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• Databases in Source Control

  - by Grant Fritchey

  I’ve been working as a database professional for quite a long time. But originally, I was a developer. And I loved being a developer. There was this constant feedback loop of a job well done, your code compiled and it ran. Every time this happened successfully, you’d check it into source control. These days you have to add another step; the code passed all the tests, unit, line, regression, qa, whatever, then into source control it goes. As a matter of fact, when I first made the jump from developer to DBA/database developer/database professional, source control was the one thing I couldn’t believe was missing from the DBA toolbox. Come to find out, source control was only the beginning of what was missing from your standard DBAs set of skills. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not disrespecting the DBA. They’re focused where they should be, on your production data. But there has to be a method for developing applications that include databases and the database side of that development and deployment process has long been lacking. This lack of development and deployment methodologies is a part of what has given rise to some of the wackier implementations of Object Relational Mapping tools, the NoSQL movement, and some of the other foul cursing that is directed towards databases, DBAs, and database development by application developers. Some of that is well earned. A lot isn’t. But it is a fact that database professionals, in general, do not have as sophisticated a model for managing development and deployment as application developers do. We could charge out and start trying to come up with our own standards and methods. I’m sure people have done exactly that. However, I’m lazy, and not terribly bright. Rather than try to invent a whole new process, I’m going to look to my developer roots and choose instead to emulate the developers. They’re sitting over there across the hall from me working with SCRUM/Agile/Waterfall/Object Driven/Feature Driven/Test Driven development processes that they’ve been polishing for years. What if I just started working on database development the same way they work on code development? Win! Ah, but now I have to have a mechanism for treating my database like application code. First, I need a method for getting it into source control. That’s where Red Gate’s SQL Source Control comes into the picture. SQL Source Control works within SQL Server Management Studio to connect your database objects up to the source control system of your choice. Right out of the box SQL Source Control can link to TFS, SVN or Vault. With a little work you can connect it to Git or just about any other source control system. With the ability to get my database into source control, a lot of possibilities for more direct integration with the application development teams open up.

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• Open Your Windows - 4/Maio/10

  - by Claudia Costa

  This FREE technical briefing is designed to show ISVs/SIs how to leverage the Oracle11g Technology especially in the small to medium business. The briefing focuses on Oracle's 11g platform on Windows & Linux and gives a very comprehensive technical competitive overview to the products offered by Microsoft. The technical part covers Integration and Migration aspects of various Microsoft products such as SQL Server, .NET and Active Directory. Register Today! With Oracle11g Oracle introduced various products (ApplicationExpress, OracleExpress Edition, ADF, BPEL) and licenses (Oracle Database Standard Edition One, Application Server Java Edition) specifically targetting the small to medium business market and to show that Oracle Database and Application Server are as easy to use and costs less than Microsoft products in terms of purchase price and ongoing support & maintenance and even much much less when considering the Linux platform.. For those ISVs have already adopted Microsoft .NET framework and using SQL Server as their database layer, we will demostrate that Oracle11g Database is as easy as SQL Server to install, configure, and manage. In addition to that, their application development .NET platform does not requires dramatic changes to enable it to run on the Oracle database. Besides the standard functionalities, Oracle has enhanced some of the advanced features; such as Intermedia, Security, Ref Cursor, etc., tightly integrated with .NET framework so that .NET developers can take full advantage of the Oracle technology, without worrying or programming the complexity components. Objectives ·         Understand Oracle's strategy and commitment on Windows & Linux ·         Learn how to migrate from SQL Server to Oracle on Windows AND Linux ·         Understand that Oracle11g is easy to manage and to install on Windows & Linux ·         Learn how to integrate Windows products with the Oracle11g Platform ·         Learn how Oracle products interoperate & integrate with Microsoft .NET ·         Learn how an Oracle database on Windows will easily be ported to a lower cost Linux database platform and interoperate with a .NET application Prerequisites General Operating System expertise including MS-Windows and Linux. Agenda ·         Welcome and Intro ·         Oracle at a glance ·         Strategy; Small to Medium Business, Microsoft and Linux ·         Oracle 11g Architecture on Linux & Windows ·         Managing Oracle 11g on Linux & Windows ·         Application Development ·         Migration ·         Value propositions for ISVs & Wrap-up   ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Para mais informações/inscrições, contacte: [email protected].

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• PowerShell PowerPack Download

  - by BuckWoody

  I read Jeffery Hicks’ article in this month’s Redmond Magazine on a new add-in for Windows PowerShell 2.0. It’s called the PowerShell Pack and it has a some great new features that I plan to put into place on my production systems as soon as I finished learning and testing them. You can download the pack here if you have PowerShell 2.0. I’m having a lot of fun with it, and I’ll blog about what I’m learning here in the near future, but you should check it out. The only issue I have with it right now is that you have to load a module and then use get-help to find out what it does, because I haven’t found a lot of other documentation so far. The most interesting modules for me are the ones that can run a command elevated (in PSUserTools), the task scheduling commands (in TaskScheduler) and the file system checks and tools (in FileSystem). There’s also a way to create simple Graphical User Interface panels (in ). I plan to string all these together to install a management set of tools on my SQL Server Express Instances, giving the user “task buttons” to backup or restore a database, add or delete users and so on. Yes, I’ll be careful, and yes, I’ll make sure the user is allowed to do that. For now, I’m testing the download, but I thought I would share what I’m up to. If you have PowerShell 2.0 and you download the pack, let me know how you use it. 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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• Have you really fixed that problem?

  - by DavidWimbush

  The day before yesterday I saw our main live server's CPU go up to constantly 100% with just the occasional short drop to a lower level. The exact opposite of what you'd want to see. We're log shipping every 15 minutes and part of that involves calling WinRAR to compress the log backups before copying them over. (We're on SQL2005 so there's no native compression and we have bandwidth issues with the connection to our remote site.) I realised the log shipping jobs were taking about 10 minutes and that most of that was spent shipping a 'live' reporting database that is completely rebuilt every 20 minutes. (I'm just trying to keep this stuff alive until I can improve it.) We can rebuild this database in minutes if we have to fail over so I disabled log shipping of that database. The log shipping went down to less than 2 minutes and I went off to the SQL Social evening in London feeling quite pleased with myself. It was a great evening - fun, educational and thought-provoking. Thanks to Simon Sabin & co for laying that on, and thanks too to the guests for making the effort when they must have been pretty worn out after doing DevWeek all day first. The next morning I came down to earth with a bump: CPU still at 100%. WTF? I looked in the activity monitor but it was confusing because some sessions have been running for a long time so it's not a good guide what's using the CPU now. I tried the standard reports showing queries by CPU (average and total) but they only show the top 10 so they just show my big overnight archiving and data cleaning stuff. But the Profiler showed it was four queries used by our new website usage tracking system. Four simple indexes later the CPU was back where it should be: about 20% with occasional short spikes. So the moral is: even when you're convinced you've found the cause and fixed the problem, you HAVE to go back and confirm that the problem has gone. And, yes, I have checked the CPU again today and it's still looking sweet.

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• Archiving SQLHelp tweets

  - by jamiet

  #SQLHelp is a Twitter hashtag that can be used by any Twitter user to get help from the SQL Server community. I think its fair to say that in its first year of being it has proved to be a very useful resource however Kendra Little (@kendra_little) made a very salient point yesterday when she tweeted: Is there a way to search the archives of #sqlhelp Trying to remember answer to a question I know I saw a couple months ago http://twitter.com/#!/Kendra_Little/status/15538234184441856 This highlights an inherent problem with Twitter’s search capability – it simply does not reach far enough back in time. I have made steps to remedy that situation by putting into place two initiatives to archive Tweets that contain the #sqlhelp hashtag. The Archivist http://archivist.visitmix.com/ is a free service that, quite simply, archives a history of tweets that contain a given search term by periodically polling Twitter’s search service with that search term and subsequently displaying a dashboard providing an aggregate view of those tweets for things like tweet volume over time, top users and top words (Archivist FAQ). I have set up an archive on The Archivist for “sqlhelp” which you can view at http://archivist.visitmix.com/jamiet/7. Here is a screenshot of the SQLHelp dashboard 36 minutes after I set it up: There is lots of good information in there, including the fact that Jonathan Kehayias (@SQLSarg) is the most active SQLHelp tweeter (I suspect as an answerer rather than a questioner ) and that SSIS has proven to be a rather (ahem) popular subject!! Datasift The Archivist has its uses though for our purposes it has a couple of downsides. For starters you cannot search through an archive (which is what Kendra was after) and nor can you export the contents of the archive for offline analysis. For those functions we need something a bit more heavyweight and for that I present to you Datasift. Datasift is a tool (currently an alpha release) that allows you to search for tweets and provide them through an object called a Datasift stream. That sounds very similar to normal Twitter search though it has one distinct advantage that other Twitter search tools do not – Datasift has access to Twitter’s Streaming API (aka the Twitter Firehose). In addition it has access to a lot of other rather nice features: It provides the Datasift API that allows you to consume the output of a Datasift stream in your tool of choice (bring on my favourite ultimate mashup tool J ) It has a query language (called Filtered Stream Definition Language – FSDL for short) A Datasift stream can consume (and filter) other Datasift streams Datasift can (and does) consume services other than Twitter If I refer to Datasift as “ETL for tweets” then you may get some sort of idea what it is all about. Just as I did with The Archivist I have set up a publicly available Datasift stream for “sqlhelp” at http://datasift.net/stream/1581/sqlhelp. Here is the FSDL query that provides the data: twitter.text contains "sqlhelp" Pretty simple eh? At the current time it provides little more than a rudimentary dashboard but as Datasift is currently an alpha release I think this may be worth keeping an eye on. The real value though is the ability to consume the output of a stream via Datasift’s RESTful API, observe: http://api.datasift.net/stream.xml?stream_identifier=c7015255f07e982afdeebdf1ae6e3c0d&username=jamiet&api_key=XXXXXXX (Note that an api_key is required during the alpha period so, given that I’m not supplying my api_key, this URI will not work for you) Just to prove that a Datasift stream can indeed consume data from another stream I have set up a second stream that further filters the first one for tweets containing “SSIS”. That one is at http://datasift.net/stream/1586/ssis-sqlhelp and here is the FSDL query: rule "414c9845685ff8d2548999cf3162e897" and (interaction.content contains "ssis") When Datasift moves beyond alpha I’ll re-assess how useful this is going to be and post a follow-up blog. @Jamiet

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• July, the 31 Days of SQL Server DMO’s – Day 25 (sys.dm_db_missing_index_details)

  - by Tamarick Hill

  The sys.dm_db_missing_index_details Dynamic Management View is used to return information about missing indexes on your SQL Server instances. These indexes are ones that the optimizer has identified as indexes it would like to use but did not have. You may also see these same indexes indicated in other tools such as query execution plans or the Database tuning advisor. Let’s execute this DMV so we can review the information it provides us. I do not have any missing index information for my AdventureWorks2012 database, but for the purposes of illustrating the result set of this DMV, I will present the results from my msdb database. SELECT * FROM sys.dm_db_missing_index_details The first column presented is the index_handle which uniquely identifies a particular missing index. The next two columns represent the database_id and the object_id for the particular table in question. Next is the ‘equality_columns’ column which gives you a list of columns (comma separated) that would be beneficial to the optimizer for equality operations. By equality operation I mean for any queries that would use a filter or join condition such as WHERE A = B. The next column, ‘inequality_columns’, gives you a comma separated list of columns that would be beneficial to the optimizer for inequality operations. An inequality operation is anything other than A = B. For example, “WHERE A != B”, “WHERE A > B”, “WHERE A < B”, and “WHERE A <> B” would all qualify as inequality. Next is the ‘included_columns’ column which list all columns that would be beneficial to the optimizer for purposes of providing a covering index and preventing key/bookmark lookups. Lastly is the ‘statement’ column which lists the name of the table where the index is missing. This DMV can help you identify potential indexes that could be added to improve the performance of your system. However, I will advise you not to just take the output of this DMV and create an index for everything you see. Everything listed here should be analyzed and then tested on a Development or Test system before implementing into a Production environment. For more information on this DMV, please see the below Books Online link: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms345434.aspx Follow me on Twitter @PrimeTimeDBA

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• Application Performance: The Best of the Web

  - by Michaela Murray

  Wisdom A deep understanding and realization […] resulting in the ability to apply perceptions, judgements and actions. It is also the comprehension of what is true coupled with optimum judgment as to action. - Wikipedia We’re writing a book for ASP.NET developers, and we want you to be a part of it. We know that there’s a huge amount of web developer wisdom that never gets shared, and we want to find those golden nuggets of knowledge and experience, and make sure everyone can learn from them. Right now, we want to find out about your top tips, hard-won lessons, and sage advice for avoiding, finding, and fixing application performance problems. If you work with .NET and SQL, even better – a lot of application performance relies on the interaction with the database, so we want to hear from you! “How Do You Want Me To Be Involved?” Right! Details! We want you, our most excellent readers, to email us with the Best Advice you would give to other developers for getting the best performance out of their applications. It doesn’t matter if your advice is for newbies or veterans, .NET or SQL – so long as it’s about application performance, we want to hear from you. (And if you think that there’s developer wisdom out there that “everyone knows”, a) I’m willing to bet you could find someone who doesn’t know about it, and b) it probably bears repeating anyway!) “I’m Interested. What Can You Do For Me?” Excellent question. For starters, there’s a chance to win a Microsoft Surface (the tablet, not the table-top). Once all the ASP.NET Wisdom has been collected, tallied, and labelled, it will then be weighed and measured by a team of expert judges (whose identities are still a closely-guarded secret).  The top tip in both SQL & .NET categories will each win their author their very own MS Surface. But that’s not all! We can also give you… immortality! More details? Ok. We’ll be collecting all of the tips sent in by our readers (and we can’t wait to learn from you all,) and with the help of our Simple-Talk editors, we will publish and distribute your combined and documented knowledge as a free, community-created, professionally typeset eBook. You will naturally be credited by name / pseudonym / twitter handle / GitHub username / StackOverflow profile / Whatever, as the clearly ingenious author of hot performance tips. The Not-Very-Fine Print Here’s the breakdown: We want to bring together the best application performance knowledge from ASP.NET developers. Closing date for submissions will be 9am GMT, December 4th. Submissions should be made by email – [email protected] Submissions will be judged by a panel of expert judges (who will be revealed soon). The top submission in both the SQL & .NET categories will each win a Microsoft Surface. ALL the tips which make it through the judging process will be polished by Simple-Talk editors, and turned into a professionally typeset eBook, which will be freely available, and promoted alongside the ANTS Performance Profiler tool. Anyone whose entry makes it into the book will be clearly and profusely credited in the method of their choice (or can remain anonymous.) The really REALLY short version Share what you know about ASP.NET application performance for a chance to win a Microsoft Surface, and then get your name credited in a slick eBook with top-notch production values. For more details, see above. We can’t wait to learn from you!

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• SQL Server Transaction Marks: Restoring multiple databases to a common relative point

  - by Mladen Prajdic

  We’re all familiar with the ability to restore a database to point in time using the RESTORE WITH STOPAT statement. But what if we have multiple databases that are accessed from one application or are modifying each other? And over multiple instances? And all databases have different workloads? And we want to restore all of the databases to some known common relative point? The catch here is that this common relative point isn’t the same point in time for all databases. This common relative point in time might be now in DB1, now-1 hour in DB2 and yesterday in DB3. And we don’t know the exact times. Let me introduce you to Transaction Marks. When we run a marked transaction using the WITH MARK option a flag is set in the transaction log and a row is added to msdb..logmarkhistory table. When restoring a transaction log backup we can restore to either before or after that marked transaction. The best thing is that we don’t even need to have one database modifying another database. All we have to do is use a marked transaction with the same name in different database. Let’s see how this works with an example. The code comments say what’s going on. USE master GOCREATE DATABASE TestTxMark1GOUSE TestTxMark1GOCREATE TABLE TestTable1( ID INT, VALUE UNIQUEIDENTIFIER) -- insert some data into the table so we can have a starting pointINSERT INTO TestTable1SELECT ROW_NUMBER() OVER(ORDER BY number) AS RN, NULLFROM master..spt_valuesORDER BY RNSELECT *FROM TestTable1GO-- TAKE A FULL BACKUP of the databseBACKUP DATABASE TestTxMark1 TO DISK = 'c:\TestTxMark1.bak'GO USE master GOCREATE DATABASE TestTxMark2GOUSE TestTxMark2GOCREATE TABLE TestTable2( ID INT, VALUE UNIQUEIDENTIFIER)-- insert some data into the table so we can have a starting pointINSERT INTO TestTable2SELECT ROW_NUMBER() OVER(ORDER BY number) AS RN, NEWID()FROM master..spt_valuesORDER BY RNSELECT *FROM TestTable2GO-- TAKE A FULL BACKUP of our databseBACKUP DATABASE TestTxMark2 TO DISK = 'c:\TestTxMark2.bak'GO -- start a marked transaction that modifies both databasesBEGIN TRAN TxDb WITH MARK -- update values from NULL to random value UPDATE TestTable1 SET VALUE = NEWID(); -- update first 100 values from random value -- to NULL in different DB UPDATE TestTxMark2.dbo.TestTable2 SET VALUE = NULL WHERE ID <= 100;COMMITGO     -- some time goes by here -- with various database activity... -- We see two entries for marks in each database. -- This is just informational and has no bearing on the restore itself.SELECT * FROM msdb..logmarkhistory USE masterGO-- create a log backup to restore to mark pointBACKUP LOG TestTxMark1 TO DISK = 'c:\TestTxMark1.trn'GO-- drop the database so we can restore it backDROP DATABASE TestTxMark1GO USE masterGO-- create a log backup to restore to mark pointBACKUP LOG TestTxMark2 TO DISK = 'c:\TestTxMark2.trn'GO-- drop the database so we can restore it backDROP DATABASE TestTxMark2GO -- RESTORE THE DATABASE BACK BEFORE OUR TRANSACTION-- restore the full backup RESTORE DATABASE TestTxMark1 FROM DISK = 'c:\TestTxMark1.bak' WITH NORECOVERY;-- restore the log backup to the transaction markRESTORE LOG TestTxMark1 FROM DISK = 'c:\TestTxMark1.trn' WITH RECOVERY, -- recover to state before the transaction STOPBEFOREMARK = 'TxDb'; -- recover to state after the transaction -- STOPATMARK = 'TxDb';GO -- RESTORE THE DATABASE BACK BEFORE OUR TRANSACTION-- restore the full backup RESTORE DATABASE TestTxMark2 FROM DISK = 'c:\TestTxMark2.bak' WITH NORECOVERY;-- restore the log backup to the transaction markRESTORE LOG TestTxMark2 FROM DISK = 'c:\TestTxMark2.trn' WITH RECOVERY, -- recover to state before the transaction STOPBEFOREMARK = 'TxDb'; -- recover to state after the transaction -- STOPATMARK = 'TxDb';GO USE TestTxMark1-- we restored to time before the transaction -- so we have NULL values in our tableSELECT * FROM TestTable1 USE TestTxMark2-- we restored to time before the transaction -- so we DON'T have NULL values in our tableSELECT * FROM TestTable2   Transaction marks can be used like a crude sync mechanism for cross database operations. With them we can mark our databases with a common “restore to” point so we know we have a valid state between all databases to restore to.

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• You Probably Already Have a “Private Cloud”

  - by BuckWoody

  I’ve mentioned before that I’m not a fan of the word “Cloud”. It’s too marketing-oriented, gimmicky and non-specific. A better definition (in many cases) is “Distributed Computing”. That means that some or all of the computing functions are handled somewhere other than under your specific control. But there is a current use of the word “Cloud” that does not necessarily mean that the computing is done somewhere else. In fact, it’s a vector of Cloud Computing that can better be termed “Utility Computing”. This has to do with the provisioning of a computing resource. That means the setup, configuration, management, balancing and so on that is needed so that a user – which might actually be a developer – can do some computing work. To that person, the resource is just “there” and works like they expect, like the phone system or any other utility. The interesting thing is, you can do this yourself. In fact, you probably already have been, or are now. It’s got a cool new trendy term – “Private Cloud”, but the fact is, if you have your setup automated, the HA and DR handled, balancing and performance tuning done, and a process wrapped around it all, you can call yourself a “Cloud Provider”. A good example here is your E-Mail system. your users – pretty much your whole company – just logs into e-mail and expects it to work. To them, you are the “Cloud” provider. On your side, the more you automate and provision the system, the more you act like a Cloud Provider. Another example is a database server. In this case, the “end user” is usually the development team, or perhaps your SharePoint group and so on. The data professionals configure, monitor, tune and balance the system all the time. The more this is automated, the more you’re acting like a Cloud Provider. Lots of companies help you do this in your own data centers, from VMWare to IBM and many others. Microsoft's offering in this is based around System Center – they have a “cloud in a box” provisioning system that’s actually pretty slick. The most difficult part of operating a Private Cloud is probably the scale factor. In the case of Windows and SQL Azure, we handle this in multiple ways – and we're happy to share how we do it. It’s not magic, and the algorithms for balancing (like the one we started with called Paxos) are well known. The key is the knowledge, infrastructure and people. Sure, you can do this yourself, and in many cases such as top-secret or private systems, you probably should. But there are times where you should evaluate using Azure or other vendors, or even multiple vendors to spread your risk. All of this should be based on client need, not on what you know how to do already. So congrats on your new role as a “Cloud Provider”. If you have an E-mail system or a database platform, you can just put that right on your resume.

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• Failing report subscriptions

  - by DavidWimbush

  We had an interesting problem while I was on holiday. (Why doesn't this stuff ever happen when I'm there?) The sysadmin upgraded our Exchange server to Exchange 2010 and everone's subscriptions stopped. My Subscriptions showed an error message saying that the email address of one of the recipients is invalid. When you create a subscription, Reporting puts your Windows user name into the To field and most users have no permissions to edit it. By default, Reporting leaves it up to exchange to resolve that into an email address. This only works if Exchange is set up to translate aliases or 'short names' into email addresses. It turns out this leaves Exchange open to being used as a relay so it is disabled out of the box. You now have three options: Open up Exchange. That would be bad. Give all Reporting users the ability to edit the To field in a subscription. a) They shouldn't have to, it should just work. b) They don't really have any business subscribing anyone but themselves. Fix the report server to add the domain. This looks like the right choice and it works for us. See below for details. Pre-requisites: A single email domain name. A clear relationship between the Windows user name and the email address. eg. If the user name is joebloggs, then joebloggs@domainname needs to be the email address or an alias of it. Warning: Saving changes to the rsreportserver.config file will restart the Report Server service which effectively takes Reporting down for around 30 seconds. Time your action accordingly. Edit the file rsreportserver.config (most probably in the folder ..\Program Files[ (x86)]\Microsoft SQL Server\MSRS10_50[.instancename]\Reporting Services\ReportServer). There's a setting called DefaultHostName which is empty by default. Enter your email domain name without the leading '@'. Save the file. This domain name will be appended to any destination addresses that don't have a domain name of their own.

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• SQL Server Date Comparison Functions

  - by HighAltitudeCoder

  A few months ago, I found myself working with a repetitive cursor that looped until the data had been manipulated enough times that it was finally correct.  The cursor was heavily dependent upon dates, every time requiring the earlier of two (or several) dates in one stored procedure, while requiring the later of two dates in another stored procedure. In short what I needed was a function that would allow me to perform the following evaluation: WHERE MAX(Date1, Date2) < @SomeDate The problem is, the MAX() function in SQL Server does not perform this functionality.  So, I set out to put these functions together.  They are titled: EarlierOf() and LaterOf(). /**********************************************************                               EarlierOf.sql   **********************************************************/ /**********************************************************   Return the later of two DATETIME variables.   Parameter 1: DATETIME1 Parameter 2: DATETIME2   Works for a variety of DATETIME or NULL values. Even though comparisons with NULL are actually indeterminate, we know conceptually that NULL is not earlier or later than any other date provided.   SYNTAX: SELECT dbo.EarlierOf('1/1/2000','12/1/2009') SELECT dbo.EarlierOf('2009-12-01 00:00:00.000','2009-12-01 00:00:00.521') SELECT dbo.EarlierOf('11/15/2000',NULL) SELECT dbo.EarlierOf(NULL,'1/15/2004') SELECT dbo.EarlierOf(NULL,NULL)   **********************************************************/ USE AdventureWorks GO   IF EXISTS       (SELECT *       FROM sysobjects       WHERE name = 'EarlierOf'       AND xtype = 'FN'       ) BEGIN             DROP FUNCTION EarlierOf END GO   CREATE FUNCTION EarlierOf (       @Date1                              DATETIME,       @Date2                              DATETIME )   RETURNS DATETIME   AS BEGIN       DECLARE @ReturnDate     DATETIME         IF (@Date1 IS NULL AND @Date2 IS NULL)       BEGIN             SET @ReturnDate = NULL             GOTO EndOfFunction       END         ELSE IF (@Date1 IS NULL AND @Date2 IS NOT NULL)       BEGIN             SET @ReturnDate = @Date2             GOTO EndOfFunction       END         ELSE IF (@Date1 IS NOT NULL AND @Date2 IS NULL)       BEGIN             SET @ReturnDate = @Date1             GOTO EndOfFunction       END         ELSE       BEGIN             SET @ReturnDate = @Date1             IF @Date2 < @Date1                   SET @ReturnDate = @Date2             GOTO EndOfFunction       END         EndOfFunction:       RETURN @ReturnDate   END -- End Function GO   ---- Set Permissions --GRANT SELECT ON EarlierOf TO UserRole1 --GRANT SELECT ON EarlierOf TO UserRole2 --GO                                                                                             The inverse of this function is only slightly different. /**********************************************************                               LaterOf.sql   **********************************************************/ /**********************************************************   Return the later of two DATETIME variables.   Parameter 1: DATETIME1 Parameter 2: DATETIME2   Works for a variety of DATETIME or NULL values. Even though comparisons with NULL are actually indeterminate, we know conceptually that NULL is not earlier or later than any other date provided.   SYNTAX: SELECT dbo.LaterOf('1/1/2000','12/1/2009') SELECT dbo.LaterOf('2009-12-01 00:00:00.000','2009-12-01 00:00:00.521') SELECT dbo.LaterOf('11/15/2000',NULL) SELECT dbo.LaterOf(NULL,'1/15/2004') SELECT dbo.LaterOf(NULL,NULL)   **********************************************************/ USE AdventureWorks GO   IF EXISTS       (SELECT *       FROM sysobjects       WHERE name = 'LaterOf'       AND xtype = 'FN'       ) BEGIN             DROP FUNCTION LaterOf END GO   CREATE FUNCTION LaterOf (       @Date1                              DATETIME,       @Date2                              DATETIME )   RETURNS DATETIME   AS BEGIN       DECLARE @ReturnDate     DATETIME         IF (@Date1 IS NULL AND @Date2 IS NULL)       BEGIN             SET @ReturnDate = NULL             GOTO EndOfFunction       END         ELSE IF (@Date1 IS NULL AND @Date2 IS NOT NULL)       BEGIN             SET @ReturnDate = @Date2             GOTO EndOfFunction       END         ELSE IF (@Date1 IS NOT NULL AND @Date2 IS NULL)       BEGIN             SET @ReturnDate = @Date1             GOTO EndOfFunction       END         ELSE       BEGIN             SET @ReturnDate = @Date1             IF @Date2 > @Date1                   SET @ReturnDate = @Date2             GOTO EndOfFunction       END         EndOfFunction:       RETURN @ReturnDate   END -- End Function GO   ---- Set Permissions --GRANT SELECT ON LaterOf TO UserRole1 --GRANT SELECT ON LaterOf TO UserRole2 --GO                                                                                             The interesting thing about this function is its simplicity and the built-in NULL handling functionality.  Its interesting, because it seems like something should already exist in SQL Server that does this.  From a different vantage point, if you create this functionality and it is easy to use (ideally, intuitively self-explanatory), you have made a successful contribution. Interesting is good.  Self-explanatory, or intuitive is FAR better.  Happy coding! Graeme

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• Advanced Record-Level Business Intelligence with Inner Queries

  - by gt0084e1

  While business intelligence is generally applied at an aggregate level to large data sets, it's often useful to provide a more streamlined insight into an individual records or to be able to sort and rank them. For instance, a salesperson looking at a specific customer could benefit from basic stats on that account. A marketer trying to define an ideal customer could pull the top entries and look for insights or patterns. Inner queries let you do sophisticated analysis without the overhead of traditional BI or OLAP technologies like Analysis Services. Example - Order History Constancy Let's assume that management has realized that the best thing for our business is to have customers ordering every month. We'll need to identify and rank customers based on how consistently they buy and when their last purchase was so sales & marketing can respond accordingly. Our current application may not be able to provide this and adding an OLAP server like SSAS may be overkill for our needs. Luckily, SQL Server provides the ability to do relatively sophisticated analytics via inner queries. Here's the kind of output we'd like to see. Creating the Queries Before you create a view, you need to create the SQL query that does the calculations. Here we are calculating the total number of orders as well as the number of months since the last order. These fields might be very useful to sort by but may not be available in the app. This approach provides a very streamlined and high performance method of delivering actionable information without radically changing the application. It's also works very well with self-service reporting tools like Izenda. SELECT CustomerID,CompanyName, ( SELECT COUNT(OrderID) FROM Orders WHERE Orders.CustomerID = Customers.CustomerID ) As Orders, DATEDIFF(mm, ( SELECT Max(OrderDate) FROM Orders WHERE Orders.CustomerID = Customers.CustomerID) ,getdate() ) AS MonthsSinceLastOrder FROM Customers Creating Views To turn this or any query into a view, just put CREATE VIEW AS before it. If you want to change it use the statement ALTER VIEW AS. Creating Computed Columns If you'd prefer not to create a view, inner queries can also be applied by using computed columns. Place you SQL in the (Formula) field of the Computed Column Specification or check out this article here. Advanced Scoring and Ranking One of the best uses for this approach is to score leads based on multiple fields. For instance, you may be in a business where customers that don't order every month require more persistent follow up. You could devise a simple formula that shows the continuity of an account. If they ordered every month since their first order, they would be at 100 indicating that they have been ordering 100% of the time. Here's the query that would calculate that. It uses a few SQL tricks to make this happen. We are extracting the count of unique months and then dividing by the months since initial order. This query will give you the following information which can be used to help sales and marketing now where to focus. You could sort by this percentage to know where to start calling or to find patterns describing your best customers. Number of orders First Order Date Last Order Date Percentage of months order was placed since last order. SELECT CustomerID, (SELECT COUNT(OrderID) FROM Orders WHERE Orders.CustomerID = Customers.CustomerID) As Orders, (SELECT Max(OrderDate) FROM Orders WHERE Orders.CustomerID = Customers.CustomerID) AS LastOrder, (SELECT Min(OrderDate) FROM Orders WHERE Orders.CustomerID = Customers.CustomerID) AS FirstOrder, DATEDIFF(mm,(SELECT Min(OrderDate) FROM Orders WHERE Orders.CustomerID = Customers.CustomerID),getdate()) AS MonthsSinceFirstOrder, 100*(SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT 100*DATEPART(yy,OrderDate) + DATEPART(mm,OrderDate)) FROM Orders WHERE Orders.CustomerID = Customers.CustomerID) / DATEDIFF(mm,(SELECT Min(OrderDate) FROM Orders WHERE Orders.CustomerID = Customers.CustomerID),getdate()) As OrderPercent FROM Customers

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• When a problem is resolved

  - by Rob Farley

  This month’s T-SQL Tuesday is hosted by Jen McCown, and she’s picked the topic of Resolutions. It’s a new year, and she’s thinking about what people have resolved to do this year. Unfortunately, I’ve never really done resolutions like that. I see too many people resolve to quit smoking, or lose weight, or whatever, and fail miserably. I’m not saying I don’t set goals, but it’s not a thing for New Year. The obvious joke is “1920x1080” as a resolution, but I’m not going there. I think Resolving is a strange word. It makes it sound like I’m having to solve a problem a second time, when actually, it’s more along the lines of solving a problem well enough for it to count as finished. If something has been resolved, a solution has been provided. There is a resolution, through the provision of a solution. It’s a strangeness of English. When I look up the word resolution at dictionary.com, it has 12 options, including “settling of a problem”. There’s a finality about resolution. If you resolve to do something, you’re saying “Yes. This is a done thing. I’m resolving to do it, which means that it may as well be complete already.” I like to think I resolve problems, rather than just solving them. I want my solving to be final and complete. If I tune a query, I don’t want to find that I’m back in there, re-tuning it at some point. Strangely, if I re-solve a problem, that implies that I didn’t resolve it in the first place. I only solved it. Temporarily. We “data-folk” live in a world where the most common answer is “It depends.” Frustratingly, the thing an answer depends on may still be changing in the system in question. That probably means that any solution that is put in place may need reinvestigating at some point later. So do I resolve things? Yes. Am I Chuck Norris, and solve things so well the world would break first? No. Do these two claims happily sit beside each other? No, unfortunately not. But I happily take responsibility for things, and let my clients depend on me to see it through. As far as they are concerned, it is resolved. And so I resolve to keep resolving, right through 2011.

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• Testing and Validation – You Really Do Have The Time

  - by BuckWoody

  One of the great advantages in my role as a Technical Specialist here at Microsoft is that I get to work with so many great clients. I get to see their environments and how they use them, and the way they work with SQL Server. I’ve been a data professional myself for many years. Over that time I’ve worked with many database platforms, lots of client applications, and written a lot of code in many industries. For a while I was also a consultant, so I got to see how other shops did things as well. But because I now focus on a “set” base of clients (over 500 professionals in over 150 companies) I get to see them over a longer period of time. Many of them help me understand how they use the product in their projects, and I even attend some DBA regular meetings. I see the way the product succeeds, and I see when it fails. Something that has really impacted my way of thinking is the level of importance any given shop is able to place on testing and validation. I’ve always been a big proponent of setting up a test system and following a very disciplined regimen to make sure it will work in production for any new projects, and then taking the lessons learned into production as standards. I know, I know – there’s never enough time to do things right like this. Yet the shops I see that do it have the same level of work that they output as the shops that don’t. They just make the time to do the testing and validation and create a standard that they will follow in production. And what I’ve found (surprise surprise) is that they have fewer production problems. OK, that might seem obvious – but I’ve actually tracked it and those places that do the testing and best practices really do save stress, time and trouble from that effort. We all think that’s a good idea, but we just “don’t have time”. OK – but from what I’m seeing, you can gain time if you spend a little up front. You may find that you’re actually already spending the same amount of time that you would spend in doing the testing, you’re just doing it later, at night, under the gun. Food for thought.  Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• Connecting Dell PowerVault NAS to ESXi

  - by Matt Fitz

  Just got a Dell PowerVault NAS storage device running Windows Storage Server Standard which includes NFS. When I try and connect the ESXi server I get the following message: Call "HostDatastoreSystem.CreateNasDatastore" for object "ha-datastoresystem" on ESXi "powerhouse" failed. Operation failed, diagnostics report: Unable to complete Sysinfo operation. Please see the VMkernel log file for more details. I am pretty sure it is a username/password type thing. Not sure were to begin though. Also, I am planning on using "Username Mapping" instead of Active Directory. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated

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• Windows 2008 terminal server - How to restrict access to DVD/floppy?

  - by test1839

  I has a very simple task. I need to block access to removable media (CD, DVD, floppy, USB drives etc.) on a Windows 2008 R2 Terminal Server for users and allow it for admins. I tried to enable the following policy in GPO: User Configuration/Administrative Templates/System/Removable Storage Access All Removable Storage classes: Deny all access = Enabled But it did not work. I tried different physical and virtual 2008 servers with the same result. It works on Windows 7 but not on Windows 2008. Has anyone had success with this parameter on Windows 2008? Thank you

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• Question regarding an NAS server and remote users

  - by JB

  I have a client that requires a massive amount of storage space but: Doesn't want to spend very much money Needs remote users (across the country) to be able to pull data from it and store to it, as well. Can this be done with an NAS Server such as the Western Digital Sharespace Network Storage System? I do not believe the client wants to spend over $1400 and HP is offering 8TB for $1299. Also, if anyone has any other ideas besides using NAS, please let me know. Thanks in advance for any help.

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• best filesystem for an aws s3 like service

  - by gucki

  Hi! I need to build a fault tolerant, highly available key/value storage (no posix, only same functionaluty as S3) using cheap existing hardware. The storage should be able to handle several billions of items. The maximum size of items is around 1GB, most are only several KB. What's the best software/ filesystem for this task? I already had a brief look at mogilefs, mongodb (grid-fs) & glusterfs but I'm not really sure which is stable & fault tolerant enough. The simpler the setup and later expansion the better :). Corin

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• Server vendor that allows 3rd party disks

  - by Alvin S

  As noted here, Dell is no longer allowing 3rd party disks to be used with their latest servers. As in, they don't work period. Which means that if you buy one of these boxes and want to upgrade the storage later, you have buy disks from Dell at significant premiums. Dell has just given me a very strong reason to take my server business elsewhere. My company buys (instead of leasing) our servers, and typically uses them for 5 years. I need to be able to upgrade/repurpose storage periodically, and do not want to be locked in to whatever Dell might have in stock, at inflated prices to boot. As you will see in the comments of the above link, it seems HP is doing the same thing. I am looking for a server vendor that offers 3-5 year warranty with same day/next day onsite service, and allows me to use 3rd party disks. Suggestions?

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• Advantage of using nexenta vs. OpenSolaris

  - by jotango

  I am currently building a NAS for about 24 TB of storage. Video files, slow access, long term storage. No performance issues. I am currently undecided between buying a JBOD case and installing OpenSolaris (because of ZFS), or purchasing a Nexenta license. The difference is about $ 12.500 for licenses over three years. What would you see as the main advantage in purchasing a nexenta license, beside the support? Did nexenta really enhance the basic OpenSolaris, or is it just a lot of marketing speak? No one really wanted to answer that question.

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• Alternatives to FTP

  - by Jack Hickerson

  I need to share files with clients outside of my business and unfortunately our FTP server is becoming too much of a hassle (with regards to clients use of an ftp client and creating password protected downloads based on customized account privileges) Essentially, I need: a remote service that mimics an FTP server with a web interface (easy for basic internet users to comprehend). over 100gb of storage file transfer size over 2gb customizable user account privileges (password protected downloads) secure storage and data transfer preferably less then $100/mo I have already looked into some services that almost meet my requirements (StreamFile.com, box.net, onehub.com, filesanywhere.com)- has anyone used a service they would recommend? cheers, jack

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• Effecient organization of spare cables and hardware

  - by Jake Wharton

  As many of you also likely do, I have a growing collection of cables, hardware, and spare parts (screws, connectors, etc.). I'm looking to find a good system of organization so that everything isn't a tangled mess, mismatched, and potentially able to be damaged. Since the the three things listed above are all have varying sizes and degrees of delicacy this poises an interesting problem. Presently I have those cheap plastic storage bins you find at Wal-mart for everything. Cables that were once wrapped neatly have become tangled due to numerous "I know I have a cable for this" moments. Hardware is mixed in other bins with odds and ends with no protection from each other. NICs, CPUs, and HDDs are all interacting and likely causing damage. Finally there are stray parts sprinkled amongst these two both in plastic bags and loose. I'm looking to unify this storage into a controlled chaos. Here are my thoughts: Odds and ends are the easiest. Screws, connectors, and small electronic parts lend themselves perfectly to tackle boxes and jewelry boxes. Since these are usually dynamically compartmentalized I can adjust for the contents and label them on the outside or inside of the lid. Cables are easily wrangled with short velcro strips but that doesn't stop them from being all mixed in together. Hardware is the worst offender. Size, shape, and degree of delicacy changes with nearly every piece. I'm willing to sacrifice a bit of organization for a somewhat efficient manner. What are all your thoughts? What is the best type of tackle or jewelry box to use? Most of them are cheap and flimsy. Is there a better alternative? How can I organize cables to know exactly (within reason) where one is? What about associating cables with hardware (Wall adapter to router, etc.)? What kind of storage unit lends itself to all shapes of hardware? Do I need to separate by size or degree of delicacy for better organization?

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• What disk setup is needed / best practice for hypervisor-only servers?

  - by Luke404

  Planning to buy some servers to run an hypervisor (Citrix XenServer or VMware vSphere, still have to decide between the two) we'd like to boot off the local redundant SD card module offered by various vendors (eg. Dell, HP, etc...). The actual VMs will run from an existing iSCSI SAN (which, by the way, can't support booting the servers directly off the SAN). What are the reasons, if any, to choose completely diskless servers VS having some local storage? And what would be the guidelines to choose that local storage? (number of spindles, raid level, etc)

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• Any experience with SATA SAS Interposer Cards?

  - by korkman

  Driven by the current price difference between SATA and SAS disks on one side and the potentially bad behaviour of SATA disks in bigger storage arrays on the other side, I have found so-called SATA-to-SAS interposer cards. Advertised as "seamlessly adding SAS capabilities to existing SATA disk drives", I wonder if anyone here has had some experience with these or similar products. The major benefits I can identify are the increased cable voltage (if all drives are SAS connected), the ability to power-cycle the drive and multipath (if desired). Obviously the SATA drive will still have to be RAID edition. The question is: Do these cards indeed increase the overall reliability of a storage system, or will failing SATA disks cause trouble nevertheless? Edit: I'm not asking for hypothetical answers, only actual experience please. I'm well aware that the typical 10k SAS drive is more reliable (and better performing) than 7200 SATA drives. But how does a nearline SAS, which is phyiscally the same disk as its SATA counterpart, compare to the SATA version with interposer?

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• Network Drive Via Ethernet Port for Speed?

  - by Yar

  I have a Macbook with Firewire 400 and USB 2.0, so the only way I can get fast external storage is through the Ethernet port. A really fast firewire 800 drive on ANOTHER computer is actually much faster than the built-in drive (according to XBench). So I thought I would try to go one better and buy an ethernet-ready drive. I bought a Seagate GoFlex™ Home Network Storage System, and it seems like the only way to get it to work is to plug it into a router. Can this drive be used without a router (i.e., direct to computer)? Are there any drives that can be plugged directly into the ethernet port for fast access? I don't want the drive on my router: I want it on my computer. Ideally I'd need 7200rpm or faster, too... Update: Just chatted with Seagate and they said that this particular drive will not work that way. Will any others?

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