very important that every business plan for data safety. Database backup strategies are often discussed after the disaster has already happened. In this introductory course we will explore a few of the basic backup strategies every business should implement for data safely. We will explore how we can recover our server quickly after any unfriendly incident to our MySQL database. Click to View Course Here are various important aspects which we have discussed in this course. How to take backup of single database? How to take backup of multiple database? How to backup various database objects? How to restore a single database? How to restore multiple databases? How to use MySQL Workbench for Backup and Restore? How to restore Point in Time for any database? What is the best time to backup? How to copy database from one server to another server? All of the above concepts and many more subjects are covered in the MySQL Backup and Recovery Fundamentals course. It is available on Pluralsight. Scenarios As learning about Backup and Recovery can be very much boring, I decided to create two fictitious characters and demonstrate the entire course based on their conversation. The story is about Mike and Rahul. Mike is Sr. Database administrator in USA and Rahul is an intern in India. Rahul aspires to become a senior database administrator and this is a story about his challenges and how he overcomes those challenges. I had a great time to build this course and I have got very good feedback on this course. I encourage all of you to attempt to learn MySQL Backup and Recovery Fundamental course with this innovative effort. It will be very valuable to know your feedback. You will need a valid Pluralsight subscription to watch this course. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)Filed under: MySQL, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Backup and Restore, SQL Query, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

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• SQL SERVER – Query Hint – Contest Win Joes 2 Pros Combo (USD 198) – Day 1 of 5

  - by pinaldave

  August 2011 we ran a contest where every day we give away one book for an entire month. The contest had extreme success. Lots of people participated and lots of give away. I have received lots of questions if we are doing something similar this month. Absolutely, instead of running a contest a month long we are doing something more interesting. We are giving away USD 198 worth gift every day for this week. We are giving away Joes 2 Pros 5 Volumes (BOOK) SQL 2008 Development Certification Training Kit every day. One copy in India and One in USA. Total 2 of the giveaway (worth USD 198). All the gifts are sponsored from the Koenig Training Solution and Joes 2 Pros. The books are available here Amazon | Flipkart | Indiaplaza How to Win: Read the Question Read the Hints Answer the Quiz in Contact Form in following format Question Answer Name of the country (The contest is open for USA and India residents only) 2 Winners will be randomly selected announced on August 20th. Question of the Day: Which of the following queries will return dirty data? a) SELECT * FROM Table1 (READUNCOMMITED) b) SELECT * FROM Table1 (NOLOCK) c) SELECT * FROM Table1 (DIRTYREAD) d) SELECT * FROM Table1 (MYLOCK) Query Hints: BIG HINT POST Most SQL people know what a “Dirty Record” is. You might also call that an “Intermediate record”. In case this is new to you here is a very quick explanation. The simplest way to describe the steps of a transaction is to use an example of updating an existing record into a table. When the insert runs, SQL Server gets the data from storage, such as a hard drive, and loads it into memory and your CPU. The data in memory is changed and then saved to the storage device. Finally, a message is sent confirming the rows that were affected. For a very short period of time the update takes the data and puts it into memory (an intermediate state), not a permanent state. For every data change to a table there is a brief moment where the change is made in the intermediate state, but is not committed. During this time, any other DML statement needing that data waits until the lock is released. This is a safety feature so that SQL Server evaluates only official data. For every data change to a table there is a brief moment where the change is made in this intermediate state, but is not committed. During this time, any other DML statement (SELECT, INSERT, DELETE, UPDATE) needing that data must wait until the lock is released. This is a safety feature put in place so that SQL Server evaluates only official data. Additional Hints: I have previously discussed various concepts from SQL Server Joes 2 Pros Volume 1. SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Dirty Records and Table Hints SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Row Constructors SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Finding un-matching Records SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Efficient Query Writing Strategy SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Finding Apostrophes in String and Text SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Wildcard – Querying Special Characters SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Wildcard Basics Recap Next Step: Answer the Quiz in Contact Form in following format Question Answer Name of the country (The contest is open for USA and India) Bonus Winner Leave a comment with your favorite article from the “additional hints” section and you may be eligible for surprise gift. There is no country restriction for this Bonus Contest. Do mention why you liked it any particular blog post and I will announce the winner of the same along with the main contest. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Joes 2 Pros, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Puzzle, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• SQLAuthority News – Monthly list of Puzzles and Solutions on SQLAuthority.com

  - by pinaldave

  This month has been very interesting month for SQLAuthority.com we had multiple and various puzzles which everybody participated and lots of interesting conversation which we have shared. Let us start in latest puzzles and continue going down. There are few answers also posted on facebook as well. SQL SERVER – Puzzle Involving NULL – Resolve – Error – Operand data type void type is invalid for sum operator This puzzle involves NULL and throws an error. The challenge is to resolve the error. There are multiple ways to resolve this error. Readers has contributed various methods. Few of them even have supplied the answer why this error is showing up. NULL are very important part of the database and if one of the column has NULL the result can be totally different than the one expected. SQL SERVER – T-SQL Scripts to Find Maximum between Two Numbers I modified script provided by friend to find greatest number between two number. My script has small bug in it. However, lots of readers have suggested better scripts. Madhivanan has written blog post on the subject over here. SQL SERVER – BI Quiz Hint – Performance Tuning Cubes – Hints This quiz is hosted on my friend Jacob‘s site. I have written many hints how one can tune cubes. Now one can take part here and win exciting prizes. SQL SERVER – Solution – Generating Zero Without using Any Numbers in T-SQL Madhivanan has asked very interesting question on his blog about How to Generate Zero without using Any Numbers in T-SQL. He has demonstrated various methods how one can generate Zero. I asked the same question on blog and got many interesting answers which I have shared. SQL SERVER – Solution – Puzzle – Statistics are not Updated but are Created Once I have to accept that this was most difficult puzzle. In this puzzle I have asked even though settings are correct, why statistics of the tables are not getting updated. In this puzzle one is tested with various concepts 1) Indexes, 2) Statistics, 3) database settings etc. There are multiple ways of solving this puzzles. It was interesting as many took interest but only few got it right. SQL SERVER – Question to You – When to use Function and When to use Stored Procedure This is rather straight forward question and not the typical puzzle. The answers from readers are great however, still there is chance of more detailed answers. SQL SERVER – Selecting Domain from Email Address I wrote on selecting domains from email addresses. Madhivanan makes puzzle out of a simple question. He wrote a follow-up post over here. In his post he writes various way how one can find email addresses from list of domains. Well, this is not a puzzle but amazing Guest Post by Feodor Georgiev who has written on subject Job Interviewing the Right Way (and for the Right Reasons). An article which everyone should read. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, Readers Contribution, Readers Question, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Puzzle, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLServer, T SQL, Technology

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• SQL SERVER – Simple Demo of New Cardinality Estimation Features of SQL Server 2014

  - by Pinal Dave

  SQL Server 2014 has new cardinality estimation logic/algorithm. The cardinality estimation logic is responsible for quality of query plans and majorly responsible for improving performance for any query. This logic was not updated for quite a while, but in the latest version of SQL Server 2104 this logic is re-designed. The new logic now incorporates various assumptions and algorithms of OLTP and warehousing workload. Cardinality estimates are a prediction of the number of rows in the query result. The query optimizer uses these estimates to choose a plan for executing the query. The quality of the query plan has a direct impact on improving query performance. ~ Souce MSDN Let us see a quick example of how cardinality improves performance for a query. I will be using the AdventureWorks database for my example. Before we start with this demonstration, remember that even though you have SQL Server 2014 to see the effect of new cardinality estimates, you will need your database compatibility mode set to 120 which is for SQL Server 2014. If your server instance of SQL Server 2014 but you have set up your database compatibility mode to 110 or any other earlier version, you will get performance from your query like older version of SQL Server. Now we will execute following query in two different compatibility mode and see its performance. (Note that my SQL Server instance is of version 2014). USE AdventureWorks2014 GO -- ------------------------------- -- NEW Cardinality Estimation ALTER DATABASE AdventureWorks2014 SET COMPATIBILITY_LEVEL = 120 GO EXEC [dbo].[uspGetManagerEmployees] 44 GO -- ------------------------------- -- Old Cardinality Estimation ALTER DATABASE AdventureWorks2014 SET COMPATIBILITY_LEVEL = 110 GO EXEC [dbo].[uspGetManagerEmployees] 44 GO Result of Statistics IO Compatibility level 120 Table ‘Person’. Scan count 0, logical reads 6, physical reads 0, read-ahead reads 0, lob logical reads 0, lob physical reads 0, lob read-ahead reads 0. Table ‘Employee’. Scan count 2, logical reads 7, physical reads 0, read-ahead reads 0, lob logical reads 0, lob physical reads 0, lob read-ahead reads 0. Table ‘Worktable’. Scan count 0, logical reads 0, physical reads 0, read-ahead reads 0, lob logical reads 0, lob physical reads 0, lob read-ahead reads 0. Table ‘Worktable’. Scan count 2, logical reads 7, physical reads 0, read-ahead reads 0, lob logical reads 0, lob physical reads 0, lob read-ahead reads 0. Compatibility level 110 Table ‘Worktable’. Scan count 2, logical reads 7, physical reads 0, read-ahead reads 0, lob logical reads 0, lob physical reads 0, lob read-ahead reads 0. Table ‘Person’. Scan count 0, logical reads 137, physical reads 0, read-ahead reads 0, lob logical reads 0, lob physical reads 0, lob read-ahead reads 0. Table ‘Employee’. Scan count 2, logical reads 7, physical reads 0, read-ahead reads 0, lob logical reads 0, lob physical reads 0, lob read-ahead reads 0. Table ‘Worktable’. Scan count 0, logical reads 0, physical reads 0, read-ahead reads 0, lob logical reads 0, lob physical reads 0, lob read-ahead reads 0. You will notice in the case of compatibility level 110 there 137 logical read from table person where as in the case of compatibility level 120 there are only 6 physical reads from table person. This drastically improves the performance of the query. If we enable execution plan, we can see the same as well. I hope you will find this quick example helpful. You can read more about this in my latest Pluralsight Course. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com)Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

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