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• PowerShell: Read Excel to Create Inserts

  - by BuckWoody

  I’m writing a series of articles on how to migrate “departmental” data into SQL Server. I also hold workshops on the entire process – from discovering that the data exists to the modeling process and then how to design the Extract, Transform and Load (ETL) process. Finally I write about (and teach) a few methods on actually moving the data. One of those options is to use PowerShell. There are a lot of ways even with that choice, but the one I show is to read two columns from the spreadsheet and output statements that would insert the data using a stored procedure. Of course, you could re-write this as INSERT statements, out to a text file for bcp, or even use a database connection in the script to move the data directly from Excel into SQL Server. This snippet won’t run on your system, of course – it assumes a Microsoft Office Excel 2007 spreadsheet located at c:\temp called VendorList.xlsx. It looks for a tab in that spreadsheet called Vendors. The statement that does the writing just uses one column: Vendor Code. Here’s the breakdown of what I’m doing: In the first block, I connect to Microsoft Office Excel. That connection string is specific to Excel 2007, so if you need a different version you’ll need to look that up. In the second block I set up a selection from the entire spreadsheet based on that tab. Note that if you’re only after certain data you shouldn’t get the whole spreadsheet – that’s just good practice. In the next block I create the text I want, inserting the Vendor Code field as I go. Finally I close the connection. Enjoy! $ExcelConnection= New-Object -com "ADODB.Connection" $ExcelFile="c:\temp\VendorList.xlsx" $ExcelConnection.Open("Provider=Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0;` Data Source=$ExcelFile;Extended Properties=Excel 12.0;") $strQuery="Select * from [Vendors$]" $ExcelRecordSet=$ExcelConnection.Execute($strQuery) do { Write-Host "EXEC sp_InsertVendors '" $ExcelRecordSet.Fields.Item("Vendor Code").Value "'" $ExcelRecordSet.MoveNext()} Until ($ExcelRecordSet.EOF) $ExcelConnection.Close() Script Disclaimer, for people who need to be told this sort of thing: Never trust any script, including those that you find here, until you understand exactly what it does and how it will act on your systems. Always check the script on a test system or Virtual Machine, not a production system. All scripts on this site are performed by a professional stunt driver on a closed course. Your mileage may vary. Void where prohibited. Offer good for a limited time only. Keep out of reach of small children. Do not operate heavy machinery while using this script. If you experience blurry vision, indigestion or diarrhea during the operation of this script, see a physician immediately. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• PowerShell – Show a Notification Balloon

  - by BuckWoody

  In my presentations for PowerShell I sometimes want to start a process (like a backup) that will take some time. I normally pop up a notification “balloon” at the start, and then do the bulk of the work, and then pop up a balloon at the end to let me know it’s done. You can actually try out this little sample (on a test system, of course) without any other code to see what it does. Then just put the other PowerShell commands in the #Do Some Work part. Oh – throw an icon (.ico file) in a c:\temp directory or point that somewhere else. (No, this probably isn’t original. Can’t remember where I saw the original code, but I’ve modified it a bit anyway, so if you’re the original author and this looks slightly familiar, post a comment.) [void] [System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("System.Windows.Forms") $objBalloon = New-Object System.Windows.Forms.NotifyIcon $objBalloon.Icon = "C:\temp\Folder.ico" # You can use the value Info, Warning, Error $objBalloon.BalloonTipIcon = "Info" # Put what you want to say here for the Start of the process $objBalloon.BalloonTipTitle = "Begin Title" $objBalloon.BalloonTipText = "Begin Message" $objBalloon.Visible = $True $objBalloon.ShowBalloonTip(10000) # Do some work # Put what you want to say here for the completion of the process $objBalloon.BalloonTipTitle = "End Title" $objBalloon.BalloonTipText = "End Message" $objBalloon.Visible = $True $objBalloon.ShowBalloonTip(10000) Script Disclaimer, for people who need to be told this sort of thing: Never trust any script, including those that you find here, until you understand exactly what it does and how it will act on your systems. Always check the script on a test system or Virtual Machine, not a production system. Yes, there are always multiple ways to do things, and this script may not work in every situation, for everything. It’s just a script, people. All scripts on this site are performed by a professional stunt driver on a closed course. Your mileage may vary. Void where prohibited. Offer good for a limited time only. Keep out of reach of small children. Do not operate heavy machinery while using this script. If you experience blurry vision, indigestion or diarrhea during the operation of this script, see a physician immediately. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• Changes to the LINQ-to-StreamInsight Dialect

  - by Roman Schindlauer

  In previous versions of StreamInsight (1.0 through 2.0), CepStream<> represents temporal streams of many varieties: Streams with ‘open’ inputs (e.g., those defined and composed over CepStream<T>.Create(string streamName) Streams with ‘partially bound’ inputs (e.g., those defined and composed over CepStream<T>.Create(Type adapterFactory, …)) Streams with fully bound inputs (e.g., those defined and composed over To*Stream – sequences or DQC) The stream may be embedded (where Server.Create is used) The stream may be remote (where Server.Connect is used) When adding support for new programming primitives in StreamInsight 2.1, we faced a choice: Add a fourth variety (use CepStream<> to represent streams that are bound the new programming model constructs), or introduce a separate type that represents temporal streams in the new user model. We opted for the latter. Introducing a new type has the effect of reducing the number of (confusing) runtime failures due to inappropriate uses of CepStream<> instances in the incorrect context. The new types are: IStreamable<>, which logically represents a temporal stream. IQStreamable<> : IStreamable<>, which represents a queryable temporal stream. Its relationship to IStreamable<> is analogous to the relationship of IQueryable<> to IEnumerable<>. The developer can compose temporal queries over remote stream sources using this type. The syntax of temporal queries composed over IQStreamable<> is mostly consistent with the syntax of our existing CepStream<>-based LINQ provider. However, we have taken the opportunity to refine certain aspects of the language surface. Differences are outlined below. Because 2.1 introduces new types to represent temporal queries, the changes outlined in this post do no impact existing StreamInsight applications using the existing types! SelectMany StreamInsight does not support the SelectMany operator in its usual form (which is analogous to SQL’s “CROSS APPLY” operator): static IEnumerable<R> SelectMany<T, R>(this IEnumerable<T> source, Func<T, IEnumerable<R>> collectionSelector) It instead uses SelectMany as a convenient syntactic representation of an inner join. The parameter to the selector function is thus unavailable. Because the parameter isn’t supported, its type in StreamInsight 1.0 – 2.0 wasn’t carefully scrutinized. Unfortunately, the type chosen for the parameter is nonsensical to LINQ programmers: static CepStream<R> SelectMany<T, R>(this CepStream<T> source, Expression<Func<CepStream<T>, CepStream<R>>> streamSelector) Using Unit as the type for the parameter accurately reflects the StreamInsight’s capabilities: static IQStreamable<R> SelectMany<T, R>(this IQStreamable<T> source, Expression<Func<Unit, IQStreamable<R>>> streamSelector) For queries that succeed – that is, queries that do not reference the stream selector parameter – there is no difference between the code written for the two overloads: from x in xs from y in ys select f(x, y) Top-K The Take operator used in StreamInsight causes confusion for LINQ programmers because it is applied to the (unbounded) stream rather than the (bounded) window, suggesting that the query as a whole will return k rows: (from win in xs.SnapshotWindow() from x in win orderby x.A select x.B).Take(k) The use of SelectMany is also unfortunate in this context because it implies the availability of the window parameter within the remainder of the comprehension. The following compiles but fails at runtime: (from win in xs.SnapshotWindow() from x in win orderby x.A select win).Take(k) The Take operator in 2.1 is applied to the window rather than the stream: Before After (from win in xs.SnapshotWindow() from x in win orderby x.A select x.B).Take(k) from win in xs.SnapshotWindow() from b in     (from x in win     orderby x.A     select x.B).Take(k) select b Multicast We are introducing an explicit multicast operator in order to preserve expression identity, which is important given the semantics about moving code to and from StreamInsight. This also better matches existing LINQ dialects, such as Reactive. This pattern enables expressing multicasting in two ways: Implicit Explicit var ys = from x in xs          where x.A > 1          select x; var zs = from y1 in ys          from y2 in ys.ShiftEventTime(_ => TimeSpan.FromSeconds(1))          select y1 + y2; var ys = from x in xs          where x.A > 1          select x; var zs = ys.Multicast(ys1 =>     from y1 in ys1     from y2 in ys1.ShiftEventTime(_ => TimeSpan.FromSeconds(1))     select y1 + y2; Notice the product translates an expression using implicit multicast into an expression using the explicit multicast operator. The user does not see this translation. Default window policies Only default window policies are supported in the new surface. Other policies can be simulated by using AlterEventLifetime. Before After xs.SnapshotWindow(     WindowInputPolicy.ClipToWindow,     SnapshotWindowInputPolicy.Clip) xs.SnapshotWindow() xs.TumblingWindow(     TimeSpan.FromSeconds(1),     HoppingWindowOutputPolicy.PointAlignToWindowEnd) xs.TumblingWindow(     TimeSpan.FromSeconds(1)) xs.TumblingWindow(     TimeSpan.FromSeconds(1),     HoppingWindowOutputPolicy.ClipToWindowEnd) Not supported … LeftAntiJoin Representation of LASJ as a correlated sub-query in the LINQ surface is problematic as the StreamInsight engine does not support correlated sub-queries (see discussion of SelectMany). The current syntax requires the introduction of an otherwise unsupported ‘IsEmpty()’ operator. As a result, the pattern is not discoverable and implies capabilities not present in the server. The direct representation of LASJ is used instead: Before After from x in xs where     (from y in ys     where x.A > y.B     select y).IsEmpty() select x xs.LeftAntiJoin(ys, (x, y) => x.A > y.B) from x in xs where     (from y in ys     where x.A == y.B     select y).IsEmpty() select x xs.LeftAntiJoin(ys, x => x.A, y => y.B) ApplyWithUnion The ApplyWithUnion methods have been deprecated since their signatures are redundant given the standard SelectMany overloads: Before After xs.GroupBy(x => x.A).ApplyWithUnion(gs => from win in gs.SnapshotWindow() select win.Count()) xs.GroupBy(x => x.A).SelectMany(     gs =>     from win in gs.SnapshotWindow()     select win.Count()) xs.GroupBy(x => x.A).ApplyWithUnion(gs => from win in gs.SnapshotWindow() select win.Count(), r => new { r.Key, Count = r.Payload }) from x in xs group x by x.A into gs from win in gs.SnapshotWindow() select new { gs.Key, Count = win.Count() } Alternate UDO syntax The representation of UDOs in the StreamInsight LINQ dialect confuses cardinalities. Based on the semantics of user-defined operators in StreamInsight, one would expect to construct queries in the following form: from win in xs.SnapshotWindow() from y in MyUdo(win) select y Instead, the UDO proxy method is referenced within a projection, and the (many) results returned by the user code are automatically flattened into a stream: from win in xs.SnapshotWindow() select MyUdo(win) The “many-or-one” confusion is exemplified by the following example that compiles but fails at runtime: from win in xs.SnapshotWindow() select MyUdo(win) + win.Count() The above query must fail because the UDO is in fact returning many values per window while the count aggregate is returning one. Original syntax New alternate syntax from win in xs.SnapshotWindow() select win.UdoProxy(1) from win in xs.SnapshotWindow() from y in win.UserDefinedOperator(() => new Udo(1)) select y -or- from win in xs.SnapshotWindow() from y in win.UdoMacro(1) select y Notice that this formulation also sidesteps the dynamic type pitfalls of the existing “proxy method” approach to UDOs, in which the type of the UDO implementation (TInput, TOuput) and the type of its constructor arguments (TConfig) need to align in a precise and non-obvious way with the argument and return types for the corresponding proxy method. UDSO syntax UDSO currently leverages the DataContractSerializer to clone initial state for logical instances of the user operator. Initial state will instead be described by an expression in the new LINQ surface. Before After xs.Scan(new Udso()) xs.Scan(() => new Udso()) Name changes ShiftEventTime => AlterEventStartTime: The alter event lifetime overload taking a new start time value has been renamed. CountByStartTimeWindow => CountWindow

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

  - by SQLOS Team

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

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• Windows in StreamInsight: Hopping vs. Snapshot

  - by Roman Schindlauer

  Three weeks ago, we explained the basic concept of windows in StreamInsight: defining sets of events that serve as arguments for set-based operations, like aggregations. Today, we want to discuss the so-called Hopping Windows and compare them with Snapshot Windows. We will compare these two, because they can serve similar purposes with different behaviors; we will discuss the remaining window type, Count Windows, another time. Hopping (and its syntactic-sugar-sister Tumbling) windows are probably the most straightforward windowing concept in StreamInsight. A hopping window is defined by its length, and the offset from one window to the next. They are aligned with some absolute point on the timeline (which can also be given as a parameter to the window) and create sets of events. The diagram below shows an example of a hopping window with length of 1h and hop size (the offset) of 15 minutes, hence creating overlapping windows:   Two aspects in this diagram are important: Since this window is overlapping, an event can fall into more than one windows. If an (interval) event spans a window boundary, its lifetime will be clipped to the window, before it is passed to the set-based operation. That’s the default and currently only available window input policy. (This should only concern you if you are using a time-sensitive user-defined aggregate or operator.) The set-based operation will be applied to each of these sets, yielding a result. This result is: A single scalar value in case of built-in or user-defined aggregates. A subset of the input payloads, in case of the TopK operator. Arbitrary events, when using a user-defined operator. The timestamps of the result are almost always the ones of the windows. Only the user-defined  operator can create new events with timestamps. (However, even these event lifetimes are subject to the window’s output policy, which is currently always to clip to the window end.) Let’s assume we were calculating the sum over some payload field: var result = from window in source.HoppingWindow( TimeSpan.FromHours(1), TimeSpan.FromMinutes(15), HoppingWindowOutputPolicy.ClipToWindowEnd) select new { avg = window.Avg(e => e.Value) }; Now each window is reflected by one result event:   As you can see, the window definition defines the output frequency. No matter how many or few events we got from the input, this hopping window will produce one result every 15 minutes – except for those windows that do not contain any events at all, because StreamInsight window operations are empty-preserving (more about that another time). The “forced” output for every window can become a performance issue if you have a real-time query with many events in a wide group & apply – let me explain: imagine you have a lot of events that you group by and then aggregate within each group – classical streaming pattern. The hopping window produces a result in each group at exactly the same point in time for all groups, since the window boundaries are aligned with the timeline, not with the event timestamps. This means that the query output will become very bursty, delivering the results of all the groups at the same point in time. This becomes especially obvious if the events are long-lasting, spanning multiple windows each, so that the produced result events do not change their value very often. In such a case, a snapshot window can remedy. Snapshot windows are more difficult to explain than hopping windows: they represent those periods in time, when no event changes occur. In other words, if you mark all event start and and times on your timeline, then you are looking at all snapshot window boundaries:   If your events are never overlapping, the snapshot window will not make much sense. It is commonly used together with timestamp modification, which make it a very powerful tool. Or as Allan Mitchell expressed in in a recent tweet: “I used to look at SnapshotWindow() with disdain. Now she is my mistress, the one I turn to in times of trouble and need”. Let’s look at a simple example: I want to compute the average of some value in my events over the last minute. I don’t want this output be produced at fixed intervals, but at soon as it changes (that’s the true event-driven spirit!). The snapshot window will include all currently active event at each point in time, hence we need to extend our original events’ lifetimes into the future: Applying the Snapshot window on these events, it will appear to be “looking back into the past”: If you look at the result produced in this diagram, you can easily prove that, at each point in time, the current event value represents the average of all original input event within the last minute. Here is the LINQ representation of that query, applying the lifetime extension before the snapshot window: var result = from window in source .AlterEventDuration(e => TimeSpan.FromMinutes(1)) .SnapshotWindow(SnapshotWindowOutputPolicy.Clip) select new { avg = window.Avg(e => e.Value) }; With more complex modifications of the event lifetimes you can achieve many more query patterns. For instance “running totals” by keeping the event start times, but snapping their end times to some fixed time, like the end of the day. Each snapshot then “sees” all events that have happened in the respective time period so far. Regards, The StreamInsight Team

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• The 2013 PASS Summit - Day 2

  - by AllenMWhite

  Good morning! It's Day 2 of the PASS Summit 2013 and it should be a busy one. Douglas McDowell, EVP Finance of PASS opened up the keynote to welcome people and talked about the financial status of the organization. Last year's Business Analytics Conference left the organization $100,000 ahead, and he went on to show the overall financial health, which is very good at this point. Bill Graziano came out to thank Doug, Rob Farley and Rushabh Mehta for their service on the board, as they step down from...(read more)

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• Automated backups for Windows Azure SQL Database

  - by Greg Low

  One of the questions that I've often been asked is about how you can backup databases in Windows Azure SQL Database. What we have had access to was the ability to export a database to a BACPAC. A BACPAC is basically just a zip file that contains a bunch of metadata along with a set of bcp files for each of the tables in the database. Each table in the database is exported one after the other, so this does not produce a transactionally-consistent backup at a specific point in time. To get a transactionally-consistent copy, you need a database that isn't in use.The easiest way to get a database that isn't in use is to use CREATE DATABASE AS COPY OF. This creates a new database as a transactionally-consistent copy of the database that you are copying. You can then use the export options to get a consistent BACPAC created.Previously, I've had to automate this process by myself. Given there was also no SQL Agent in Azure, I used a job in my on-premises SQL Server to do this, using a linked server configuration.Now there's a much simpler way. Windows Azure SQL Database now supports an automated export function. On the Configuration tab for the database, you need to enable the Automated Export function. You can configure how often the operation is performed for you, and which storage account will be used for the backups.It's important to consider the cost impacts of this as well. You are charged for how ever many databases are on your server on a given day. So if you enable a daily backup, you will double your database costs. Do not schedule the backups just before midnight UTC, as that could cause you to have three databases each day instead of one.This is a much needed addition to the capabilities. Scott Guthrie also posted about some other notable changes today, including a preview of a new premium offering for SQL Database. In addition to the Web and Business editions, there will now be a Premium edition that has reserved (rather than shared) resources. You can read about it all in Scott's post here: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2013/07/23/windows-azure-july-updates-sql-database-traffic-manager-autoscale-virtual-machines.aspx

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• Disruption

  - by andyleonard

  Introduction This post is the thirty-first part of a ramble-rant about the software business. The current posts in this series are: Goodwill, Negative and Positive Visions, Quests, Missions Right, Wrong, and Style Follow Me Balance, Part 1 Balance, Part 2 Definition of a Great Team The 15-Minute Meeting Metaproblems: Drama The Right Question Software is Organic, Part 1 Metaproblem: Terror I Don't Work On My Car A Turning Point Human Doings Everything Changes Getting It Right The First Time One-Time...(read more)

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• Run your cpus fast but not hot

  - by John Paul Cook

  Paul Randall recently blogged about the importance of checking to make sure you are getting every bit of speed you should from your cpus. He recommended that people use CPU-Z , a free tool I recommend and have been using for many years. Power saving features in a cpu are great for laptops. Battery life is greatly extended when a processor isn't running to the max all of the time. But this isn't necessarily a good thing for a server. As Paul and others have pointed out, the processor might not get...(read more)

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• The Power of Goals

  - by BuckWoody

  Every year we read blogs, articles, magazines, hear news stories and blurbs on making New Year’s Resolutions. Well, I for one don’t do that. I do something else. Each year, on January 1, my wife, daughter and I get up early - like before 6:00 A.M. - and find a breakfast place that’s open. When I used to live in Safety Harbor, Florida, that was the “Paradise Café”, which has some of the best waffles around…but I digress. We find that restaurant and have a great breakfast while everyone else is recuperating from the night before. And we bring along a worn leather book that we’ve been writing in since my daughter wasn’t even old enough to read. It’s our book of Goals. A resolution, as it is purely defined, is a decision to change, stop or start an action. It has a sense of continuance, and that’s the issue. Some people decide things like “I’m going to lose weight” or “I’m going to spend more time with my family or hobby”. But a goal is different. A goal tends to have a defined start and end point. It’s something that can be measured. So each year on January 1 we sit down with the little leather book and we make a few - and only a few - individual and family goals. Sometimes it’s to exercise three times a week at the gym, sometimes it’s to save a certain percentage of income, and sometimes it’s to give away some of our possessions or to help someone we know in a specific way. Each person is responsible for their own goals - coming up with them, and coming up with a plan to meet them. Then we write it down in the little leather book. But it doesn’t end there. Each month, we grab the little leather book and read out the goals from that year to each person with a question or two: How are you doing on your goal? And what are you doing about reaching it? Can I help? Am I helping? At the end of the year, we put a checkmark by the goals we reached, and an X by the ones we didn’t. There’s no judgment, there’s no statements, each person is just expected to handle the success or failure in their own way. We also have family goals, and those we work on together. This might seem a little “corny” to some people. “I don’t need to write goals down” they say, “I keep track in my head of the things I do all the time. That’s silly.” But let me give you a little challenge: find a book, get with your family, and write down the things you want to do by the next January 1. Each month, look at the book. You can make goals for your career, your education, your spiritual side, your family, whatever. But if you make your goals realistic, think them through, and think about how you will achieve them, you will be surprised by the power of written goals.

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• SSISDB Analysis Script on Gist

  - by Davide Mauri

  I've created two simple, yet very useful, script to extract some useful data to quickly monitor SSIS packages execution in SQL Server 2012 and after.get-ssis-execution-status  get-ssis-data-pumped-rows  I've started to use gist since it comes very handy, for this "quick'n'dirty" scripts and snippets, and you can find the above scripts and others (hopefully the number will increase over time...I plan to use gist to store all the code snippet I used to store in a dedicated folder on my machine) there.Now, back to the aforementioned scripts. The first one ("get-ssis-execution-status") returns a list of all executed and executing packages along with latest successful and running executions (so that on can have an idea of the expected run time)error messageswarning messages related to duplicate rows found in lookupsthe second one ("get-ssis-data-pumped-rows") returns information on DataFlows status. Here there's something interesting, IMHO. Nothing exceptional, let it be clear, but nonetheless useful: the script extract information on destinations and row sent to destinations right from the messages produced by the DataFlow component. This helps to quickly understand how many rows as been sent and where...without having to increase the logging level.Enjoy! PSI haven't tested it with SQL Server 2014, but AFAIK they should work without problems. Of course any feedback on this is welcome. 

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• Quick Tip - Speed a Slow Restore from the Transaction Log

  - by KKline

  Here's a quick tip for you: During some restore operations on Microsoft SQL Server, the transaction log redo step might be taking an unusually long time. Depending somewhat on the version and edition of SQL Server you've installed, you may be able to increase performance by tinkering with the readahead performance for the redo operations. To do this, you should use the MAXTRANSFERSIZE parameter of the RESTORE statement. For example, if you set MAXTRANSFERSIZE=1048576, it'll use 1MB buffers. If you...(read more)

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• Differences in documentation for sys.dm_exec_requests

  - by AaronBertrand

  I've already complained about this on Connect ( see #641790 ), but I just wanted to point out that if you're trying to make sense of the sys.dm_exec_requests document and what it lists as the commands supported by the percent_complete column, you should check which version of the documentation you're reading. I noticed the following discrepancies. I can't explain why certain operations are missing, except that the Denali topic was generated from the 2008 topic (or maybe from the 2008 R2 topic before...(read more)

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• Two BULK INSERT issues I worked around recently

  - by AaronBertrand

  Since I am still afraid of SSIS, and because I am dealing mostly with CSV files and table structures that are relatively simple and require only one of the three letters in the acronym "ETL," I find myself using BULK INSERT a lot. I have been meaning to switch to using CLR, since I am doing a lot of file system querying using xp_cmdshell, but I haven't had the chance to really explore it yet. I know, a lot of you are probably thinking, wow, look at all those bad habits. But for every person thinking...(read more)

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• Speaking this week at Richmond SQL Server User Group

  - by drsql

  Thursday night, at 6:00 (or so) I will be speaking in Richmond ( http://richmondsql.org/cs2007/ ), talking about How to Implement a Hierarchy using SQL Server. The abstract is: One of the most common structures you will come across in the real world is a hierarchy (either a single parent "tree" or a multi-parent "graph"). Many systems will implement the obvious examples, such as a corporate managerial structure or a bill of materials. It turns out that almost any many-to-many relationship can be...(read more)

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• TechEd North America 2012 – Day 1 #msTechEd

  - by Marco Russo (SQLBI)

  Yesterday I and Alberto delivered the PreCon day about BISM Tabular in Analysis Services 2012. We received very good feedback and now I am looking forward to meet people that read our blogs and our books! Ping me on Twitter at @marcorus if you want to contact me during the conference. This is my schedule for the next few days: ·         Monday, June 11, 2012 o   10:30am-12:30pm I will be in the Technical Learning Center area, at the Breaktrough Insights (station #8) in the Database & Business Intelligence area (dedicated to SQL Server 2012) o   I will try to watch some sessions in the afternoon o   6:30pm-7:00pm I will be at the O’Reilly booth meeting book readers and doing some book signing ·         Tuesday, June 12, 2012 o   12:30pm-3:30pm I will be in the Technical Learning Center area, at the Breaktrough Insights (station #8) in the Database & Business Intelligence area (dedicated to SQL Server 2012) o   5:00pm-6:15pm I will attend the Alberto’s session DBI413 Many-to-Many Relationships in BISM Tabular (room S330E) o   6:15pm-9:00pm Community Night & Ask the Experts, we’ll discuss about Analysis Services, Tabular and Multidimensional! ·         Wednesday, June 13, 2012 o   11:15am-11:30am Don’t miss this special demo session at the Private Cloud, Public Cloud and Data Platform Theater in the Technical Learning Center area (next to the SQL Server 2012 zone). I and Alberto will present Querying multi-billion rows with many to many relationships in SSAS Tabular (xVelocity) and you’re invited to guess the response time of DAX queries on a 4 billion rows table with many-to-many relationships before we run them! We’ll give away some 8GB USB key if you guess the right answer! o   12:30pm-1:00pm I and Alberto will have a book signing session at the TechEd Bookstore o   3:00pm-5:00pm I will be in the Technical Learning Center area, at the Breaktrough Insights (station #8) in the Database & Business Intelligence area (dedicated to SQL Server 2012) ·         Thursday, June 14, 2012 o   2:45pm-4:00pm I will deliver my DBI319 BISM: Multidimensional vs. Tabular breakthrough session in room S320A. I expect many questions here! And if you want to learn more about Analysis Services Tabular, we announced two more online sessions of our SSAS Tabular Workshop: ·         July 2-3, 2012 - SSAS Workshop Online - America's time zone ·         September 3-4, 2012 - SSAS Workshop Online - America's time zone Register now if you are interested, the early bird for the July session expires on June 19, 2012! I will also deliver a SSAS Workshop in Oslo (Norway) on August 27-28, 2012.  

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• Use Those Schemas, People!

  - by BuckWoody

  Database Schemas are just containers – they aren’t users or anything else – think of a sub-directory on the hard drive. In early versions of SQL Server we “hid” schemas, placing all objects under “dbo”, which gave the erroneous perception that Schemas are users. In SQL Server 2005, we “un-hid” or re-introduced schemas within the database. Users can have a default schema (a place where their new objects go), you can add new schemas and transfer objects between them, and they have many other benefits. But I still see a lot of applications, developed by shops I know as well as vendors, that don’t make use of a Schema. Everything is piled under dbo. I completely understand this – since permissions can be granted to a schema, they feel a lot like a user, so it’s just easier not to worry about both users and schemas when you create a database. But if you’ll use them properly you can make your application more understandable and portable. You should at least take a few minutes and read more about them – you owe it to your users: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms190387.aspx Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• Part 1 - Load Testing In The Cloud

  - by Tarun Arora

  Azure is fascinating, but even more fascinating is the marriage of Azure and TFS! Introduction Recently a client I worked for had 2 major business critical applications being delivered, with very little time budgeted for Performance testing, we immediately hit a bottleneck when the performance testing phase started, the in house infrastructure team could not support the hardware requirements in the short notice. It was suggested that the performance testing be performed on one of the QA environments which was a fraction of the production environment. This didn’t seem right, the team decided to turn to the cloud. The team took advantage of the elasticity offered by Azure, starting with a single test agent which was provisioned and ready for use with in 30 minutes the team scaled up to 17 test agents to perform a very comprehensive performance testing cycle. Issues were identified and resolved but the highlight was that the cost of running the ‘test rig’ proved to be less than if hosted on premise by the infrastructure team. Thank you for taking the time out to read this blog post, in the series of posts, I’ll try and cover the start to end of everything you need to know to use Azure to build your Test Rig in the cloud. But Why Azure? I have my own Data Centre… If the environment is provisioned in your own datacentre, - No matter what level of service agreement you may have with your infrastructure team there will be down time when the environment is patched - How fast can you scale up or down the environments (keeping the enterprise processes in mind) Administration, Cost, Flexibility and Scalability are the areas you would want to think around when taking the decision between your own Data Centre and Azure! How is Microsoft's Public Cloud Offering different from Amazon’s Public Cloud Offering? Microsoft's offering of the Cloud is a hybrid of Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) which distinguishes Microsoft's offering from other providers such as Amazon (Amazon only offers IaaS). PaaS – Platform as a Service IaaS – Infrastructure as a Service Fills the needs of those who want to build and run custom applications as services. Similar to traditional hosting, where a business will use the hosted environment as a logical extension of the on-premises datacentre. A service provider offers a pre-configured, virtualized application server environment to which applications can be deployed by the development staff. Since the service providers manage the hardware (patching, upgrades and so forth), as well as application server uptime, the involvement of IT pros is minimized. On-demand scalability combined with hardware and application server management relieves developers from infrastructure concerns and allows them to focus on building applications. The servers (physical and virtual) are rented on an as-needed basis, and the IT professionals who manage the infrastructure have full control of the software configuration. This kind of flexibility increases the complexity of the IT environment, as customer IT professionals need to maintain the servers as though they are on-premises. The maintenance activities may include patching and upgrades of the OS and the application server, load balancing, failover clustering of database servers, backup and restoration, and any other activities that mitigate the risks of hardware and software failures.   The biggest advantage with PaaS is that you do not have to worry about maintaining the environment, you can focus all your time in solving the business problems with your solution rather than worrying about maintaining the environment. If you decide to use a VM Role on Azure, you are asking for IaaS, more on this later. A nice blog post here on the difference between Saas, PaaS and IaaS. Now that we are convinced why we should be turning to the cloud and why in specific Azure, let’s discuss about the Test Rig. The Load Test Rig – Topology Now the moment of truth, Of course a big part of getting value from cloud computing is identifying the most adequate workloads to take to the cloud, so I’ve decided to try to make a Load Testing rig where the Agents are running on Windows Azure.   I’ll talk you through the above Topology, - User: User kick starts the load test run from the developer workstation on premise. This passes the request to the Test Controller. - Test Controller: The Test Controller is on premise connected to the same domain as the developer workstation. As soon as the Test Controller receives the request it makes use of the Windows Azure Connect service to orchestrate the test responsibilities to all the Test Agents. The Windows Azure Connect endpoint software must be active on all Azure instances and on the Controller machine as well. This allows IP connectivity between them and, given that the firewall is properly configured, allows the Controller to send work loads to the agents. In parallel, the Controller will collect the performance data from the agents, using the traditional WMI mechanisms. - Test Agents: The Test Agents are on the Windows Azure Public Cloud, as soon as the test controller issues instructions to the test agents, the test agents start executing the load tests. The HTTP requests are issued against the web server on premise, the results are captured by the test agents. And finally the results are passed over to the controller. - Servers: The Web Server and DB Server are hosted on premise in the datacentre, this is usually the case with business critical applications, you probably want to manage them your self. Recap and What’s next? So, in the introduction in the series of blog posts on Load Testing in the cloud I highlighted why creating a test rig in the cloud is a good idea, what advantages does Windows Azure offer and the Test Rig topology that I will be using. I would also like to mention that i stumbled upon this [Video] on Azure in a nutshell, great watch if you are new to Windows Azure. In the next post I intend to start setting up the Load Test Environment and discuss pricing with respect to test agent machine types that will be used in the test rig. Hope you enjoyed this post, If you have any recommendations on things that I should consider or any questions or feedback, feel free to add to this blog post. Remember to subscribe to http://feeds.feedburner.com/TarunArora.  See you in Part II.   Share this post : CodeProject

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• Auditing database source code changes

  - by John Paul Cook

  Auditing changes to database source code can be easily implemented with a database trigger. Here’s a simple implementation of stored procedure auditing using an audit table and a database trigger. It assumes that a schema named Audit already exists. CREATE TABLE Audit . AuditStoredProcedures ( DatabaseName sysname , ObjectName sysname , LoginName sysname , ChangeDate datetime , EventType sysname , EventDataXml xml ); Notice the EventDataXml column. Using an nvarchar column to store the source text...(read more)

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• MERGE gives better OUTPUT options

  - by Rob Farley

  MERGE is very cool. There are a ton of useful things about it – mostly around the fact that you can implement a ton of change against a table all at once. This is great for data warehousing, handling changes made to relational databases by applications, all kinds of things. One of the more subtle things about MERGE is the power of the OUTPUT clause. Useful for logging.   If you’re not familiar with the OUTPUT clause, you really should be – it basically makes your DML (INSERT/DELETE/UPDATE/MERGE) statement return data back to you. This is a great way of returning identity values from INSERT commands (so much better than SCOPE_IDENTITY() or the older (and worse) @@IDENTITY, because you can get lots of rows back). You can even use it to grab default values that are set using non-deterministic functions like NEWID() – things you couldn’t normally get back without running another query (or with a trigger, I guess, but that’s not pretty). That inserted table I referenced – that’s part of the ‘behind-the-scenes’ work that goes on with all DML changes. When you insert data, this internal table called inserted gets populated with rows, and then used to inflict the appropriate inserts on the various structures that store data (HoBTs – the Heaps or B-Trees used to store data as tables and indexes). When deleting, the deleted table gets populated. Updates get a matching row in both tables (although this doesn’t mean that an update is a delete followed by an inserted, it’s just the way it’s handled with these tables). These tables can be referenced by the OUTPUT clause, which can show you the before and after for any DML statement. Useful stuff. MERGE is slightly different though. With MERGE, you get a mix of entries. Your MERGE statement might be doing some INSERTs, some UPDATEs and some DELETEs. One of the most common examples of MERGE is to perform an UPSERT command, where data is updated if it already exists, or inserted if it’s new. And in a single operation too. Here, you can see the usefulness of the deleted and inserted tables, which clearly reflect the type of operation (but then again, MERGE lets you use an extra column called $action to show this). (Don’t worry about the fact that I turned on IDENTITY_INSERT, that’s just so that I could insert the values) One of the things I love about MERGE is that it feels almost cursor-like – the UPDATE bit feels like “WHERE CURRENT OF …”, and the INSERT bit feels like a single-row insert. And it is – but into the inserted and deleted tables. The operations to maintain the HoBTs are still done using the whole set of changes, which is very cool. And $action – very convenient. But as cool as $action is, that’s not the point of my post. If it were, I hope you’d all be disappointed, as you can’t really go near the MERGE statement without learning about it. The subtle thing that I love about MERGE with OUTPUT is that you can hook into more than just inserted and deleted. Did you notice in my earlier query that my source table had a ‘src’ field, that wasn’t used in the insert? Normally, this would be somewhat pointless to include in my source query. But with MERGE, I can put that in the OUTPUT clause. This is useful stuff, particularly when you’re needing to audit the changes. Suppose your query involved consolidating data from a number of sources, but you didn’t need to insert that into the actual table, just into a table for audit. This is now very doable, either using the INTO clause of OUTPUT, or surrounding the whole MERGE statement in brackets (parentheses if you’re American) and using a regular INSERT statement. This is also doable if you’re using MERGE to just do INSERTs. In case you hadn’t realised, you can use MERGE in place of an INSERT statement. It’s just like the UPSERT-style statement we’ve just seen, except that we want nothing to match. That’s easy to do, we just use ON 1=2. This is obviously more convoluted than a straight INSERT. And it’s slightly more effort for the database engine too. But, if you want the extra audit capabilities, the ability to hook into the other source columns is definitely useful. Oh, and before people ask if you can also hook into the target table’s columns... Yes, of course. That’s what deleted and inserted give you.

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• Free eBooks - SQL Server and other Microsoft Technologies

  - by Greg Low

  Great to see the advice from Gail Erickson about the release of a number of SQL Server related eBooks on the new Microsoft eBook Gallery site. It's good to see this sort of content moving over to eBook formats.The e-books that are currently available include: SQL Server 2012 Transact-SQL DML Reference Master Data Services Capacity Guidelines Microsoft SQL Server AlwaysOn Solutions Guide for High Availability and Disaster Recovery QuickStart: Learn DAX Basics in 30 Minutes Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services Multidimensional Performance and Operations Guide You'll find details of them here: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/11608.e-book-gallery-for-microsoft-technologies.aspx

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• My favourite feature of SQL 2008 R2

  - by Rob Farley

  Interestingly, my favourite new feature of SQL Server 2008 R2 isn’t any of the obvious things.  You may have read my recent posts about how much I like some of the new Reporting Services features, such as the map control. Or you may have seen my presentation at SQLBits V on StreamInsight, which I think has great potential to change the way many applications handle data (by allowing easier querying of data before it even reaches the database). Next week the Adelaide SQL Server User Group has...(read more)

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• links worth clicking&hellip;

  - by Chris Williams

  Scanning my Twitter feed almost always proves to be fruitful when looking for cool/interesting links to share. Here are a few of the highlights: I read this blog post from Justin Angel today, pretty interesting stuff: Windows Phone 7 – Unlocked ROMs  Looks like there’s a lot of good stuff floating just under the surface in the latest build of the WP7 Emulator. (Courtesy of @JustinAngel) Next up is this video titled Game Design Tutorials: From Seconds to Hours of Gameplay. If you’re into Indie Game Development, or just like watching videos… this one is pretty short at 5 minutes, but contains some good information about increasing the duration of fun gameplay in your game. (Courtesy of @Kei_tchan) If you are a Firefly (or Castle, or Dr. Horrible’s Singalong Blog) fan, check out this Facebook campaign to get Nathan Fillion to host SNL: http://tinyurl.com/2dh5m67  It worked for Betty White, so why not, right? (Courtesy of @DGalloway42)

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• Updatable columnstore index, sp_spaceused and sys.partitions

  - by Michael Zilberstein

  Columnstore index in SQL Server 2014 contains 2 new important features: it can be clustered and it is updateable. So I decided to play with both. As a “control group” I’ve taken my old columnstore index demo from one of the ISUG (Israeli SQL Server Usergroup) sessions. The script itself isn’t important – it creates partition function with 7 partitions (actually 8 but one remains empty), table on it and populates the table with 63 million rows – 9 million in each partition. So I used the same script...(read more)

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• SQLSat65, Great Perf Counters Poster from Quest

  - by merrillaldrich

  I was fortunate to be able to attend the Vancouver BC SQLSaturday this past weekend, and it was excellent! Great sessions, good facility, well attended. Nice work, and a huge thank you to the volunteers that made that happen. One side perk: I got a copy of this terrific performance counters poster from Quest, which you can download as a PDF for free. Very handy, especially as a teaching tool. I'm using it for my SCOM MP work. Check it out....(read more)

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