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• SQL Saturday 43 (Redmond, WA) Review

  - by BuckWoody

  Last Saturday (June 12th) we held a “SQL Saturday” (more about those here) event in Redmond, Washington. The event was held at the Microsoft campus, at the Mixer in our new location called the “Commons”. This is a mall-like area that we have on campus, and the Mixer is a large building with lots of meeting rooms, so it made a perfect location for the event. There was a sign to find the parking, and once there they had a sign to show how to get to the building. Since it’s a secure facility, Greg Larsen and crew had a person manning the door so that even late arrivals could get in. We had about 400 sign up for the event, and a little over 300 attend (official numbers later). I think we would have had a lot more, but the sun was out – and you just can’t underestimate the effect of that here in the Pacific Northwest. We joke a lot about not seeing the sun much, but when a day like what we had on Saturday comes around, and on a weekend at that, you’d cancel your wedding to go outside to play in the sun. And your spouse would agree with you for doing it. We had some top-notch speakers, including Clifford Dibble and Kalen Delany. The food was great, we had multiple sponsors (including Confio who seems to be at all of these) and the attendees were from all over the professional spectrum, from developers to BI to DBA’s. Everyone I saw was very engaged, and when I visited room-to-room I saw almost no one in the halls – everyone was in the sessions. I also saw a much larger Microsoft presence this year, especially from Dan Jones’ team. I had a great turnout at my session, and yes, I was wearing an Oracle staff shirt. I did that because I wanted to show that the session I gave on “SQL Server for the Oracle DBA” was non-marketing – I couldn’t exactly bash Oracle wearing their colors! These events are amazing. I can’t emphasize enough how much I appreciate the volunteers and how much work they put into these events, and to you for coming. If you’re reading this and you haven’t attended one yet, definitely find out if there is one in your area – and if not, start one. It’s a lot of work, but it’s totally worth it.       Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• Speaking - Red Gate's SQL in the City

  - by AllenMWhite

  The great folks at Red Gate have invited me to join the festivities at the SQL in the City events in both Chicago on October 5, and in Seattle on November 5. In both cities I'll be presenting a session entitled Automated Deployment: Application And Database Releases Without The Headache . Here's the abstract: Ever since applications were first created, the deployment of updates and changes has been a headache, with the potential of disruption of the application at best and data corruption at worst....(read more)

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• PASS Summit Preconference and Sessions

  - by Davide Mauri

  I’m very pleased to announce that I’ll be delivering a Pre-Conference at PASS Summit 2012. I’ll speak about Business Intelligence again (as I did in 2010) but this time I’ll focus only on Data Warehouse, since it’s big topic even alone. I’ll discuss not only what is a Data Warehouse, how it can be modeled and built, but also how it’s development can be approached using and Agile approach, bringing the experience I gathered in this field. Building the Agile Data Warehouse with SQL Server 2012 http://www.sqlpass.org/summit/2012/Sessions/SessionDetails.aspx?sid=2821 I’m sure you’ll like it, especially if you’re starting to create a BI Solution and you’re wondering what is a Data Warehouse, if it is still useful nowadays that everyone talks about Self-Service BI and In-Memory databases, and what’s the correct path to follow in order to have a successful project up and running. Beside this Preconference, I’ll also deliver a regular session, this time related to database administration, monitoring and tuning: DMVs: Power in Your Hands http://www.sqlpass.org/summit/2012/Sessions/SessionDetails.aspx?sid=3204 Here we’ll dive into the most useful DMVs, so that you’ll see how that can help in everyday management in order to discover, understand and optimze you SQL Server installation, from the server itself to the single query. See you there!!!!!

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• SQLSaturday #60 - Cleveland Rocks!

  - by Mike C

  Looking forward to seeing all the DBAs, programmers and BI folks in Cleveland at SQLSaturday #60 tomorrow! I'll be presenting on (1) Intro to Spatial Data and (2) Build Your Own Search Engine in SQL. I've reworked the Spatial Data presentation based on feedback from previous SQLSaturday events and added more sample code. I also expanded the Build Your Own Search Engine code samples to demonstrate additional FILESTREAM functionality. See you all tomorrow! A little road music, please! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vU0JpyH1gC...(read more)

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• Cloud – the forecast is improving

  - by Rob Farley

  There is a lot of discussion about “the cloud”, and how that affects people’s data stories. Today the discussion enters the realm of T-SQL Tuesday, hosted this month by Jorge Segarra. Over the years, companies have invested a lot in making sure that their data is good, and I mean every aspect of it – the quality of it, the security of it, the performance of it, and more. Experts such as those of us at LobsterPot Solutions have helped these companies with this, and continue to work with clients to make sure that data is a strong part of their business, not an oversight. Whether business intelligence systems are being utilised or not, every business needs to be able to rely on its data, and have the confidence in it. Data should be a foundation upon which a business is built. In the past, data had been stored in paper-based systems. Filing cabinets stored vital information. Today, people have server rooms with storage of various kinds, recognising that filing cabinets don’t necessarily scale particularly well. It’s easy to ‘lose’ data in a filing cabinet, when you have people who need to make sure that the sheets of paper are in the right spot, and that you know how things are stored. Databases help solve that problem, but still the idea of a large filing cabinet continues, it just doesn’t involve paper. If something happens to the physical ‘filing cabinet’, then the problems are larger still. Then the data itself is under threat. Many clients have generators in case the power goes out, redundant cables in case the connectivity dies, and spare servers in other buildings just in case they’re required. But still they’re maintaining filing cabinets. You see, people like filing cabinets. There’s something to be said for having your data ‘close’. Even if the data is not in readable form, living as bits on a disk somewhere, the idea that its home is ‘in the building’ is comforting to many people. They simply don’t want to move their data anywhere else. The cloud offers an alternative to this, and the human element is an obstacle. By leveraging the cloud, companies can have someone else look after their filing cabinet. A lot of people really don’t like the idea of this, partly because the administrators of the data, those people who could potentially log in with escalated rights and see more than they should be allowed to, who need to be trusted to respond if there’s a problem, are now a faceless entity in the cloud. But this doesn’t mean that the cloud is bad – this is simply a concern that some people may have. In new functionality that’s on its way, we see other hybrid mechanisms that mean that people can leverage parts of the cloud with less fear. Companies can use cloud storage to hold their backup data, for example, backups that have been encrypted and are therefore not able to be read by anyone (including administrators) who don’t have the right password. Companies can have a database instance that runs locally, but which has its data files in the cloud, complete with Transparent Data Encryption if needed. There can be a higher level of control, making the change easier to accept. Hybrid options allow people who have had fears (potentially very justifiable) to take a new look at the cloud, and to start embracing some of the benefits of the cloud (such as letting someone else take care of storage, high availability, and more) without losing the feeling of the data being close. @rob_farley

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• You probably have enough

  - by BuckWoody

  This a decidedly non-technical post, and even a little preachy. I post it here because you, the technical professional, are the perfect audience for it. I have enough stuff. I never think so, of course, but I do. I don’t consider myself rich, but if you have a comfortable place to sleep,  enough food to eat and you can plan for your future, you are rich. And when we are rich enough to have “enough” stuff, that usually means we have too much stuff. Stuff costs money that could be put to better use, stuff needs painting, cleaning, fueling, feeding, storage and caring for. Stuff is a burden. So I decided a few years back that I had enough stuff. We gave away a lot of things, and we don’t buy any new (meaning we didn’t have one before)  things – only replacement things. We’d rather “do something” than “have something”. But even so, when birthdays, anniversaries and Christmas rolled around, we got more stuff. So I asked all of my friends and relatives to do something for me.   I ask folks that want to give me a gift (for whatever reason) to donate the price they would have paid for the gift to a charity they care about. This does a few things: They have to find a charity to care about The fact that I made it through a calendar year now actually means something Someone else gets the help they need Everybody feels better No, I’m not saying these things so you’ll think I’m a wonderful person - the reason I’m posting this here is that as a technical professional you probably have enough stuff like I do. So I ask you to try this out. Try it for one birthday, or one Holiday, or even for a year. I can promise this: it will change your life, the life of the person who gives the gift, and the person’s life who receives it. If you do try it, I’d love to have a comment here on your thoughts.

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• Speaking at PASS 2012 Summit in Seattle #sqlpass

  - by Marco Russo (SQLBI)

  I will deliver two sessions at the next PASS Summit 2012: one is title Inside DAX Query Plans and the other is Near Real-Time Analytics with xVelocity (without DirectQuery).These will be two sessions that require a lot of preparation and even if I have already much to say, I still have a long work to do this summer in order to go deeper in several details that I want to investigate for completing these sessions.I already look forward to come back in Seattle!In the meantime, you have to study SSAS Tabular and if you want to get a real jumpstart why not attending one of the next SSAS Tabular Workshop Online? We are working on more dates for this fall, but there are a few dates already scheduled.And, last but not least, the early Rough Cuts edition of our upcoming SSAS Tabular book is finally available here (really near to the final print)!

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• T-SQL Tuesday #016:Check Your Service Accounts with PowerShell

  - by AllenMWhite

  T-SQL Tuesday #016:Check Your Service Accounts with PowerShell This T-SQL Tuesday is about Aggregate Functions. It may be a bit of a stretch, but a security best practice to use separate service accounts for all your SQL Server services, so I've written some PowerShell code to check to see if any account is used more than once on a given machine. I take advantage of the SQLWmiManagement DLL to find the SQL Server services, which is a safer bet than filtering on a service name. First I load the SQLWmiManagement...(read more)

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• Parent-child hierarchies and unary operators in PowerPivot

  - by Marco Russo (SQLBI)

  Alberto wrote an excellent post describing how to implement the Unary Operator feature (which is present in Analysis Services) in PowerPivot (there was a previous post about parent-child hierarchies, too). I have to say that the solution is not so easy to implement as in Analysis Services, but it just works and, from a practical point of view, it is not so difficult to implement if you understand how it works and accept its limitations (only sum and subtractions are supported). I think that many...(read more)

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• New Project Starting. Got Gas?

  - by merrillaldrich

  “Storage is just like gasoline,” said a fellow DBA at the office the other day. This DBA, Mike is his name, is one of the smartest people I know, so I pressed him, in my subtle and erudite way, to elaborate. “Um, whut?” I said. “Yeah. Now that everything is shared – VMs or consolidated SQL Servers and shared storage – if you want to do a big project, like, say, drive to Vegas, you better fill the car with gas. Drive back and forth to work every day? Gas. Same for storage.” This was a light-bulb-above-my-head...(read more)

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• SQL Server v.Next (Denali) : Why you should start testing early

  - by AaronBertrand

  Denali is coming, whether you like it or not. You may not be an early adopter and you may not have plans on your current calendar, but at some point you will need to move your apps and databases to this release - or one very much like it. There are a lot of great new features you will be able to take advantage of, but not everything is a double rainbow. There are some changes that will break your spirit if you let them. What does it mean? I go over several breaking changes in my presentation that...(read more)

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• StreamInsight Now Available Through Microsoft Update

  - by Roman Schindlauer

  We are pleased to announce that StreamInsight v1.1 is now available for automatic download and install via Microsoft Update globally. In order to enable agile deployment of StreamInsight solutions, you have asked of us a steady cadence of releases with incremental, but highly impactful features and product improvements. Following our StreamInsight 1.0 launch in Spring 2010, we offered StreamInsight 1.1 in Fall 2010 with implicit compatibility and an upgraded setup to support side by side installs. With this setup, your applications will automatically point to the latest runtime, but you still have the choice to point your application back to a 1.0 runtime if you choose to do so. As the next step, in order to enable timely delivery of our releases to you, we are pleased to announce the support for automatic download and install of StreamInsight 1.1 release via Microsoft Update starting this week. If you have a computer: that is subscribed to Microsoft Update (different from Windows Update) has StreamInsight 1.0 installed, and does not yet have StreamInsight 1.1 installed, Microsoft Update will automatically download and install the corresponding StreamInsight 1.1 update side by side with your existing StreamInsight 1.0 installation – across all supported 32-bit and 64-bit Windows operating systems, across 11 supported languages, and across StreamInsight client and server SKUs. This is also supported in WSUS environments, if all your updates are managed from a corporate server (please talk to the WSUS administrator in your enterprise). As an example, if you have SI Client 1.0 DEU and SI Server 1.0 ENU installed on the same computer, Microsoft Update will selectively download and side-by-side install just the SI Client 1.1 DEU and SI Server 1.1 ENU releases. Going forward, Microsoft Update will be our preferred mode of delivery – in addition to support for our download sites, and media based distribution where appropriate. Regards, The StreamInsight Team

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• Parameterize Charts using Excel Slicers in PowerPivot

  - by Marco Russo (SQLBI)

  One new nice feature of Excel 2010 is the Slicer. Usually, slicers are used to filter data in a PivotTable. But they might be also useful to parameterize an algorithm or a chart! We discussed this technique in our book , but Alberto Ferrari wrote a post that shows how to use this technique to allow the user to select two stocks that should be compared in an Excel Chart – as you might imagine, this will work also when you will publish the workbook on SharePoint! This is the result: Nice to see that...(read more)

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• Rules of Holes #3 -A Better Shovel is NOT the Answer!

  - by ArnieRowland

  You stopped digging. You looked around and saw that you were still in the Hole. You needed to get out. AHA! Problem solved, you thought. You'll just get a better and more efficient shovel! Sorry, I have to tell you that switching to a more efficient shovel is unlikely to help you get out of the Hole. Yes, your resumed digging may be faster, more directed, and even well planned and articulated. But you will still be in the Hole, and digging. And that's just not the solution. A new process (scrum,...(read more)

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• SQL Server 2008 R2: StreamInsight changes at RTM: Event Flow Debugger and Management Interface Secur

  - by Greg Low

  In CTP3, I found setting up the StreamInsight Event Flow Debugger fairly easy. For RTM, a number of security changes were made. First config: To be able to connect to the management interface, your user must be added to the Performance Log Users group. After you make this change, you must log off and log back on as the token is only added to your login token when you log on. I forgot this and spent ages trying to work out why I couldn't connect. Second config: You need to reserve the URL that the...(read more)

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• TechEd 2010 Day Four: Learning how to help others learn

  - by BuckWoody

  I do quite a few presentations, and teach at the University of Washington, and also teach other classes. But I'm always learning from others how to help others learn. At events like TechEd I have access to some of the best speakers around, so I try to find out what they do that works. I attended a great session by allen White, in which he demonstrated a set of PowerShell scripts. He said that Dan Jones of the Microsoft Manageability team told him while he demonstrated a script he needed to provide some visual way to represent the process. Allen used one of the oldest visualizations around - a flowchart. It was the first time I'd seen one used to illustrate a PowerShell script, and it was very effective. I'm totally stealing the idea. All of us are teachers - we help others on our team understand what we're up to. Make sure you make notes for what you find effective in dealing with you, and then meld that into your own way of teaching. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• Survey: Do you find surveys annoying?

  - by James Luetkehoelter

  I'm sorry I couldn't resist... Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!...(read more)

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• PASS Summit Preconference and Sessions

  - by Davide Mauri

  I’m very pleased to announce that I’ll be delivering a Pre-Conference at PASS Summit 2012. I’ll speak about Business Intelligence again (as I did in 2010) but this time I’ll focus only on Data Warehouse, since it’s big topic even alone. I’ll discuss not only what is a Data Warehouse, how it can be modeled and built, but also how it’s development can be approached using and Agile approach, bringing the experience I gathered in this field. Building the Agile Data Warehouse with SQL Server 2012 http://www.sqlpass.org/summit/2012/Sessions/SessionDetails.aspx?sid=2821 I’m sure you’ll like it, especially if you’re starting to create a BI Solution and you’re wondering what is a Data Warehouse, if it is still useful nowadays that everyone talks about Self-Service BI and In-Memory databases, and what’s the correct path to follow in order to have a successful project up and running. Beside this Preconference, I’ll also deliver a regular session, this time related to database administration, monitoring and tuning: DMVs: Power in Your Hands http://www.sqlpass.org/summit/2012/Sessions/SessionDetails.aspx?sid=3204 Here we’ll dive into the most useful DMVs, so that you’ll see how that can help in everyday management in order to discover, understand and optimze you SQL Server installation, from the server itself to the single query. See you there!!!!!

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• Backup and the evil RETAINDAYS option

  - by TiborKaraszi

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

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• Why do Blogger pageview stats and AdSense pageviews differ?

  - by HTML Developer

  I run many blogs for online earnings but my blog in blogger page views: Total Pageviews 90,085 And that same blog page views in Google AdSense Total Pageviews 19,347 are different why? they reduced show for earnings? My Google AdSense Code: <script type="text/javascript"><!-- google_ad_width=336; google_ad_height=280; google_ad_format="336x280_as"; google_ad_type="text_image"; google_ad_host_channel="0001+S0011+L0007"; google_color_border="CCCCCC"; google_color_bg="FFFFFF"; google_color_link="000000"; google_color_url="336699"; google_color_text="000000"; //--></script>

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• Developing a Support Plan for Cloud Applications

  - by BuckWoody

  Last week I blogged about developing a High-Availability plan. The specifics of a given plan aren't as simple as "Step 1, then Step 2" because in a hybrid environment (which most of us have) the situation changes the requirements. There are those that look for simple "template" solutions, but unless you settle on a single vendor and a single way of doing things, that's not really viable. The same holds true for support. As I've mentioned before, I'm not fond of the term "cloud", and would rather use the tem "Distributed Computing". That being said, more people understand the former, so I'll just use that for now. What I mean by Distributed Computing is leveraging another system or setup to perform all or some of a computing function. If this definition holds true, then you're essentially creating a partnership with a vendor to run some of your IT - whether that be IaaS, PaaS or SaaS, or more often, a mix. In your on-premises systems, you're the first and sometimes only line of support. That changes when you bring in a Cloud vendor. For Windows Azure, we have plans for support that you can pay for if you like. http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/support/plans/ You're not off the hook entirely, however. You still need to create a plan to support your users in their applications, especially for the parts you control. The last thing they want to hear is "That's vendor X's problem - you'll have to call them." I find that this is often the last thing the architects think about in a solution. It's fine to put off the support question prior to deployment, but I would hold off on calling it "production" until you have that plan in place. There are lots of examples, like this one: http://www.va-interactive.com/inbusiness/editorial/sales/ibt/customer.html some of which are technology-specific. Once again, this is an "it depends" kind of approach. While it would be nice if there was just something in a box we could buy, it just doesn't work that way in a hybrid system. You have to know your options and apply them appropriately.

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• Brute Force Hardware versus Tuning

  - by jchang

  Every now and then, the question is asked “When will servers be powerful enough that performance tuning will not be necessary.” Sometimes I get the impression this was posed not on technical grounds, but rather that ISVs and CIOs don’t like performance specialists. Fortunately (for me) it does not appear that this will ever happen for two principal reasons: 1) hardware and tuning contribute in such completely different aspects that neither can be ignored, and 2) multi-core processors actually introduce...(read more)

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• Geek City: A Hint of Degrees

  - by Kalen Delaney

  This is just a quick post to describe a test I just ran to satisfy my own curiosity. I remember when Microsoft first introduced the query hint OPTION (MAXDOP N). We already had the configuration option ‘max degree of parallelism’, so there were lots of questions about how the hint interacted with the configuration option. Some people thought the configuration option set an absolute maximum, and the hint could only specify something less than that value to be meaningful. Other people thought differently,...(read more)

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• TPC-H Benchmarks on SQL Server 2014 with Columnstore

  - by jchang

  Three TPC-H benchmark results were published in April of this year at SQL Server 2014 launch, where the new updateable columnstore feature was used. SQL Server 2012 had non-updateable columnstore that required the base table to exist in rowstore form. This was not used in the one published TPC-H benchmark result on SQL Server 2012, which includes two refresh stored procedures, one inserting rows, the second deleting rows. It is possible that the TPC-H rules do not allow a view to union two tables?...(read more)

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• Wait Statistics in Microsoft SQL Server

  - by KKline

  When it comes to troubleshooting in relational databases, there's no better place to start than wait statistics. In a nutshell, a wait statistic is an internal counter that tells you how long the database spent waiting for a particular resource, activity, or process. Since wait statistics are categorized by type, one look will quickly tell the variety of problem that needs your attention, assuming you know meaning for Microsoft's lingo for each wait type....(read more)

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