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• Analyzing the errorlog

  - by TiborKaraszi

  How often do you do this? Look over each message (type) in the errorlog file and determine whether this is something you want to act on. Sure, some (but not all) of you have some monitoring solution in place, but are you 100% confident that it really will notify for all messages that you might find interesting? That there isn't even one little message hiding in there that you would find valuable knowing about? Or how about messages that you typically don't are about, but knowing that you have a high...(read more)

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• Updated article "Agent Alerts Management Pack"

  - by TiborKaraszi

  I've just updated the "Agent Alerts Management Pack" found here . I realize that some don't feel confident in reading and executing T-SQL code and they instead prefer to point & click in SSMS instead. So I added two tables with my suggestion on the severity levels and error numbers to define alerts for. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!...(read more)

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• List columns where collation doesn't match database collation

  - by TiborKaraszi

  Below script lists all database/table/column where the column collation doesn't match the database collation. I just wrote it for a migration project and thought I'd share it. I'm sure lots of tings can be improved, but below worked just fine for me for a one-time execution on a number of servers. IF OBJECT_ID ( 'tempdb..#res' ) IS NOT NULL DROP TABLE #res GO DECLARE @db sysname , @sql nvarchar ( 2000 ) CREATE TABLE #res ( server_name sysname , db_name sysname , db_collation sysname , table_name...(read more)

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• List columns where collation doesn't match database collation

  - by TiborKaraszi

  Below script lists all database/table/column where the column collation doesn't match the database collation. I just wrote it for a migration project and thought I'd share it. I'm sure lots of tings can be improved, but below worked just fine for me for a one-time execution on a number of servers. IF OBJECT_ID ( 'tempdb..#res' ) IS NOT NULL DROP TABLE #res GO DECLARE @db sysname , @sql nvarchar ( 2000 ) CREATE TABLE #res ( server_name sysname , db_name sysname , db_collation sysname , table_name...(read more)

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• Restore database to the point of disaster

  - by TiborKaraszi

  This is really basic, but so often overlooked and misunderstood. Basically, we have a database, and something goes south. Can we restore all the way up to that point? I.e., even if the last backup (db or log) is earlier than the disaster? Yes, of course we can (unless for more extreme cases, read on), but many don't realize/do that, for some strange reason. This blog post was inspired from a thread in the MSDN forums, which exposed just this misunderstanding. Basically the scenario was that they...(read more)

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• Restore database to the point of disaster

  - by TiborKaraszi

  This is really basic, but so often overlooked and misunderstood. Basically, we have a database, and something goes south. Can we restore all the way up to that point? I.e., even if the last backup (db or log) is earlier than the disaster? Yes, of course we can (unless for more extreme cases, read on), but many don't realize/do that, for some strange reason. This blog post was inspired from a thread in the MSDN forums, which exposed just this misunderstanding. Basically the scenario was that they...(read more)

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• Are log records removed from ldf file for rollbacks?

  - by TiborKaraszi

  Seems like a simple enough question, right? This question (but more targeted, read on) was raised in an MCT forum. While the discussion was on-going and and I tried to come up with answers, I realized that this question are really several questions. First, what is a rollback? I can see three different types of rollbacks (there might be more, of course): Regular rollback, as in ROLLBACK TRAN (or lost/terminated connection) Rollback done by restore recovery. I.e., end-time of backup included some transaciton...(read more)

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• Point-in-time restore of database backup?

  - by TiborKaraszi

  SQL Server 2005 added the STOPAT option for the RESTORE DATABASE command. This sounds great - we can stop at some point in time during the database backup process was running! Or? No, we can't. Here follows some tech stuff why not, and then what the option is really meant for: A database backup includes all used extents and also all log records that were produced while the backup process was running (possibly older as well, to handle open transactions). When you restore such a backup, SQL Server...(read more)

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• Analyzing the errorlog

  - by TiborKaraszi

  How often do you do this? Look over each message (type) in the errorlog file and determine whether this is something you want to act on. Sure, some (but not all) of you have some monitoring solution in place, but are you 100% confident that it really will notify for all messages that you might find interesting? That there isn't even one little message hiding in there that you would find valuable knowing about? Or how about messages that you typically don't are about, but knowing that you have a high...(read more)

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• Are we Borg?

  - by TiborKaraszi

  Is it time to stop remeber things? For real, this time? Today I needed to find two pieces of SQL Server related information. One was straight foward, I posted it on #sqlhelp on twitter and a minute or so later I had the answer. The other was a bit more involved and I asked around in our MVP mail list - a couple of hours later I had bunch of suggestions and tips. These are only examples, it could just as well have been some web-forum, newsgroup, or some other forum. We've all had cases like this,...(read more)

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• How selective do we need to be for an index to be used?

  - by TiborKaraszi

  You know the answer already: It depends. But I often see some percentage value quoted and the point of this post is to show that there is no such percentage value. To get the most out of this blog post, you should understand the basic structure for an index, i.e. how the b+ tree look like. You should also understand the difference between a clustered and a non-clustered index. In essence, you should be able to visualize these structures and searches through them as you read the text. If you find...(read more)

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• Upgrading from Express Edition to Standard Edition

  - by TiborKaraszi

  Say you encounter an SQL Server which is Express Edition, and it really should have been some higher edition. Sounds familiar? It is common for me as a consultant to find plenty of SQL Servers at a customer's site. Many of the databases in these will be moved (typically using backup and restore) to a "real" SQL Server. But in some cases, this might not be desirable. You want to convert the whole instance, from Express to a "real" SQL Server edition. I'm attending a great SharePoint course for Daniel...(read more)

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• What does this Express Edition look like, anyhow?

  - by TiborKaraszi

  Chances are that you rarely get to see the Express Edition of SQL Server if you mainly work with servers. This blog post is inspired from a forum discussion where some functionality is missing in SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) and I suspected that the tools were installed as a Basic installation instead of Complete installation. So how do I check that? Difficult if I don’t have such an install to look at. I’m training this week and have a few spare machines to play with so I went ahead and installed...(read more)

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• Backup and the evil RETAINDAYS option

  - by TiborKaraszi

  "So what bad has this option done?", you probably as yourself. Well, not much, but I find it evil because it confuses people, especially those new to SQL Server. I have many times seen people specifying something like 3, and expect SQL Server to keep the three most recent backups in the backup file and overwrite everything which is older than that. Well, that is not what the option does. But before we go into details, let's look at an example backup command which is using this option: BACKUP DATABASE...(read more)

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• Updated sp_indexinfo

  - by TiborKaraszi

  It was time to give sp_indexinfo some love. The procedure is meant to be the "ultimate" index information procedure, providing lots of information about all indexes in a database or all indexes for a certain table. Here is what I did in this update: Changed the second query that retrieves missing index information so it generates the index name (based on schema name, table name and column named - limited to 128 characters). Re-arranged and shortened column names to make output more compact and more...(read more)

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• Mirroring: what happens if principal loses contact with both mirror and wittness?

  - by TiborKaraszi

  Imagine a database mirroring setup where you have two LANs with a WAN link in between. Let's call them site A and site B. Say that principal is currently in site A, and both mirror and witness are in site B. I.e., we are running database mirroring with a witness, and assuming we are running safety FULL (synchronous), we have auto-fail over. Now, what is really fail over when it comes to mirroring? the simple answer is that the mirror will finish the recovery process (UNDO) and make the database available....(read more)

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• How selective do we need to be for an index to be used?

  - by TiborKaraszi

  You know the answer already: It depends. But I often see some percentage value quoted and the point of this post is to show that there is no such percentage value. To get the most out of this blog post, you should understand the basic structure for an index, i.e. how the b+ tree look like. You should also understand the difference between a clustered and a non-clustered index. In essence, you should be able to visualize these structures and searches through them as you read the text. If you find...(read more)

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• Rebuilding system databases in 2008 R2

  - by TiborKaraszi

  All my attempts so far to rebuild the system databases in 2008 R2 has failed. I first tried to run setup from below path: C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\100\Setup Bootstrap\Release But above turns out to be the 2008 setup program, not 2008R2 setup; even though I have no 2008 instanced installed (I have only R2 instances installed). Apparently, the 2008 setup program does a version check of the instance to be rebuilt and since it is > 10.50.0, the rebuild fails. Books Online for R2 the section...(read more)

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• Are non-modified FILESTREAM files excluded from DIFFERENTIAL backups?

  - by TiborKaraszi

  Short answer seems to be "yes". I got this from a forum post today, so I thought I'd test it out. Basically, the discussion is whether we can somehow cut down backup sizes for filestream data (assumption is that filestream data isn't modified very frequently). I've seen this a few times now, and often suggestions arises to somehow exclude the filestream data and fo file level backup of those files. But that would more or less leaves us with the problem of the "old" solution: potential inconsistency....(read more)

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• Check for Instant File Initialization

  - by TiborKaraszi

  Instant File initialization, IFI, is generally a good thing to have. Check out this earlier blog post of mine f you don't know what IFI is and why it is a good thing: blog . The purpose of this blog post is to provide a simple script you can use to check if you have IFI turned on. Note that the script below uses undocumented commands, and might take a while if you have a large errorlog file... USE MASTER ; SET NOCOUNT ON -- *** WARNING: Undocumented commands used in this script !!! *** -- --Exit...(read more)

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• Wait random number of minutes

  - by TiborKaraszi

  Why on earth would you want to do that? you ask. Say you have a job that is scheduled to start at the same time over a number of servers. This might be because you have an SQL Server Master/Target server environment (MSX/TSX) or you quite simply script a job and execute that script on several servers. You probably want to spread the load on your SAN and virtual machine host a bit. This is the exact reason I use this procedure. I frequently use MSX servers and I usually add a job step (executing this...(read more)

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• Updated sp_indexinfo

  - by TiborKaraszi

  It was time to give sp_indexinfo some love. The procedure is meant to be the "ultimate" index information procedure, providing lots of information about all indexes in a database or all indexes for a certain table. Here is what I did in this update: Changed the second query that retrieves missing index information so it generates the index name (based on schema name, table name and column named - limited to 128 characters). Re-arranged and shortened column names to make output more compact and more...(read more)

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• SQL Live Monitor

  - by TiborKaraszi

  I just found this one out there and wanted to share it. It connects to an instance and show you a bunch of figures. Nothing you can't extract yourself with SQL queries, but sometimes it is just nice to have one tool which is very easy to use. Here's what it looks like when connecting to an instance with no load on it: As you can see, there are some hyperlinked pages as well, and there are also some interesting options (like logging to CSV or for PAL analysis) under the "Option" button. One more thing...(read more)

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