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• HP ProLiant DL980-Oracle TPC-C Benchmark spat

  - by jchang

  The Register reported a spat between HP and Oracle on the TPC-C benchmark. Per above, HP submitted a TPC-C result of 3,388,535 tpm-C for their ProLiant DL980 G7 (8 Xeon X7560 processors), with a cost of $0.63 per tpm-C. Oracle has refused permission to publish. Late last year (2010) Oracle published a result of 30M tpm-C for a 108 processors (sockets) SPARC cluster ($30M complete system cost). Oracle is now comparing this to the HP Superdome result from 2007 of 4M tpm-C at $2.93 per tpm-C, calling...(read more)

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• Refreshing imported MySQL data with MySQL for Excel

  - by Javier Rivera

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

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• Joins in single-table queries

  - by Rob Farley

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

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• Installing SharePoint 2010 and PowerPivot for SharePoint on Windows 7

  - by smisner

  Many people like me want (or need) to do their business intelligence development work on a laptop. As someone who frequently speaks at various events or teaches classes on all subjects related to the Microsoft business intelligence stack, I need a way to run multiple server products on my laptop with reasonable performance. Once upon a time, that requirement meant only that I had to load the current version of SQL Server and the client tools of choice. In today's post, I'll review my latest experience with trying to make the newly released Microsoft BI products work with a Windows 7 operating system. The entrance of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 into the BI stack complicated matters and I started using Virtual Server to establish a "suitable" environment. As part of the team that delivered a lot of education as part of the Yukon pre-launch activities (that would be SQL Server 2005 for the uninitiated), I was working with four - yes, four - virtual servers. That was a pretty brutal workload for a 2GB laptop, which worked if I was very, very careful. It could also be a finicky and unreliable configuration as I learned to my dismay at one TechEd session several years ago when I had to reboot a very carefully cached set of servers just minutes before my session started. Although it worked, it came back to life very, very slowly much to the displeasure of the audience. They couldn't possibly have been less pleased than me. At that moment, I resolved to get the beefiest environment I could afford and consolidate to a single virtual server. Enter the 4GB 64-bit laptop to preserve my sanity and my livelihood. Likewise, for SQL Server 2008, I managed to keep everything within a single virtual server and I could function reasonably well with this approach. Now we have SQL Server 2008 R2 plus Office SharePoint Server 2010. That means a 64-bit operating system. Period. That means no more Virtual Server. That means I must use Hyper-V or another alternative. I've heard alternatives exist, but my few dabbles in this area did not yield positive results. It might have been just me having issues rather than any failure of those technologies to adequately support the requirements. My first run at working with the new BI stack configuration was to set up a 64-bit 4GB laptop with a dual-boot to run Windows Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V. However, I was generally not happy with running Windows Server 2008 R2 on my laptop. For one, I couldn't put it into sleep mode, which is helpful if I want to prepare for a presentation beforehand and then walk to the podium without the need to hold my laptop in its open state along the way (my strategy at the TechEd session long, long ago). Secondly, it was finicky with projectors. I had issues from time to time and while I always eventually got it to work, I didn't appreciate those nerve-wracking moments wondering whether this would be the time that it wouldn't work. Somewhere along the way, I learned that it was possible to load SharePoint 2010 in a Windows 7 which piqued my interest. I had just acquired a new laptop running Windows 7 64-bit, and thought surely running the BI stack natively on my laptop must be better than running Hyper-V. (I have not tried booting to Hyper-V VHD yet, but that's on my list of things to try so the jury of one is still out on this approach.) Recently, I had to build up a server with the RTM versions of SQL Server 2008 R2 and Sharepoint Server 2010 and decided to follow suit on my Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit laptop. The process is slightly different, but I'm happy to report that it IS possible, although I had some fits and starts along the way. DISCLAIMER: These products are NOT intended to be run in production mode on the Windows 7 operating system. The configuration described in this post is strictly for development or learning purposes and not supported by Microsoft. If you have trouble, you will NOT get help from them. I might be able to help, but I provide no guarantees of my ability or availablity to help. I won't provide the step-by-step instructions in this post as there are other resources that provide these details, but I will provide an overview of my approach, point you to the relevant resources, describe some of the problems I encountered, and explain how I addressed those problems to achieve my desired goal. Because my goal was not simply to set up SharePoint Server 2010 on my laptop, but specifically PowerPivot for SharePoint, I started out by referring to the installation instructions at the PowerPiovt-Info site, but mainly to confirm that I was performing steps in the proper sequence. I didn't perform the steps in Part 1 because those steps are applicable only to a server operating system which I am not running on my laptop. Then, the instructions in Part 2, won't work exactly as written for the same reason. Instead, I followed the instructions on MSDN, Setting Up the Development Environment for SharePoint 2010 on Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Windows Server 2008. In general, I found the following differences in installation steps from the steps at PowerPivot-Info: You must copy the SharePoint installation media to the local drive so that you can edit the config.xml to allow installation on a Windows client. You also have to manually install the prerequisites. The instructions provides links to each item that you must manually install and provides a command-line instruction to execute which enables required Windows features. I will digress for a moment to save you some grief in the sequence of steps to perform. I discovered later that a missing step in the MSDN instructions is to install the November CTP Reporting Services add-in for SharePoint. When I went to test my SharePoint site (I believe I tested after I had a successful PowerPivot installation), I ran into the following error: Could not load file or assembly 'RSSharePointSoapProxy, Version=10.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=89845dcd8080cc91' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified. I was rather surprised that Reporting Services was required. Then I found an article by Alan le Marquand, Working Together: SQL Server 2008 R2 Reporting Services Integration in SharePoint 2010,that instructed readers to install the November add-in. My first reaction was, "Really?!?" But I confirmed it in another TechNet article on hardware and software requirements for SharePoint Server 2010. It doesn't refer explicitly to the November CTP but following the link took me there. (Interestingly, I retested today and there's no longer any reference to the November CTP. Here's the link to download the latest and greatest Reporting Services Add-in for SharePoint Technologies 2010.) You don't need to download the add-in anymore if you're doing a regular server-based installation of SharePoint because it installs as part of the prerequisites automatically. When it was time to start the installation of SharePoint, I deviated from the MSDN instructions and from the PowerPivot-Info instructions: On the Choose the installation you want page of the installation wizard, I chose Server Farm. On the Server Type page, I chose Complete. At the end of the installation, I did not run the configuration wizard. Returning to the PowerPivot-Info instructions, I tried to follow the instructions in Part 3 which describe installing SQL Server 2008 R2 with the PowerPivot option. These instructions tell you to choose the New Server option on the Setup Role page where you add PowerPivot for SharePoint. However, I ran into problems with this approach and got installation errors at the end. It wasn't until much later as I was investigating an error that I encountered Dave Wickert's post that installing PowerPivot for SharePoint on Windows 7 is unsupported. Uh oh. But he did want to hear about it if anyone succeeded, so I decided to take the plunge. Perseverance paid off, and I can happily inform Dave that it does work so far. I haven't tested absolutely everything with PowerPivot for SharePoint but have successfully deployed a workbook and viewed the PowerPivot Management Dashboard. I have not yet tested the data refresh feature, but I have installed. Continue reading to see how I accomplished my objective. I unintalled SQL Server 2008 R2 and started again. I had different problems which I don't recollect now. However, I uninstalled again and approached installation from a different angle and my next attempt succeeded. The downside of this approach is that you must do all of the things yourself that are done automatically when you install PowerPivot as a new server. Here are the steps that I followed: Install SQL Server 2008 R2 to get a database engine instance installed. Run the SharePoint configuration wizard to set up the SharePoint databases. In Central Administration, create a Web application using classic mode authentication as per a TechNet article on PowerPivot Authentication and Authorization. Then I followed the steps I found at How to: Install PowerPivot for SharePoint on an Existing SharePoint Server. Especially important to note - you must launch setup by using Run as administrator. I did not have to manually deploy the PowerPivot solution as the instructions specify, but it's good to know about this step because it tells you where to look in Central Administration to confirm a successful deployment. I did spot some incorrect steps in the instructions (at the time of this writing) in How To: Configure Stored Credentials for PowerPivot Data Refresh. Specifically, in the section entitled Step 1: Create a target application and set the credentials, both steps 10 and 12 are incorrect. They tell you to provide an actual Windows user name and password on the page where you are simply defining the prompts for your application in the Secure Store Service. To add the Windows user name and password that you want to associate with the application - after you have successfully created the target application - you select the target application and then click Set credentials in the ribbon. Lastly, I followed the instructions at How to: Install Office Data Connectivity Components on a PowerPivot server. However, I have yet to test this in my current environment. I did have several stops and starts throughout this process and edited those out to spare you from reading non-essential information. I believe the explanation I have provided here accurately reflect the steps I followed to produce a working configuration. If you follow these steps and get a different result, please let me know so that together we can work through the issue and correct these instructions. I'm sure there are many other folks in the Microsoft BI community that will appreciate the ability to set up the BI stack in a Windows 7 environment for development or learning purposes. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• ROI is Dead, Long Live ROI

  - by frank.buytendijk

  Here's my second video blog. Click here to watch it. frank

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• New Year's resolution 2012

  Same procedure as every year... Hundreds of thousands of people have their annual new year's resolution to begin the new year. And so am I. My resolution for 2012: Writing more blog articles (again). Actually, it's quite difficult to find to proper time and space to write up an article for any kind of blog, newspaper or magazine. Especially, when you are very busy with daily work and fulfilling customers demands with very tight schedules. But seriously, I'll try to keep it up with at least one or two articles per month during 2012. There are quite some good topics to write about in the queue. Cheers, JoKi

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• Visually stunning maps and PivotViewer

  - by Rob Farley

  One of the things about PivotViewer is that it runs in the Silverlight platform and can be extended recently. One of my guys at LobsterPot, Roger Noble, has used this to incorporate a Bing Maps layer, showing items which have  Latitude and Longitude values there. We’re already talking to a hospital about using this to allow them to browse their patient data, including showing the patients on a map according to which bed they’re in. Interesting times – this will involve having custom tiles instead of the ones from Bing Maps, but the idea is similar. Of course, we’ll be using Bing Maps to show where the patients live. I should also mention that this is a work-in-progress still. Figuring out how to use PivotViewer isn’t trivial, and we’ve done quite a lot of experimenting to see how to get things working. If you find bugs, please feel free to let me know (rob_farley at hotmail will usually reach me), and we’ll add them to our list. Here are some screenshots that I made recently using the collection at http://pivot.lobsterpot.com.au/flickr – by selecting a tag, you can get a new bunch of images. A couple of images that were taken in Iceland. Some from St Mary’s Lighthouse near Newcastle, UK. And some from around Big Ben in London. I’d recommend using either Firefox or Internet Explorer if you choose to browse this yourself. It seems the Chrome browser support for Silverlight doesn’t quite handle things as nicely as we’d all like. I imagine that at some point, we may enhance the Flickr collection, to be able to search on more than tags, but as a sample collection, it seems to work quite well.

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• #SQLMug - Like a collectors set of 5 x geeky SQL Mugs?

  - by Greg Low

  Hi Folks,For a while, I've been wanting to get some great SQL mugs printed for SQL Down Under but I need further inspiration so here's your chance to get a collectors set of 5 SQL mugs:Send me (greg @ sqldownunder . com) a great line to go onto the mugs, along with your country and a delivery address. I'll pick the best 5 and get mugs printed with those sayings. If you're one of the 5, I'll send you a collectors set with one of each of the 5. Simple enough?Here are some ideas I've already received to get you started:Chuck Norris gets NULL. Nothing compares to him either.ALTER MUG  SET SINGLE_USER  WITH ROLLBACK IMMEDIATE;DENY CONTROL  ON OBJECT::MUG  TO public;knock knock who's there? sp_ sp_who? spid 1, spid 2, spid 3, spid 4... ALTER DATABASE CriticalDB SET ChuckNorrisMode = ON WITH NOWAIT;I'll probably cut off new entries around the end of April.

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• Making meetings much more efficient

  - by John Paul Cook

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

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• Bloggers Behaving Badly

  - by andyleonard

  Introduction The other morning I awoke and said to myself, "Self, you need a million bucks." After breakfast, I waltzed down to the local bank. I slipped into the vault and managed to grab a million bucks while no one was paying attention. Quietly, I slipped out of the vault and made it home with the money. My logic? The money was there for the taking, as evidenced by my ability to go and take it. I plan to donate some of the money to charity. Worst-case: If the bank wants the money back, they'll...(read more)

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• Presenting at the San Francisco SQL Server User Group - 12-Sep-2012

  - by RickHeiges

  I have a business trip scheduled out far enough in advance for a change. I was able to schedule a presentation at the San Francisco SQL Server User Group on Sep 12 about SQL Server Consolidation Strategies. If you will be in the SF area on Sep 12, I invite you to attend ar just drop by to say hello. You can find out more about the group at http://www.meetup.com/The-San-Francisco-SQL-Server-Meetup-Group/ Hope to see you there!...(read more)

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

  - by Pinal Dave

  Here is the list of selected articles of SQLAuthority.com across all these years. Instead of just listing all the articles I have selected a few of my most favorite articles and have listed them here with additional notes below it. Let me know which one of the following is your favorite article from memory lane. 2007 FQL – Facebook Query Language Facebook list following advantages of FQL: Condensed XML reduces bandwidth and parsing costs. More complex requests can reduce the number of requests necessary. Provides a single consistent, unified interface for all of your data. It’s fun! UDF – Get the Day of the Week Function The day of the week can be retrieved in SQL Server by using the DatePart function. The value returned by the function is between 1 (Sunday) and 7 (Saturday). To convert this to a string representing the day of the week, use a CASE statement. UDF – Function to Get Previous And Next Work Day – Exclude Saturday and Sunday While reading ColdFusion blog of Ben Nadel Getting the Previous Day In ColdFusion, Excluding Saturday And Sunday, I realize that I use similar function on my SQL Server Database. This function excludes the Weekends (Saturday and Sunday), and it gets previous as well as next work day. Complete Series of SQL Server Interview Questions and Answers Data Warehousing Interview Questions and Answers – Introduction Data Warehousing Interview Questions and Answers – Part 1 Data Warehousing Interview Questions and Answers – Part 2 Data Warehousing Interview Questions and Answers – Part 3 Data Warehousing Interview Questions and Answers Complete List Download 2008 Introduction to Log Viewer In SQL Server all the windows event logs can be seen along with SQL Server logs. Interface for all the logs is same and can be launched from the same place. This log can be exported and filtered as well. DBCC SHRINKFILE Takes Long Time to Run If you are DBA who are involved with Database Maintenance and file group maintenance, you must have experience that many times DBCC SHRINKFILE operations takes a long time but any other operations with Database are relatively quicker. mssqlsystemresource – Resource Database The purpose of resource database is to facilitates upgrading to the new version of SQL Server without any hassle. In previous versions whenever version of SQL Server was upgraded all the previous version system objects needs to be dropped and new version system objects to be created. 2009 Puzzle – Write Script to Generate Primary Key and Foreign Key In SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS), there is no option to script all the keys. If one is required to script keys they will have to manually script each key one at a time. If database has many tables, generating one key at a time can be a very intricate task. I want to throw a question to all of you if any of you have scripts for the same purpose. Maximizing View of SQL Server Management Studio – Full Screen – New Screen I had explained the following two different methods: 1) Open Results in Separate Tab - This is a very interesting method as result pan shows up in a different tab instead of the splitting screen horizontally. 2) Open SSMS in Full Screen - This works always and to its best. Not many people are aware of this method; hence, very few people use it to enhance performance. 2010 Find Queries using Parallelism from Cached Plan T-SQL script gets all the queries and their execution plan where parallelism operations are kicked up. Pay attention there is TOP 10 is used, if you have lots of transactional operations, I suggest that you change TOP 10 to TOP 50 This is the list of the all the articles in the series of computed columns. SQL SERVER – Computed Column – PERSISTED and Storage This article talks about how computed columns are created and why they take more storage space than before. SQL SERVER – Computed Column – PERSISTED and Performance This article talks about how PERSISTED columns give better performance than non-persisted columns. SQL SERVER – Computed Column – PERSISTED and Performance – Part 2 This article talks about how non-persisted columns give better performance than PERSISTED columns. SQL SERVER – Computed Column and Performance – Part 3 This article talks about how Index improves the performance of Computed Columns. SQL SERVER – Computed Column – PERSISTED and Storage – Part 2 This article talks about how creating index on computed column does not grow the row length of table. SQL SERVER – Computed Columns – Index and Performance This article summarized all the articles related to computed columns. 2011 SQL SERVER – Interview Questions and Answers – Frequently Asked Questions – Data Warehousing Concepts – Day 21 of 31 What is Data Warehousing? What is Business Intelligence (BI)? What is a Dimension Table? What is Dimensional Modeling? What is a Fact Table? What are the Fundamental Stages of Data Warehousing? What are the Different Methods of Loading Dimension tables? Describes the Foreign Key Columns in Fact Table and Dimension Table? What is Data Mining? What is the Difference between a View and a Materialized View? SQL SERVER – Interview Questions and Answers – Frequently Asked Questions – Data Warehousing Concepts – Day 22 of 31 What is OLTP? What is OLAP? What is the Difference between OLTP and OLAP? What is ODS? What is ER Diagram? SQL SERVER – Interview Questions and Answers – Frequently Asked Questions – Data Warehousing Concepts – Day 23 of 31 What is ETL? What is VLDB? Is OLTP Database is Design Optimal for Data Warehouse? If denormalizing improves Data Warehouse Processes, then why is the Fact Table is in the Normal Form? What are Lookup Tables? What are Aggregate Tables? What is Real-Time Data-Warehousing? What are Conformed Dimensions? What is a Conformed Fact? How do you Load the Time Dimension? What is a Level of Granularity of a Fact Table? What are Non-Additive Facts? What is a Factless Facts Table? What are Slowly Changing Dimensions (SCD)? SQL SERVER – Interview Questions and Answers – Frequently Asked Questions – Data Warehousing Concepts – Day 24 of 31 What is Hybrid Slowly Changing Dimension? What is BUS Schema? What is a Star Schema? What Snow Flake Schema? Differences between the Star and Snowflake Schema? What is Difference between ER Modeling and Dimensional Modeling? What is Degenerate Dimension Table? Why is Data Modeling Important? What is a Surrogate Key? What is Junk Dimension? What is a Data Mart? What is the Difference between OLAP and Data Warehouse? What is a Cube and Linked Cube with Reference to Data Warehouse? What is Snapshot with Reference to Data Warehouse? What is Active Data Warehousing? What is the Difference between Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence? What is MDS? Explain the Paradigm of Bill Inmon and Ralph Kimball. SQL SERVER – Azure Interview Questions and Answers – Guest Post by Paras Doshi – Day 25 of 31 Paras Doshi has submitted 21 interesting question and answers for SQL Azure. 1.What is SQL Azure? 2.What is cloud computing? 3.How is SQL Azure different than SQL server? 4.How many replicas are maintained for each SQL Azure database? 5.How can we migrate from SQL server to SQL Azure? 6.Which tools are available to manage SQL Azure databases and servers? 7.Tell me something about security and SQL Azure. 8.What is SQL Azure Firewall? 9.What is the difference between web edition and business edition? 10.How do we synchronize On Premise SQL server with SQL Azure? 11.How do we Backup SQL Azure Data? 12.What is the current pricing model of SQL Azure? 13.What is the current limitation of the size of SQL Azure DB? 14.How do you handle datasets larger than 50 GB? 15.What happens when the SQL Azure database reaches Max Size? 16.How many databases can we create in a single server? 17.How many servers can we create in a single subscription? 18.How do you improve the performance of a SQL Azure Database? 19.What is code near application topology? 20.What were the latest updates to SQL Azure service? 21.When does a workload on SQL Azure get throttled? SQL SERVER – Interview Questions and Answers – Guest Post by Malathi Mahadevan – Day 26 of 31 Malachi had asked a simple question which has several answers. Each answer makes you think and ponder about the reality of the IT world. Look at the simple question – ‘What is the toughest challenge you have faced in your present job and how did you handle it’? and its various answers. Each answer has its own story. SQL SERVER – Interview Questions and Answers – Guest Post by Rick Morelan – Day 27 of 31 Rick Morelan of Joes2Pros has written an excellent blog post on the subject how to find top N values. Most people are fully aware of how the TOP keyword works with a SELECT statement. After years preparing so many students to pass the SQL Certification I noticed they were pretty well prepared for job interviews too. Yes, they would do well in the interview but not great. There seemed to be a few questions that would come up repeatedly for almost everyone. Rick addresses similar questions in his lucid writing skills. 2012 Observation of Top with Index and Order of Resultset SQL Server has lots of things to learn and share. It is amazing to see how people evaluate and understand different techniques and styles differently when implementing. The real reason may be absolutely different but we may blame something totally different for the incorrect results. Read the blog post to learn more. How do I Record Video and Webcast How to Convert Hex to Decimal or INT Earlier I asked regarding a question about how to convert Hex to Decimal. I promised that I will post an answer with Due Credit to the author but never got around to post a blog post around it. Read the original post over here SQL SERVER – Question – How to Convert Hex to Decimal. Query to Get Unique Distinct Data Based on Condition – Eliminate Duplicate Data from Resultset The natural reaction will be to suggest DISTINCT or GROUP BY. However, not all the questions can be solved by DISTINCT or GROUP BY. Let us see the following example, where a user wanted only latest records to be displayed. Let us see the example to understand further. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Memory Lane, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• The PASS Elections Review Committee Needs Your Feedback

  - by andyleonard

  Introduction PASS has had an ERC (Elections Review Committee) forum running for a few months now. There's been surprisingly little feedback, though lots of reads. Here's what it looks like tonight: That's 1,662 views and 37 replies by my count. Not very many replies... Jump In! Now's the time to let PASS know what you think about the current elections process. The ERC members are good people who are trying to make things better. If you have something to add - as simple as "love it!" or "hate it!"...(read more)

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• Watch @marcorus and @ferrarialberto sessions online #teched #msteched #tee2012

  - by Marco Russo (SQLBI)

  In June I participated to two TechEd editions (North America and Europe). I and Alberto delivered a Pre Conference and two sessions about Tabular. Both conferences provides recorded sessions freely available on Channel 9 so that you can compare which one has been delivered in the best way! If you have to choose between the two versions, consider that in North America we receive more questions during and after the session (still recording), increasing the interaction, whereas in Europe questions usually comes after the session finished (so no recording available). If you’re curious, watch both and let me know which version you prefer, especially for Multidimensional vs Tabular! BISM: Multidimensional vs. Tabular (TechEd North America 2012) BISM: Multidimensional vs. Tabular (TechEd Europe 2012) Many-to-Many Relationships in BISM Tabular (TechEd North America 2012) Many-to-Many Relationships in BISM Tabular (TechEd Europe 2012) If you are interested to learn SSAS Tabular, don’t miss the next SSAS Tabular Workshop online on September 3-4, 2012. We are also planning dates for another roadshow in Europe this fall and I’m happy to announce we’ll have two dates in Germany, too. More updates in the coming weeks.

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• Quote of the Day: Substitutions

  - by BuckWoody

  “Ours is the age of substitutes: Instead of language we have jargon, instead of principles, slogans, and instead of genuine ideas, bright suggestions.”  Eric Bently Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• Bit-Twiddling in SQL

  - by Mike C

  Someone posted a question to the SQL Server forum the other day asking how to count runs of zero bits in an integer using SQL. Basically the poster wanted to know how to efficiently determine the longest contiguous string of zero-bits (known as a run of bits) in any given 32-bit integer. Here are a couple of examples to demonstrate the idea: Decimal = Binary = Zero Run 999,999,999 decimal = 00 111011 1 00 11010 11 00 1 00 1 11111111 binary = 2 contiguous zero bits 666,666,666 decimal = 00100111 10111100...(read more)

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• Silverlight TV 20: Community Driven Development with WCF RIA Services

  In this episode, John talks with Jeff Handley about how the community's feedback really helped shape some features in WCF RIA Services. Jeff is very active in the community and has a wealth of knowledge about WCF RIA Services. Relevant links: John's Blog and John on Twitter Jeff's Blog and Jeff on Twitter WCF RIA Services ContosoSales sample application shown in the episode Silverlight 4 RC Features (or download here) Follow us on Twitter @SilverlightTV Silverlight Training...Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• First Post

  - by Allan Ritchie

  It has been a while since I've had a blog, but I'm back into the open source dev and decided to get back into things.  I had a blog a few years back when NHibernate was infant (0.8 or something) and I was working with the Wilson ORMapper (www.ormapper.net) at the time.  Anyhow, I'm still working with NHibernate (particularily the exciting v3 alpha 1) and Castle framework. I've also written a .NET ExtDirect stack for which I'll be writing a few articles around due to its flexibility.  I decided to write yet another communication stack because all the implementations I found on the Ext forums were lacking any sort of flexibility.  So stay tuned... I'll be presenting a bunch of the extension points.

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• July, the 31 Days of SQL Server DMO’s – Day 3 (sys.dm_exec_connections)

  - by Tamarick Hill

    The third DMV we will review is the sys.dm_exec_connections DMV. This DMV is Server-Scoped and displays information about each and every current connection on your SQL Server Instance. Lets take a look at some information that this DMV returns. SELECT * FROM sys.dm_exec_connections After reviewing this DMV, in my opinion, its not a whole lot of useful information returned from this DMV from a monitoring or troubleshooting standpoint. The primary use case I have for this DMV is when I need to get a quick count of how many connections I have on one of my SQL Server boxes. For this purpose a quick SELECT COUNT(*) satisfies my need. However, for those who need it, there is other information such as what type of authentication a specific connection is using, network packet size, and client/local TCP ports being used. This information can come in handy for specific scenarios but you probably wont need it very much for your day to day monitoring/troubleshooting needs. However, this is still an important DMV that you should be aware of in the event that you need it. For more information on this DMV, please see the below Books Online link: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms181509.aspx

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• SQL Server 2012 content on Channel 9

  - by jamiet

  A mountain of SQL Server 2012 video content featuring Greg Low, Jonathan Kehayias, Joe Sack and Roger Doherty has just been released on Channel 9. Channel 9 has great support for tags and RSS feeds so if you want to automatically download all of that content simply you can add the following RSS feed: http://channel9.msdn.com/Tags/sql+server+2012/RSS to your podcast reader of choice and have fun learning about all the new features in SQL Server 2012 such as: AlwaysOn Power View SSDT SSRS Data Alerts SSAS Tabular Modelling DAX Improvements MDS improvements SSIS improvements DQS StreamInsight improvements Data-Tier Apps (DACs) LocalDB FileTable Spatial improvements T-SQL paging Distributed Replay XEvents improvements ADO.Net Code-first T-SQL improvements Server roles Partitioning improvements ColumnStore Whew, quite a list! @jamiet

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• Third-Grade Math Class

  - by andyleonard

  An Odd Thing Happened... ... when I was in third grade math class: I was handed a sheet of arithmetic problems to solve. There were maybe 20 problems on the page and we were given the remainder of the class to complete them. I don't remember how much time remained in the class, I remember I finished working on the problems before my classmates. That wasn't the odd part. The odd part was that I started working on the first problem, concentrating pretty hard. I worked the sum and moved to the next...(read more)

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• The Data Scientist

  - by BuckWoody

  A new term - well, perhaps not that new - has come up and I’m actually very excited about it. The term is Data Scientist, and since it’s new, it’s fairly undefined. I’ll explain what I think it means, and why I’m excited about it. In general, I’ve found the term deals at its most basic with analyzing data. Of course, we all do that, and the term itself in that definition is redundant. There is no science that I know of that does not work with analyzing lots of data. But the term seems to refer to more than the common practices of looking at data visually, putting it in a spreadsheet or report, or even using simple coding to examine data sets. The term Data Scientist (as far as I can make out this early in it’s use) is someone who has a strong understanding of data sources, relevance (statistical and otherwise) and processing methods as well as front-end displays of large sets of complicated data. Some - but not all - Business Intelligence professionals have these skills. In other cases, senior developers, database architects or others fill these needs, but in my experience, many lack the strong mathematical skills needed to make these choices properly. I’ve divided the knowledge base for someone that would wear this title into three large segments. It remains to be seen if a given Data Scientist would be responsible for knowing all these areas or would specialize. There are pretty high requirements on the math side, specifically in graduate-degree level statistics, but in my experience a company will only have a few of these folks, so they are expected to know quite a bit in each of these areas. Persistence The first area is finding, cleaning and storing the data. In some cases, no cleaning is done prior to storage - it’s just identified and the cleansing is done in a later step. This area is where the professional would be able to tell if a particular data set should be stored in a Relational Database Management System (RDBMS), across a set of key/value pair storage (NoSQL) or in a file system like HDFS (part of the Hadoop landscape) or other methods. Or do you examine the stream of data without storing it in another system at all? This is an important decision - it’s a foundation choice that deals not only with a lot of expense of purchasing systems or even using Cloud Computing (PaaS, SaaS or IaaS) to source it, but also the skillsets and other resources needed to care and feed the system for a long time. The Data Scientist sets something into motion that will probably outlast his or her career at a company or organization. Often these choices are made by senior developers, database administrators or architects in a company. But sometimes each of these has a certain bias towards making a decision one way or another. The Data Scientist would examine these choices in light of the data itself, starting perhaps even before the business requirements are created. The business may not even be aware of all the strategic and tactical data sources that they have access to. Processing Once the decision is made to store the data, the next set of decisions are based around how to process the data. An RDBMS scales well to a certain level, and provides a high degree of ACID compliance as well as offering a well-known set-based language to work with this data. In other cases, scale should be spread among multiple nodes (as in the case of Hadoop landscapes or NoSQL offerings) or even across a Cloud provider like Windows Azure Table Storage. In fact, in many cases - most of the ones I’m dealing with lately - the data should be split among multiple types of processing environments. This is a newer idea. Many data professionals simply pick a methodology (RDBMS with Star Schemas, NoSQL, etc.) and put all data there, regardless of its shape, processing needs and so on. A Data Scientist is familiar not only with the various processing methods, but how they work, so that they can choose the right one for a given need. This is a huge time commitment, hence the need for a dedicated title like this one. Presentation This is where the need for a Data Scientist is most often already being filled, sometimes with more or less success. The latest Business Intelligence systems are quite good at allowing you to create amazing graphics - but it’s the data behind the graphics that are the most important component of truly effective displays. This is where the mathematics requirement of the Data Scientist title is the most unforgiving. In fact, someone without a good foundation in statistics is not a good candidate for creating reports. Even a basic level of statistics can be dangerous. Anyone who works in analyzing data will tell you that there are multiple errors possible when data just seems right - and basic statistics bears out that you’re on the right track - that are only solvable when you understanding why the statistical formula works the way it does. And there are lots of ways of presenting data. Sometimes all you need is a “yes” or “no” answer that can only come after heavy analysis work. In that case, a simple e-mail might be all the reporting you need. In others, complex relationships and multiple components require a deep understanding of the various graphical methods of presenting data. Knowing which kind of chart, color, graphic or shape conveys a particular datum best is essential knowledge for the Data Scientist. Why I’m excited I love this area of study. I like math, stats, and computing technologies, but it goes beyond that. I love what data can do - how it can help an organization. I’ve been fortunate enough in my professional career these past two decades to work with lots of folks who perform this role at companies from aerospace to medical firms, from manufacturing to retail. Interestingly, the size of the company really isn’t germane here. I worked with one very small bio-tech (cryogenics) company that worked deeply with analysis of complex interrelated data. So  watch this space. No, I’m not leaving Azure or distributed computing or Microsoft. In fact, I think I’m perfectly situated to investigate this role further. We have a huge set of tools, from RDBMS to Hadoop to allow me to explore. And I’m happy to share what I learn along the way.

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• Quote of the Day: Substitutions

  - by BuckWoody

  “Ours is the age of substitutes: Instead of language we have jargon, instead of principles, slogans, and instead of genuine ideas, bright suggestions.”  Eric Bently Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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

  - by AaronBertrand

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

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• Prologue…

  - by Chris Stewart

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

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