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• SQL 2005 Transaction Rollback Hung–unresolved deadlock

  - by steveh99999

  Encountered an interesting issue recently with a SQL 2005 sp3 Enterprise Edition system. Every weekend, a full database reindex was being run on this system – normally this took around one and a half hours. Then, one weekend, the job ran for over 17 hours  - and had yet to complete... At this point, DBA cancelled the job. Job status is now cancelled – issue over…   However, cancelling the job had not killed the reindex transaction – DBCC OPENTRAN was still showing the transaction being open. The oldest open transaction in the database was now over 17 hours old.  Consequently, transaction log % used growing dramatically and locks still being held in the database... Further attempts to kill the transaction did nothing. ie we had a transaction which could not be killed. In sysprocesses, it was apparent the SPID was in rollback status, but the spid was not accumulating CPU or IO. Was the SPID stuck ? On examination of the SQL errorlog – shortly after the reindex had started, a whole bunch of deadlock output had been produced by trace flag 1222. Then this :- spid5s      ***Stack Dump being sent to   xxxxxxx\SQLDump0042.txt spid5s      * ******************************************************************************* spid5s      * spid5s      * BEGIN STACK DUMP: spid5s      *   12/05/10 01:04:47 spid 5 spid5s      * spid5s      * Unresolved deadlock spid5s      * spid5s      *   spid5s      * ******************************************************************************* spid5s      * ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- spid5s      * Short Stack Dump spid5s      Stack Signature for the dump is 0x000001D7 spid5s      External dump process return code 0x20000001. Unresolved deadlock – don’t think I’ve ever seen one of these before…. A quick call to Microsoft support confirmed the following bug had been hit :- http://support.microsoft.com/kb/961479 So, only option to get rid of the hung spid – to restart SQL Server… Fortunately SQL Server restarted without any issues. I was pleasantly surprised to see that recovery on this particular database was fast. However, restarting SQL Server to fix an issue is not something I would normally rush to do... Short term fix – the reindex was changed to use MAXDOP of 1. Longer term fix will be to apply the correct CU, or wait for SQL 2005 sp 4 ?? This should be released any day soon I hope..

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• SharePoint 2010 Sandboxed solution SPGridView

  - by Steve Clements

  If you didn’t know, you probably will soon, the SPGridView is not available in Sandboxed solutions. To be honest there doesn’t seem to be a great deal of information out there about the whys and what nots, basically its not part of the Sandbox SharePoint API. Of course the error message from SharePoint is about as useful as punch in the face… An unexpected error has been encountered in this Web Part.  Error: A Web Part or Web Form Control on this Page cannot be displayed or imported. You don't have Add and Customize Pages permissions required to perform this action …that’s if you have debug=true set, if not the classic “This webpart cannot be added” !! Love that one! but will a little digging you should find something like this… [TypeLoadException: Could not load  type Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls.SPGridView from assembly 'Microsoft.SharePoint, Version=14.900.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c'.]   Depending on what you want to do with the SPGridView, this may not help at all.  But I’m looking to inherit the theme of the site and style it accordingly. After spending a bit of time with Chrome’s FireBug I was able to get the required CSS classes.  I created my own class inheriting from GridView (note the lack of a preceding SP!) and simply set the styles in there. Inherit from the standard GridView public class PSGridView : GridView   Set the styles in the contructor… public PSGridView() {     this.CellPadding = 2;     this.CellSpacing = 0;     this.GridLines = GridLines.None;     this.CssClass = "ms-listviewtable";     this.Attributes.Add("style", "border-bottom-style: none; border-right-style: none; width: 100%; border-collapse: collapse; border-top-style: none; border-left-style: none;");       this.HeaderStyle.CssClass = "ms-viewheadertr";          this.RowStyle.CssClass = "ms-itmhover";     this.SelectedRowStyle.CssClass = "s4-itm-selected";     this.RowStyle.Height = new Unit(25); }   Then as you cant override the Columns property setter, a custom method to add the column and set the style… public PSGridView() {     this.CellPadding = 2;     this.CellSpacing = 0;     this.GridLines = GridLines.None;     this.CssClass = "ms-listviewtable";     this.Attributes.Add("style", "border-bottom-style: none; border-right-style: none; width: 100%; border-collapse: collapse; border-top-style: none; border-left-style: none;");       this.HeaderStyle.CssClass = "ms-viewheadertr";          this.RowStyle.CssClass = "ms-itmhover";     this.SelectedRowStyle.CssClass = "s4-itm-selected";     this.RowStyle.Height = new Unit(25); }   And that should be enough to get the nicely styled SPGridView without the need for the SPGridView, but seriously….get the SPGridView in the SandBox!!!   Technorati Tags: Sharepoint 2010,SPGridView,Sandbox Solutions,Sandbox Technorati Tags: Sharepoint 2010,SPGridView,Sandbox Solutions,Sandbox

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• SQL SERVER – Installing SQL Server Data Tools and SSRS

  - by Pinal Dave

  This example is from the Beginning SSRS by Kathi Kellenberger. Supporting files are available with a free download from the www.Joes2Pros.com web site. If you have installed SQL Server, but are missing the Data Tools or Reporting Services Double-click the SQL Server 2012 installation media. Click the Installation link on the left to view the Installation options. Click the top link New SQL Server stand-alone installation or add features to an existing installation. Follow the SQL Server Setup wizard until you get to the Installation Type screen. At that screen, select Add features to an existing instance of SQL Server 2012. Click Next to move to the Feature Selection page. Select Reporting Services – Native and SQL Server Data Tools. If the Management Tools have not been installed, go ahead and choose them as well. Continue through the wizard and reboot the computer at the end of the installation if instructed to do so. Configure Reporting Services If you installed Reporting Services during the installation of the SQL Server instance, SSRS will be configured automatically for you. If you install SSRS later, then you will have to go back and configure it as a subsequent step. Click Start > All Programs > Microsoft SQL Server 2012 > Configuration Tools > Reporting Services Configuration Manager > Connect on the Reporting Services Configuration Connection dialog box. On the left-hand side of the Reporting Services Configuration Manager, click Database. Click the Change Database button on the right side of the screen. Select Create a new report server database and click Next. Click through the rest of the wizard accepting the defaults. This wizard creates two databases: ReportServer, used to store report definitions and security, and ReportServerTempDB which is used as scratch space when preparing reports for user requests. Now click Web Service URL on the left-hand side of the Reporting Services Configuration Manager. Click the Apply button to accept the defaults. If the Apply button has been grayed out, move on to the next step. This step sets up the SSRS web service. The web service is the program that runs in the background that communicates between the web page, which you will set up next, and the databases. The final configuration step is to select the Report Manager URL link on the left. Accept the default settings and click Apply. If the Apply button was already grayed out, this means the SSRS was already configured. This step sets up the Report Manager web site where you will publish reports. You may be wondering if you also must install a web server on your computer. SQL Server does not require that the Internet Information Server (IIS), the Microsoft web server, be installed to run Report Manager. Click Exit to dismiss the Reporting Services Configuration Manager dialog box. Tomorrow’s Post Tomorrow’s blog post will show how to create your first report using the Report Wizard. If you want to learn SSRS in easy to simple words – I strongly recommend you to get Beginning SSRS book from Joes 2 Pros. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL Tagged: Reporting Services, SSRS

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• MySQL for Excel 1.3.0 Beta has been released

  - by Javier Treviño

  The MySQL Windows Experience Team is proud to announce the release of MySQL for Excel version 1.3.0.  This is a beta release for 1.3.x. MySQL for Excel is an application plug-in enabling data analysts to very easily access and manipulate MySQL data within Microsoft Excel. It enables you to directly work with a MySQL database from within Microsoft Excel so you can easily do tasks such as: Importing MySQL data into Excel Exporting Excel data directly into MySQL to a new or existing table Editing MySQL data directly within Excel As this is a beta version the MySQL for Excel product can be downloaded only by using the product standalone installer at this link http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/windows/excel/ Your feedback on this beta version is very well appreciated, you can raise bugs on the MySQL bugs page or give us your comments on the MySQL for Excel forum. Changes in MySQL for Excel 1.3.0 (2014-06-06, Beta) This section documents all changes and bug fixes applied to MySQL for Excel since the release of 1.2.1. Several new features were added, for more information see What Is New In MySQL for Excel (http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.6/en/mysql-for-excel-what-is-new.html). Known limitations: Upgrading from versions MySQL for Excel 1.2.0 and lower is not possible due to a bug fixed in MySQL for Excel 1.2.1. In that scenario, the old version (MySQL for Excel 1.2.0 or lower) must be uninstalled first. Upgrading from version 1.2.1 works correctly. <CTRL> + <A> cannot be used to select all database objects. Either <SHIFT> + <Arrow Key> or <CTRL> + click must be used instead. PivotTables are normally placed to the right (skipping one column) of the imported data, they will not be created if there is another existing Excel object at that position. Functionality Added or Changed Imported data can now be refreshed by using the native Refresh feature. Fields in the imported data sheet are then updated against the live MySQL database using the saved connection ID. Functionality was added to import data directly into PivotTables, which can be created from any Import operation. Multiple objects (tables and views) can now be imported into Excel, when before only one object could be selected. Relational information is also utilized when importing multiple objects. All options now have descriptive tooltips. Hovering over an option/preference displays helpful information about its use. A new Export Data, Advanced Options option was added that shows all available data types in the Data Type combo box, instead of only showing a subset of the most popular data types. The option dialogs now include a Refresh to Defaults button that resets the dialog's options to their defaults values. Each option dialog is set individually. A new Add Summary Fields for Numeric Columns option was added to the Import Data dialog that automatically adds summary fields for numeric data after the last row of the imported data. The specific summary function is selectable from many options, such as "Total" and "Average." A new collation option was added for the schema and table creation wizards. The default schema collation is "Server Default", and the default table collation is "Schema Default". Collation options may be selected from a drop-down list of all available collations. Quick links: MySQL for Excel documentation: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/en/mysql-for-excel.html. MySQL on Windows blog: http://blogs.oracle.com/MySQLOnWindows. MySQL for Excel forum: http://forums.mysql.com/list.php?172. MySQL YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/MySQLChannel. Enjoy and thanks for the support! 

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• A temporary disagreement

  - by Tony Davis

  Last month, Phil Factor caused a furore amongst some MVPs with an article that attempted to offer simple advice to developers regarding the use of table variables, versus local and global temporary tables, in their code. Phil makes clear that the table variables do come with some fairly major limitations.no distribution statistics, no parallel query plans for queries that modify table variables.but goes on to suggest that for reasonably small-scale strategic uses, and with a bit of due care and testing, table variables are a "good thing". Not everyone shares his opinion; in fact, I imagine he was rather aghast to learn that there were those felt his article was akin to pulling the pin out of a grenade and tossing it into the database; table variables should be avoided in almost all cases, according to their advice, in favour of temp tables. In other words, a fairly major feature of SQL Server should be more-or-less 'off limits' to developers. The problem with temp tables is that, because they are scoped either in the procedure or the connection, it is easy to allow them to hang around for too long, eating up precious memory and bulking up the shared tempdb database. Unless they are explicitly dropped, global temporary tables, and local temporary tables created within a connection rather than within a stored procedure, will persist until the connection is closed or, with connection pooling, until the connection is reused. It's also quite common with ASP.NET applications to have connection leaks, as Bill Vaughn explains in his chapter in the "SQL Server Deep Dives" book, meaning that the web page exits without closing the connection object, maybe due to an error condition. This will then hang around in the heap for what might be hours before picked up by the garbage collector. Table variables are much safer in this regard, since they are batch-scoped and so are cleaned up automatically once the batch is complete, which also means that they are intuitive to use for the developer because they conform to scoping rules that are closer to those in procedural code. On the surface then, an ideal way to deal with issues related to tempdb memory hogging. So why did Phil qualify his recommendation to use Table Variables? This is another of those cases where, like scalar UDFs and table-valued multi-statement UDFs, developers can sometimes get into trouble with a relatively benign-looking feature, due to way it's been implemented in SQL Server. Once again the biggest problem is how they are handled internally, by the SQL Server query optimizer, which can make very poor choices for JOIN orders and so on, in the absence of statistics, especially when joining to tables with highly-skewed data. The resulting execution plans can be horrible, as will be the resulting performance. If the JOIN is to a large table, that will hurt. Ideally, Microsoft would simply fix this issue so that developers can't get burned in this way; they've been around since SQL Server 2000, so Microsoft has had a bit of time to get it right. As I commented in regard to UDFs, when developers discover issues like with such standard features, the database becomes an alien planet to them, where death lurks around each corner, and they continue to avoid these "killer" features years after the problems have been eventually resolved. In the meantime, what is the right approach? Is it to say "hammers can kill, don't ever use hammers", or is it to try to explain, as Phil's article and follow-up blog post have tried to do, what the feature was intended for, why care must be applied in its use, and so enable developers to make properly-informed decisions, without requiring them to delve deep into the inner workings of SQL Server? Cheers, Tony.

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• AutoFit in PowerPoint: Turn it OFF

  - by Daniel Moth

  Once a feature has shipped, it is very hard to eliminate it from the next release. If I was in charge of the PowerPoint product, I would not hesitate for a second to remove the dreadful AutoFit feature. Fortunately, AutoFit can be turned off on a slide-by-slide basis and, even better, globally: go to the PowerPoint "Options" and under "Proofing" find the "AutoCorrect Options…" button which brings up the dialog where you need to uncheck the last two checkboxes (see the screenshot to the right). AutoFit is the ability for the user to keep hitting the Enter key as they type more and more text into a slide and it magically still fits, by shrinking the space between the lines and then the text font size. It is the root of all slide evil. It encourages people to think of a slide as a Word document (which may be your goal, if you are presenting to execs in Microsoft, but that is a different story). AutoFit is the reason you fall asleep in presentations. AutoFit causes too much text to appear on a slide which by extension causes the following: When the slide appears, the text is so small so it is not readable by everyone in the audience. They dismiss the presenter as someone who does not care for them and then they stop paying attention. If the text is readable, but it is too much (hence the AutoFit feature kicked in when the slide was authored), the audience is busy reading the slide and not paying attention to the presenter. Humans can either listen well or read well at the same time, so when they are done reading they now feel that they missed whatever the speaker was saying. So they "switch off" for the rest of the slide until the next slide kicks in, which is the natural point for them to pick up paying attention again. Every slide ends up with different sized text. The less visual consistency between slides, the more your presentation feels unprofessional. You can do better than dismiss the (subconscious) negative effect a deck with inconsistent slides has on an audience. In contrast, the absence of AutoFit Leads to consistency among all slides in a deck with regards to amount of text and size of said text. Ensures the text is readable by everyone in the audience (presuming the PowerPoint template is designed for the room where the presentation is delivered). Encourages the presenter to create slides with the minimum necessary text to help the audience understand the basic structure, flow, and key points of the presentation. The "meat" of the presentation is delivered verbally by the presenter themselves, which is why they are in the room in the first place. Following on from the previous point, the audience can at a quick glance consume the text on the slide when it appears and then concentrate entirely on the presenter and what they have to say. You could argue that everything above has nothing to do with the AutoFit feature and all to do with the advice to keep slide content short. You would be right, but the on-by-default AutoFit feature is the one that stops most people from seeing and embracing that truth. In other words, the slides are the tool that aids the presenter in delivering their message, instead of the presenter being the tool that advances the slides which hold the message. To get there, embrace terse slides: the first step is to turn off this horrible feature (that was probably introduced due to the misuse of this tool within Microsoft). The next steps are described on my next post. Comments about this post welcome at the original blog.

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• wcf http 504: Working on a mystery

  - by James Fleming

  Ok,  So you're here because you've been trying to solve the mystery of why you're getting a 504 error. If you've made it to this lonely corner of the Internet, then the advice you're getting from other bloggers isn't the answer you are after. It wasn't the answer I needed either, so once I did solve my problem, I thought I'd share the answer with you. For starters, if by some miracle, you landed here first you may not already know that the 504 error is NOT coming from IIS or Casini, that response code is coming from Fiddler. HTTP/1.1 504 Fiddler - Receive Failure Content-Type: text/html Connection: close Timestamp: 09:43:05.193 ReadResponse() failed: The server did not return a response for this request.       The take away here is Fiddler won't help you with the diagnosis and any further digging in that direction is a red herring. Assuming you've dug around a bit, you may have arrived at posts which suggest you may be getting the error because you're trying to hump too much data over the wire, and have an urgent need to employ an anti-pattern: due to a special case: http://delphimike.blogspot.com/2010/01/error-504-in-wcfnet-35.html Or perhaps you're experiencing wonky behavior using WCF-CustomIsolated Adapter on Windows Server 2008 64bit environment, in which case the rather fly MVP Dwight Goins' advice is what you need. http://dgoins.wordpress.com/2009/12/18/64bit-wcf-custom-isolated-%E2%80%93-rest-%E2%80%93-%E2%80%9C504%E2%80%9D-response/ For me, none of that was helpful. I could perform a get on a single record  http://localhost:8783/Criterion/Skip(0)/Take(1) but I couldn't get more than one record in my collection as in:  http://localhost:8783/Criterion/Skip(0)/Take(2) I didn't have a big payload, or a large number of objects (as you can see by the size of one record below) - - A-1B f5abd850-ec52-401a-8bac-bcea22c74138 .biological/legal mother This item refers to the supervisor’s evaluation of the caseworker’s ability to involve the biological/legal mother in the permanency planning process. 75d8ecb7-91df-475f-aa17-26367aeb8b21 false true Admin account 2010-01-06T17:58:24.88 1.20 764a2333-f445-4793-b54d-1c3084116daa So while I was able to retrieve one record without a hitch (thus the record above) I wasn't able to return multiple records. I confirmed I could get each record individually, (Skip(1)/Take(1))so it stood to reason the problem wasn't with the data at all, so I suspected a serialization error. The first step to resolving this was to enable WCF Tracing. Instructions on how to set it up are here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms733025.aspx. The tracing log led me to the solution. The use of type 'Application.Survey.Model.Criterion' as a get-only collection is not supported with NetDataContractSerializer.  Consider marking the type with the CollectionDataContractAttribute attribute or the SerializableAttribute attribute or adding a setter to the property. So I was wrong (but close!). The problem was a deserializing issue in trying to recreate my read only collection. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa347850.aspx#Y1455 So looking at my underlying model, I saw I did have a read only collection. Adding a setter was all it took.         public virtual ICollection<string> GoverningResponses         {             get             {                 if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(GoverningResponse))                 {                     return GoverningResponse.Split(';');                 }                 else                     return null;             }                  } Hope this helps. If it does, post a comment.

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• SQLAuthority News – Ahmedabad Tech Ed On Road June 11, 2011 – An Event to Remember – A Grand Success of Community Tech Days

  - by pinaldave

  I am very excited to announce the huge success of the Microsoft Community TechDays at Ahmedabad, on 11 June 2011.  The turn-out for this seminar was huge, and there was a great response from the audience.  In fact, the AMA where the conference was held can seat 275 people – but there were over 50 people standing, the event coordinators had to find 150 more chairs, and we even had to turn away 30 people at the door because there was just no more room.  This means that there were over 500 attendees! The event started right on time, at 10 am, with my introduction and welcome to the audience.  My presentation on my favorite subject of “SQL Server Performance Troubleshooting Using Waits and Queues.”  Because of the number of speakers, I had to cut my presentation short by 10 minutes, so I only had 50 minutes to explain how to use swaits and queues to fine tune performance.  There was a good response to my talk from audience. I feel the best presentation, though, was “HTML5 – Future of the Web” by Harish Vaidyanathan.  He explained how HTML5 is going to change the internet, and taught everyone a lot about how to best use Internet Explorer 9, and discussed CSS3, SVG and DOM specifications.  Many people in the audience came specifically for this session – many had to take a half day leave off work just to travel there. At this point we all took a break for lunch, but there was no one taking a nap with a full stomach because we had a presentation of the new Windows Mango phone from Dhananjay Kumar.  New technology like this always wakes everyone up! After this came “TSQL Worst Practices” by Jacob Sebastian.  He too had to cut his talk short by 10 minutes in order to accommodate everyone, but his discussion of what SQL queries to avoid was still excellent. He is magnificent presenter and Ahmedabad loves him. The final presentation was “ASP.NET Tips and Tricks” by Tejas Shah.  This was a good overview of asp.net fundamentals, and how to use them to improve application performance.  However, the day was not over here!  We kept the audience entertained with prizes and give-aways.  Names were drawn for prizes and there was a quiz session with great gifts for the winners. Overall, the day was a huge success.  There was a good mix of SQL and non-SQL subjects, and many audiences members commented on how much they learned.  We had a much bigger turn-out than expected – all the chairs were filled 45 minutes before we even started!  For our next conference we need to find a space that will hold everyone, especially since we are hoping to have 600-800 people attending.  We definitely feel we can reach this goal.  We are already looking forward to the next Ahmedabad Microsoft Community TechDays. Download presentations: HTML5 Beauty of Web -By Harish Vaidyanathan TSQL Worst Practices- By Jacob Sebastian SQL SERVER Performance troubleshooting using Waits and Queues -By Pinal Dave ASP.NET Tips and Tracks -By Tejas Shah Other reports: Tech-Ed on Road 2011- Ahmedabad–A great event- By Jalpesh Tech-Ed 2011 on the Road in Ahmedabad – by Ritesh Shah Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: About Me, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority Author Visit, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology

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• What I've Gained from being a Presenter at Tech Events

  - by MOSSLover

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/MOSSLover/archive/2014/06/12/what-ive-gained-from-being-a-presenter-at-tech-events.aspxI know I fail at blogging lately.  As I've said before life happens and it gets in the way of best laid out plans.  I thought about creating some type of watch with some app that basically dictates using dragon naturally speaking to Wordpress, but alas no time and the write processing capabilities just don't exist yet.So to get to my point Alison Gianotto created this blog post: http://www.snipe.net/2014/06/why-you-should-stop-stalling-and-start-presenting/.  I like the message she has stated in this post and I want to share something personal.It was around 2007 that I was seriously looking into leaving the technology field altogether and going back to school.  I was calling places like Washington University in Saint Louis and University of Missouri Kansas City asking them how I could go about getting into some type of post graduate medical school program.  My entire high school career was based on Medical Explorers and somehow becoming a doctor.  I did not want to take my hobby and continue using it as a career mechanism.  I was unhappy, but I didn't realize why I was unhappy at the time.  It was really a lot of bad things involving the lack of self confidence and self esteem.  Overall I was not in a good place and it took me until 2011 to realize that I still was not in a good place in life.So in about April 2007 or so I started this blog that you guys have been reading or occasionally read.  I kind of started passively stalking people by reading their blogs in the SharePoint and .Net communities.  I also started listening to .Net Rocks & watching videos on their corresponding training for SharePoint, WCF, WF, and a bunch of other technologies.  I wanted more knowledge, so someone suggested I go to a user group.  I've told this story before about how I met Jeff Julian & John Alexander, so that point I will spare you the details.  You know how I got to my first user group presentation and how I started getting involved with events, so I'll also spare those details.The point I want to touch on is that I went out I started speaking and that path I took helped me gain the self confidence and self respect I needed.  When I first moved to NYC I couldn't even ride a subway by myself or walk alone without getting lost.  Now I feel like I can go out and solve any problem someone throws at me.  So you see what Alison states in her blog post is true and I am a great example to that point.  I stood in front of 800 or so people at SharePoint Conference in 2011 and spoke about a topic.  In 2007 I would have hidden or stuttered the entire time.  I have now spoken at over 70 events and user groups.  I am a top 25 influencer in my technology.  I was a most valued professional for years in a row in Microsoft SharePoint.  People are constantly trying to gain my time, so that they can pick my brain for solutions and other life problems.  I went from maybe five or six friends to over hundreds of friends in various cities across the globe.  I'm not saying it's an instant fame and it doesn't take a ton of work, but I have never looked back once at my life and regretted the choice I made in 2007.  It has lead me to a lot of other things in my life, including more positivity and happiness.  If anyone ever wants to contact me and pick my brain on a presentation go ahead.  If you want me to help you find the best meetup that suits you for that presentation I can try to help too (I might be a little more helpful in the Microsoft or iOS arenas though).  The best thing I can state is don't be scared just do it.  If you need an audience I can try to pencil it in my schedule.  I can't promise anything, but if you are in NYC I can at least try.

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• Removing old kernel entries in Grub

  - by To Do

  I regularly delete old kernels leaving only the latest two entries using Synaptic. I'm using Precise. However in my Grub "previous Linux version" menu there are quite a few entries labelled 2.6.8. I cannot find these linux-images in Synaptic. dpkg -l | grep linux-image Gives: rc linux-image-3.0.0-17-generic 3.0.0-17.30 Linux kernel image for version 3.0.0 on x86/x86_64 ii linux-image-3.2.0-27-generic 3.2.0-27.43 Linux kernel image for version 3.2.0 on 32 bit x86 SMP ii linux-image-3.2.0-29-generic 3.2.0-29.46 Linux kernel image for version 3.2.0 on 32 bit x86 SMP ii linux-image-3.4.0-030400-generic 3.4.0-030400.201205210521 Linux kernel image for version 3.4.0 on 32 bit x86 SMP ii linux-image-generic 3.2.0.29.31 Generic Linux kernel image Sudo update-grub gives: Generating grub.cfg ... Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-3.4.0-030400-generic Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-3.4.0-030400-generic Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-29-generic Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-3.2.0-29-generic Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-27-generic Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-3.2.0-27-generic Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.38-11-generic Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-2.6.38-11-generic Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.38-10-generic Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-2.6.38-10-generic Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.38-8-generic Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-2.6.38-8-generic Found memtest86+ image: /boot/memtest86+.bin Found Windows Vista (loader) on /dev/sda1 sudo apt-get remove linux-image-2.6.8-8-generic gives: E: Unable to locate package linux-image-2.6.8-8-generic E: Couldn't find any package by regex 'linux-image-2.6.8-8-generic' My boot folder contains the following: abi-2.6.38-10-generic initrd.img-3.4.0-030400-generic abi-2.6.38-11-generic memtest86+.bin abi-2.6.38-8-generic memtest86+_multiboot.bin abi-3.2.0-27-generic System.map-2.6.38-10-generic abi-3.2.0-29-generic System.map-2.6.38-11-generic abi-3.4.0-030400-generic System.map-2.6.38-8-generic config-2.6.38-10-generic System.map-3.2.0-27-generic config-2.6.38-11-generic System.map-3.2.0-29-generic config-2.6.38-8-generic System.map-3.4.0-030400-generic config-3.2.0-27-generic vmcoreinfo-2.6.38-10-generic config-3.2.0-29-generic vmcoreinfo-2.6.38-11-generic config-3.4.0-030400-generic vmcoreinfo-2.6.38-8-generic extlinux vmlinuz-2.6.38-10-generic grub vmlinuz-2.6.38-11-generic initrd.img-2.6.38-10-generic vmlinuz-2.6.38-8-generic initrd.img-2.6.38-11-generic vmlinuz-3.2.0-27-generic initrd.img-2.6.38-8-generic vmlinuz-3.2.0-29-generic initrd.img-3.2.0-27-generic vmlinuz-3.4.0-030400-generic initrd.img-3.2.0-29-generic and ls -l /etc/grub.d yields: total 56 -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 6715 Apr 17 20:16 00_header -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 5522 Oct 1 2011 05_debian_theme -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 7407 May 17 09:22 10_linux -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 6335 Apr 17 20:16 20_linux_xen -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1588 May 3 2011 20_memtest86+ -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 7603 Apr 17 20:16 30_os-prober -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 214 Oct 1 2011 40_custom -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 95 Oct 1 2011 41_custom -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 483 Oct 1 2011 README gdisk -l /dev/sda yields: Partition table scan: MBR: MBR only BSD: not present APM: not present GPT: not present *************************************************************** Found invalid GPT and valid MBR; converting MBR to GPT format. *************************************************************** Disk /dev/sda: 312581808 sectors, 149.1 GiB Logical sector size: 512 bytes Disk identifier (GUID): F832A498-05E1-4615-B5B1-757ACB4A757A Partition table holds up to 128 entries First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 312581774 Partitions will be aligned on 2048-sector boundaries Total free space is 4183661 sectors (2.0 GiB) Number Start (sector) End (sector) Size Code Name 1 2048 61442047 29.3 GiB 0700 Microsoft basic data 3 163842048 169986047 2.9 GiB 8200 Linux swap 4 169986048 312578047 68.0 GiB 0700 Microsoft basic data 5 61444096 159666175 46.8 GiB 8300 Linux filesystem Please help with removing the old and inexistent kernels from Grub.

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• A quick look at: sys.dm_os_buffer_descriptors

  - by Jonathan Allen

  SQL Server places data into cache as it reads it from disk so as to speed up future queries. This dmv lets you see how much data is cached at any given time and knowing how this changes over time can help you ensure your servers run smoothly and are adequately resourced to run your systems. This dmv gives the number of cached pages in the buffer pool along with the database id that they relate to: USE [tempdb] GO SELECT COUNT(*) AS cached_pages_count , CASE database_id WHEN 32767 THEN 'ResourceDb' ELSE DB_NAME(database_id) END AS Database_name FROM sys.dm_os_buffer_descriptors GROUP BY DB_NAME(database_id) , database_id ORDER BY cached_pages_count DESC; This gives you results which are quite useful, but if you add a new column with the code: …to convert the pages value to show a MB value then they become more relevant and meaningful. To see how your server reacts to queries, start up SSMS and connect to a test server and database – mine is called AdventureWorks2008. Make sure you start from a know position by running: -- Only run this on a test server otherwise your production server's-- performance may drop off a cliff and your phone will start ringing. DBCC DROPCLEANBUFFERS GO Now we can run a query that would normally turn a DBA’s hair white: USE [AdventureWorks2008] go SELECT * FROM [Sales].[SalesOrderDetail] AS sod INNER JOIN [Sales].[SalesOrderHeader] AS soh ON [sod].[SalesOrderID] = [soh].[SalesOrderID] …and then check our cache situation: A nice low figure – not! Almost 2000 pages of data in cache equating to approximately 15MB. Luckily these tables are quite narrow; if this had been on a table with more columns then this could be even more dramatic. So, let’s make our query more efficient. After resetting the cache with the DROPCLEANBUFFERS and FREEPROCCACHE code above, we’ll only select the columns we want and implement a WHERE predicate to limit the rows to a specific customer. SELECT [sod].[OrderQty] , [sod].[ProductID] , [soh].[OrderDate] , [soh].[CustomerID] FROM [Sales].[SalesOrderDetail] AS sod INNER JOIN [Sales].[SalesOrderHeader] AS soh ON [sod].[SalesOrderID] = [soh].[SalesOrderID] WHERE [soh].[CustomerID] = 29722 …and check our effect cache: Now that is more sympathetic to our server and the other systems sharing its resources. I can hear you asking: “What has this got to do with logging, Jonathan?” Well, a smart DBA will keep an eye on this metric on their servers so they know how their hardware is coping and be ready to investigate anomalies so that no ‘disruptive’ code starts to unsettle things. Capturing this information over a period of time can lead you to build a picture of how a database relies on the cache and how it interacts with other databases. This might allow you to decide on appropriate schedules for over night jobs or otherwise balance the work of your server. You could schedule this job to run with a SQL Agent job and store the data in your DBA’s database by creating a table with: IF OBJECT_ID('CachedPages') IS NOT NULL DROP TABLE CachedPages CREATE TABLE CachedPages ( cached_pages_count INT , MB INT , Database_Name VARCHAR(256) , CollectedOn DATETIME DEFAULT GETDATE() ) …and then filling it with: INSERT INTO [dbo].[CachedPages] ( [cached_pages_count] , [MB] , [Database_Name] ) SELECT COUNT(*) AS cached_pages_count , ( COUNT(*) * 8.0 ) / 1024 AS MB , CASE database_id WHEN 32767 THEN 'ResourceDb' ELSE DB_NAME(database_id) END AS Database_name FROM sys.dm_os_buffer_descriptors GROUP BY database_id After this has been left logging your system metrics for a while you can easily see how your databases use the cache over time and may see some spikes that warrant your attention. This sort of logging can be applied to all sorts of server statistics so that you can gather information that will give you baseline data on how your servers are performing. This means that when you get a problem you can see what statistics are out of their normal range and target you efforts to resolve the issue more rapidly.

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• SQL SERVER – ASYNC_IO_COMPLETION – Wait Type – Day 11 of 28

  - by pinaldave

  For any good system three things are vital: CPU, Memory and IO (disk). Among these three, IO is the most crucial factor of SQL Server. Looking at real-world cases, I do not see IT people upgrading CPU and Memory frequently. However, the disk is often upgraded for either improving the space, speed or throughput. Today we will look at another IO-related wait type. From Book On-Line: Occurs when a task is waiting for I/Os to finish. ASYNC_IO_COMPLETION Explanation: Any tasks are waiting for I/O to finish. If by any means your application that’s connected to SQL Server is processing the data very slowly, this type of wait can occur. Several long-running database operations like BACKUP, CREATE DATABASE, ALTER DATABASE or other operations can also create this wait type. Reducing ASYNC_IO_COMPLETION wait: When it is an issue related to IO, one should check for the following things associated to IO subsystem: Look at the programming and see if there is any application code which processes the data slowly (like inefficient loop, etc.). Note that it should be re-written to avoid this  wait type. Proper placing of the files is very important. We should check the file system for proper placement of the files – LDF and MDF on separate drive, TempDB on another separate drive, hot spot tables on separate filegroup (and on separate disk), etc. Check the File Statistics and see if there is a higher IO Read and IO Write Stall SQL SERVER – Get File Statistics Using fn_virtualfilestats. Check event log and error log for any errors or warnings related to IO. If you are using SAN (Storage Area Network), check the throughput of the SAN system as well as configuration of the HBA Queue Depth. In one of my recent projects, the SAN was performing really badly and so the SAN administrator did not accept it. After some investigations, he agreed to change the HBA Queue Depth on the development setup (test environment). As soon as we changed the HBA Queue Depth to quite a higher value, there was a sudden big improvement in the performance. It is very likely to happen that there are no proper indexes on the system and yet there are lots of table scans and heap scans. Creating proper index can reduce the IO bandwidth considerably. If SQL Server can use appropriate cover index instead of clustered index, it can effectively reduce lots of CPU, Memory and IO (considering cover index has lesser columns than cluster table and all other; it depends upon the situation). You can refer to the following two articles I wrote that talk about how to optimize indexes: Create Missing Indexes Drop Unused Indexes Checking Memory Related Perfmon Counters SQLServer: Memory Manager\Memory Grants Pending (Consistent higher value than 0-2) SQLServer: Memory Manager\Memory Grants Outstanding (Consistent higher value, Benchmark) SQLServer: Buffer Manager\Buffer Hit Cache Ratio (Higher is better, greater than 90% for usually smooth running system) SQLServer: Buffer Manager\Page Life Expectancy (Consistent lower value than 300 seconds) Memory: Available Mbytes (Information only) Memory: Page Faults/sec (Benchmark only) Memory: Pages/sec (Benchmark only) Checking Disk Related Perfmon Counters Average Disk sec/Read (Consistent higher value than 4-8 millisecond is not good) Average Disk sec/Write (Consistent higher value than 4-8 millisecond is not good) Average Disk Read/Write Queue Length (Consistent higher value than benchmark is not good) Read all the post in the Wait Types and Queue series. Note: The information presented here is from my experience and there is no way that I claim it to be accurate. I suggest reading Book OnLine for further clarification. All the discussions of Wait Stats in this blog are generic and vary from system to system. It is recommended that you test this on a development server before implementing it to a production server. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Wait Stats, SQL Wait Types, T SQL, Technology

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• AutoFit in PowerPoint: Turn it OFF

  - by Daniel Moth

  Once a feature has shipped, it is very hard to eliminate it from the next release. If I was in charge of the PowerPoint product, I would not hesitate for a second to remove the dreadful AutoFit feature. Fortunately, AutoFit can be turned off on a slide-by-slide basis and, even better, globally: go to the PowerPoint "Options" and under "Proofing" find the "AutoCorrect Options…" button which brings up the dialog where you need to uncheck the last two checkboxes (see the screenshot to the right). AutoFit is the ability for the user to keep hitting the Enter key as they type more and more text into a slide and it magically still fits, by shrinking the space between the lines and then the text font size. It is the root of all slide evil. It encourages people to think of a slide as a Word document (which may be your goal, if you are presenting to execs in Microsoft, but that is a different story). AutoFit is the reason you fall asleep in presentations. AutoFit causes too much text to appear on a slide which by extension causes the following: When the slide appears, the text is so small so it is not readable by everyone in the audience. They dismiss the presenter as someone who does not care for them and then they stop paying attention. If the text is readable, but it is too much (hence the AutoFit feature kicked in when the slide was authored), the audience is busy reading the slide and not paying attention to the presenter. Humans can either listen well or read well at the same time, so when they are done reading they now feel that they missed whatever the speaker was saying. So they "switch off" for the rest of the slide until the next slide kicks in, which is the natural point for them to pick up paying attention again. Every slide ends up with different sized text. The less visual consistency between slides, the more your presentation feels unprofessional. You can do better than dismiss the (subconscious) negative effect a deck with inconsistent slides has on an audience. In contrast, the absence of AutoFit Leads to consistency among all slides in a deck with regards to amount of text and size of said text. Ensures the text is readable by everyone in the audience (presuming the PowerPoint template is designed for the room where the presentation is delivered). Encourages the presenter to create slides with the minimum necessary text to help the audience understand the basic structure, flow, and key points of the presentation. The "meat" of the presentation is delivered verbally by the presenter themselves, which is why they are in the room in the first place. Following on from the previous point, the audience can at a quick glance consume the text on the slide when it appears and then concentrate entirely on the presenter and what they have to say. You could argue that everything above has nothing to do with the AutoFit feature and all to do with the advice to keep slide content short. You would be right, but the on-by-default AutoFit feature is the one that stops most people from seeing and embracing that truth. In other words, the slides are the tool that aids the presenter in delivering their message, instead of the presenter being the tool that advances the slides which hold the message. To get there, embrace terse slides: the first step is to turn off this horrible feature (that was probably introduced due to the misuse of this tool within Microsoft). The next steps are described on my next post. Comments about this post welcome at the original blog.

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• i don't receive mail notification...Nagios Core 4

  - by alessio

  I have a problem with automatically mail notification in Nagios Core 4 installed on ubuntu 12 .04 lts server... i have tried to send mail with nagios user and root user with the command: echo "test" | mail -s "test mail" [email protected] and i received mail correctly... but i don't receive any automatically mail notification... i don't know how can i do to resolve this issue! :( these are my configuration files (commands.cfg, contacts.cfg, nagios.log, mail.log): commands.cfg (the path /usr/bin/mail is the right path): # 'notify-host-by-email' command definition define command{ command_name notify-host-by-email command_line /usr/bin/printf "%b" "***** Nagios *****\n\nNotification Type: $NOTIFICATIONTYPE$\nHost: $HOSTNAME$\nState: $HOSTSTATE$\nAddress: $HOSTADDRESS$\nInfo: $HOSTOUTPUT$\n\nDate/Time: $LONGDATETIME$\n" | /usr/bin/mail -s "** $NOTIFICATIONTYPE$ Host Alert: $HOSTNAME$ is $HOSTSTATE$ **" $CONTACTEMAIL$ } # 'notify-service-by-email' command definition define command{ command_name notify-service-by-email command_line /usr/bin/printf "%b" "***** Nagios *****\n\nNotification Type: $NOTIFICATIONTYPE$\n\nService: $SERVICEDESC$\nHost: $HOSTALIAS$\nAddress: $HOSTADDRESS$\nState: $SERVICESTATE$\n\nDate/Time: $LONGDATETIME$\n\nAdditional Info:\n\n$SERVICEOUTPUT$\n" | /usr/bin/mail -s "** $NOTIFICATIONTYPE$ Service Alert: $HOSTALIAS$/$SERVICEDESC$ is $SERVICESTATE$ **" $CONTACTEMAIL$ } # 'process-host-perfdata' command definition define command{ command_name process-host-perfdata command_line /usr/bin/printf "%b" "$LASTHOSTCHECK$\t$HOSTNAME$\t$HOSTSTATE$\t$HOSTATTEMPT$\t$HOSTSTATETYPE$\t$HOSTEXECUTIONTIME$\t$HOSTOUTPUT$\t$HOSTPERFDATA$\n" >> /usr/local/nagios/var/host-perfdata.out } # 'process-service-perfdata' command definition define command{ command_name process-service-perfdata command_line /usr/bin/printf "%b" "$LASTSERVICECHECK$\t$HOSTNAME$\t$SERVICEDESC$\t$SERVICESTATE$\t$SERVICEATTEMPT$\t$SERVICESTATETYPE$\t$SERVICEEXECUTIONTIME$\t$SERVICELATENCY$\t$SERVICEOUTPUT$\t$SERVICEPERFDATA$\n" >> /usr/local/nagios/var/service-perfdata.out } contacts.cfg: define contact{ contact_name supporto alias Supporto Clienti DEA service_notification_period 24x7 host_notification_period 24x7 service_notification_options w,u,c,r host_notification_options d,r service_notification_commands notify-service-by-email host_notification_commands notify-host-by-email email [email protected] } define contactgroup{ contactgroup_name admins alias Nagios Administrators members supporto } nagios.log: [1401871412] SERVICE ALERT: fileserver;Current Users;OK;SOFT;2;USERS OK - 1 users currently logged in [1401871953] SERVICE ALERT: backups;Nagios Status;WARNING;SOFT;1;NAGIOS WARNING: 36 processes, status log updated 541 seconds ago [1401872133] SERVICE ALERT: backups;Nagios Status;OK;SOFT;2;NAGIOS OK: 36 processes, status log updated 180 seconds ago [1401872321] SERVICE ALERT: posta;Swap Usage;CRITICAL;SOFT;1;CRITICAL - Plugin timed out after 10 seconds [1401872322] SERVICE ALERT: fileserver;Current Users;CRITICAL;SOFT;1;CRITICAL - Plugin timed out after 10 seconds [1401872420] SERVICE ALERT: archivio;Disk Space;CRITICAL;SOFT;1;CRITICAL - Plugin timed out after 10 seconds [1401872492] SERVICE ALERT: fileserver;Current Users;OK;SOFT;2;USERS OK - 1 users currently logged in [1401872492] SERVICE ALERT: posta;Swap Usage;OK;SOFT;2;SWAP OK: 100% free (1984 MB out of 1984 MB) [1401872590] SERVICE ALERT: archivio;Disk Space;OK;SOFT;2;DISK OK [1401872931] Auto-save of retention data completed successfully. [1401873333] SERVICE ALERT: backups;Nagios Status;WARNING;SOFT;1;NAGIOS WARNING: 36 processes, status log updated 402 seconds ago [1401873513] SERVICE ALERT: backups;Nagios Status;OK;SOFT;2;NAGIOS OK: 36 processes, status log updated 180 seconds ago mail.log (i think that the problem is here but i don't know how to resolve it): Jun 4 10:00:01 backups sm-msp-queue[6109]: My unqualified host name (backups) unknown; sleeping for retry Jun 4 10:01:01 backups sm-msp-queue[6109]: unable to qualify my own domain name (backups) -- using short name Jun 4 10:20:01 backups sm-msp-queue[7247]: My unqualified host name (backups) unknown; sleeping for retry Jun 4 10:21:01 backups sm-msp-queue[7247]: unable to qualify my own domain name (backups) -- using short name Jun 4 10:40:01 backups sm-msp-queue[8327]: My unqualified host name (backups) unknown; sleeping for retry Jun 4 10:41:01 backups sm-msp-queue[8327]: unable to qualify my own domain name (backups) -- using short name Jun 4 11:00:01 backups sm-msp-queue[9549]: My unqualified host name (backups) unknown; sleeping for retry Jun 4 11:01:01 backups sm-msp-queue[9549]: unable to qualify my own domain name (backups) -- using short name Jun 4 11:20:01 backups sm-msp-queue[10678]: My unqualified host name (backups) unknown; sleeping for retry Jun 4 11:21:01 backups sm-msp-queue[10678]: unable to qualify my own domain name (backups) -- using short name i'm at the last step and i want to finish this Nagios Core! :) Any help be appreciate!:) host definition (this host have the disk almost full and it is in hard state but non notification) : define host{ use generic-host ; Name of host template to use host_name posta alias Server Posta ESA address 10.10.2.102 parents xen1, xen2 icon_image redhat.png statusmap_image redhat.gd2 } service definition: define service{ use generic-service host_name xen1, maestro, xen2, posta, nas002, serv2, esasrvmi02, esaubuntumi service_description Disk Space check_command ssh_all_disks!10%!5% } Notification is allowed for the contact definition you gave, but is it also allowed at the the service level ? sorry but i don't understand this thing! :(

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• SQLSaturday 33 Observations

  - by Geoff N. Hiten

  Along with a lot of my colleagues, I went to SQLSaturday #33 in Charlotte this last weekend.  Overall a really good event, especially for a first-time organizer.  There is some controversy over certain events where my name got mentioned so I thought I would clear the air. Before I get to the core controversy, let's get the details out of the way.  The Microsoft Offices in Charlotte were an excellent venue for this event.  I really appreciated the Microsoft employees that helped out by letting us in and out of normally secure areas.  This is definitely above and beyond on their part. Thanks to the organizers (especially Greg and Peter) for the great hospitality they showed to the speakers.  Now for the specifics.  Like most events of this type, there was a raffle at the end for some cool swag.  As a speaker I got raffle tickets just like any other attendee.  The raffle was clearly promoted as "must be present to win".  The problem is that for various reasons, the raffle kicked off immediately after the last speaker finished in the largest room.  That room was across the parking lot from all the other rooms for the event.  I happened to have one of the last sessions of the day, and not in the main room.  I also ran long since the audience was very interactive and there were a lot of follow-up questions.  (BTW, thanks to everyone who came and stayed for my session.  Sorry it cost you the chance to win too.).  My name was drawn for an very nice piece of swag (iPod Touch if you insist).  Since I wasn't there, I didn't win. Several folks mentioned I was still speaking and was "here" (as in at the event) just not "here in the room". Yes, I was mad when I found out about it. I think that was handled poorly.  I personally lost out as did my audience (dunno if anyone specific lost anything, but it is the idea that counts).  It was a mistake. Mistakes happen.  Nobody acted maliciously.  Heck, the guys running the event who made the decision are my friends and remain so.  I got over my mad.  We talked about this privately and we are all OK with what happened.  I am not going to let a gadget get in the way of a couple of good friendships. I think the mistake was mostly due to a lack of unity between the venue buildings   Pam Shaw had a similar challenge in Tampa a few weeks ago, including a speaker who ran long on the last session (not me that time).  She had a couple of teenage volunteers to act as gofers/runners.  They counted heads in sessions, pointed people to last-minute room and session changes, and generally helped connect the organizers to what was actually happening.  Note that this was not Pam's first SQLSaturday event.  She knew but the knowledge had not been institutionalized.  We (The SQL community in general and SQLSaturday organizers in particular) now know how essential gofers are to success. I know I spent most of this post focusing on the controversy, but I wanted to clear everything up.  I don't want to let a minor mistake, made in good faith, overshadow what was a tremendously good event for the community. As for the iPod Touch, someone in the SQL community is enjoying it, so it is not a total loss.  And if losing out on it is the price I pay so we can learn this, then that is what a community leader does.  Consider it a gift.  Besides, I really wanted a Zune 120 :)

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• How to convert from amateur web app developer to professional web apper?

  - by Nilesh

  This is more of a practical question on web app development and deployment process. Here is some background information. I use PHP for server side scripting, javascript for client side. I use Netbeans and notepad++. I user Firefox and firebug for debugging and testing. The process I use is very amateurish, I code something in netbeans, something in notepad++ and since there is nothing to compile, I just refresh the firefox browser and test it. This is convenient and faster compared to the Java development enviornment where you would have to atleast compile and deploy the jar files before you could run them. I have been thinking of putting a formal process in my development and find it hard putting it together. There are so many things to do before you can deploy your final web app. I keep hearing jslint, compression, unit testing (selenium), Ant, YUI compressor etc but I am now looking for some steps that I can take to make me more organized. For e.g I use netbeans but don't use any projects within it. I directly update the files. I don't use any source control but use my Iomega backup that saves each save into a different version and at the end of the day I backup the dev directory to my Amazon s3 account. For me development environment is just a DEV directory, TEST is my intermediate stage and PROD is the final directory that gets pushed out to the server. But all these directories are in the same apache home. I have few php scripts that just copies the needed files into the production directory. Thats about it for my development approach. I know I am missing the following - Regression testing (manual or automated ??) - automated testing (selenium ??) - automated deployment (ANT ??) - source control (svn ??) - quality control (jslint ??) Can someone explain what are the missing steps and how to go about filling those steps in order to have more professional approach. I am looking for tools with example tutorials in streamlining the whole development to deployment stage. For me just getting a hang of database, server side and client side development all in synchronization was itself a huge accomplishment. And now I feel there is lot missing before you can produce quality web application. For e.g I see lot of mention about using automated testing but how to put in use with respect to javascript and php. How to use ANT for the deployment etc. Is this all too much for a single or two person development team? Is there a way to automate all the above so that I just keep coding in netbeans and then run a batch file that is configured once and run it everytime to produce the code in the production directory? Lot of these information is scattered on the web and here, if someone can guide I would be happy to consolidate here. Thank you for your patience :)

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• SQL SERVER – IO_COMPLETION – Wait Type – Day 10 of 28

  - by pinaldave

  For any good system three things are vital: CPU, Memory and IO (disk). Among these three, IO is the most crucial factor of SQL Server. Looking at real-world cases, I do not see IT people upgrading CPU and Memory frequently. However, the disk is often upgraded for either improving the space, speed or throughput. Today we will look at an IO-related wait types. From Book On-Line: Occurs while waiting for I/O operations to complete. This wait type generally represents non-data page I/Os. Data page I/O completion waits appear as PAGEIOLATCH_* waits. IO_COMPLETION Explanation: Any tasks are waiting for I/O to finish. This is a good indication that IO needs to be looked over here. Reducing IO_COMPLETION wait: When it is an issue concerning the IO, one should look at the following things related to IO subsystem: Proper placing of the files is very important. We should check the file system for proper placement of files – LDF and MDF on a separate drive, TempDB on another separate drive, hot spot tables on separate filegroup (and on separate disk),etc. Check the File Statistics and see if there is higher IO Read and IO Write Stall SQL SERVER – Get File Statistics Using fn_virtualfilestats. Check event log and error log for any errors or warnings related to IO. If you are using SAN (Storage Area Network), check the throughput of the SAN system as well as the configuration of the HBA Queue Depth. In one of my recent projects, the SAN was performing really badly so the SAN administrator did not accept it. After some investigations, he agreed to change the HBA Queue Depth on development (test environment) set up and as soon as we changed the HBA Queue Depth to quite a higher value, there was a sudden big improvement in the performance. It is very possible that there are no proper indexes in the system and there are lots of table scans and heap scans. Creating proper index can reduce the IO bandwidth considerably. If SQL Server can use appropriate cover index instead of clustered index, it can effectively reduce lots of CPU, Memory and IO (considering cover index has lesser columns than cluster table and all other; it depends upon the situation). You can refer to the two articles that I wrote; they are about how to optimize indexes: Create Missing Indexes Drop Unused Indexes Checking Memory Related Perfmon Counters SQLServer: Memory Manager\Memory Grants Pending (Consistent higher value than 0-2) SQLServer: Memory Manager\Memory Grants Outstanding (Consistent higher value, Benchmark) SQLServer: Buffer Manager\Buffer Hit Cache Ratio (Higher is better, greater than 90% for usually smooth running system) SQLServer: Buffer Manager\Page Life Expectancy (Consistent lower value than 300 seconds) Memory: Available Mbytes (Information only) Memory: Page Faults/sec (Benchmark only) Memory: Pages/sec (Benchmark only) Checking Disk Related Perfmon Counters Average Disk sec/Read (Consistent higher value than 4-8 millisecond is not good) Average Disk sec/Write (Consistent higher value than 4-8 millisecond is not good) Average Disk Read/Write Queue Length (Consistent higher value than benchmark is not good) Note: The information presented here is from my experience and there is no way that I claim it to be accurate. I suggest reading Book OnLine for further clarification. All the discussions of Wait Stats in this blog are generic and vary from system to system. It is recommended that you test this on a development server before implementing it to a production server. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Wait Types, SQL White Papers, T SQL, Technology

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• Windows Azure Use Case: New Development

  - by BuckWoody

  This is one in a series of posts on when and where to use a distributed architecture design in your organization's computing needs. You can find the main post here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/buckwoody/archive/2011/01/18/windows-azure-and-sql-azure-use-cases.aspx Description: Computing platforms evolve over time. Originally computers were directed by hardware wiring - that, the “code” was the path of the wiring that directed an electrical signal from one component to another, or in some cases a physical switch controlled the path. From there software was developed, first in a very low machine language, then when compilers were created, computer languages could more closely mimic written statements. These language statements can be compiled into the lower-level machine language still used by computers today. Microprocessors replaced logic circuits, sometimes with fewer instructions (Reduced Instruction Set Computing, RISC) and sometimes with more instructions (Complex Instruction Set Computing, CISC). The reason this history is important is that along each technology advancement, computer code has adapted. Writing software for a RISC architecture is significantly different than developing for a CISC architecture. And moving to a Distributed Architecture like Windows Azure also has specific implementation details that our code must follow. But why make a change? As I’ve described, we need to make the change to our code to follow advances in technology. There’s no point in change for its own sake, but as a new paradigm offers benefits to our users, it’s important for us to leverage those benefits where it makes sense. That’s most often done in new development projects. It’s a far simpler task to take a new project and adapt it to Windows Azure than to try and retrofit older code designed in a previous computing environment. We can still use the same coding languages (.NET, Java, C++) to write code for Windows Azure, but we need to think about the architecture of that code on a new project so that it runs in the most efficient, cost-effective way in a Distributed Architecture. As we receive new requests from the organization for new projects, a distributed architecture paradigm belongs in the decision matrix for the platform target. Implementation: When you are designing new applications for Windows Azure (or any distributed architecture) there are many important details to consider. But at the risk of over-simplification, there are three main concepts to learn and architect within the new code: Stateless Programming - Stateless program is a prime concept within distributed architectures. Rather than each server owning the complete processing cycle, the information from an operation that needs to be retained (the “state”) should be persisted to another location c(like storage) common to all machines involved in the process.  An interesting learning process for Stateless Programming (although not unique to this language type) is to learn Functional Programming. Server-Side Processing - Along with developing using a Stateless Design, the closer you can locate the code processing to the data, the less expensive and faster the code will run. When you control the network layer, this is less important, since you can send vast amounts of data between the server and client, allowing the client to perform processing. In a distributed architecture, you don’t always own the network, so it’s performance is unpredictable. Also, you may not be able to control the platform the user is on (such as a smartphone, PC or tablet), so it’s imperative to deliver only results and graphical elements where possible.  Token-Based Authentication - Also called “Claims-Based Authorization”, this code practice means instead of allowing a user to log on once and then running code in that context, a more granular level of security is used. A “token” or “claim”, often represented as a Certificate, is sent along for a series or even one request. In other words, every call to the code is authenticated against the token, rather than allowing a user free reign within the code call. While this is more work initially, it can bring a greater level of security, and it is far more resilient to disconnections. Resources: See the references of “Nondistributed Deployment” and “Distributed Deployment” at the top of this article for more information with graphics:  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee658120.aspx  Stack Overflow has a good thread on functional programming: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/844536/advantages-of-stateless-programming  Another good discussion on Stack Overflow on server-side processing is here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3064018/client-side-or-server-side-processing Claims Based Authorization is described here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/ee335707.aspx

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• Enable Multi-Column Google Searches with a User Script

  - by Asian Angel

  Are you wanting to improve the search results view at Google and make better use of the webpage space? With a little user script magic you can make those search results look and fit better in your favorite browser. Note: This user script may conflict with the AutoPager extension if you have it installed in your favorite browser. Before Here is the standard single column view of search results at Google. Not too bad but the available space could certainly be better utilized. Note: For the purposes of our example we are using Google Chrome but this user script can be easily added to other browsers. After If you have never installed a user script in Chrome before it is just as simple as the regular extensions at the official Google website. Here you can see the details for the user script we are installing. Notice that you can view the source code if desired. To add the user script to Chrome click on “Install”. Once you start the install process you will see an intermediary message asking if you wish to continue in the lower left corner of your browser. Click “Continue” to move to the next step in the install process. From this point on the install process is practically identical to the official extensions. You can see the final confirmation window here…click “Install” to finish adding the user script to Chrome. As with regular extensions you will see a post-install message in the upper right corner. So, what does a user script look like in the “Extensions Page”? You can see the user script entry here…outside of an icon it looks rather identical to a normal extension. After refreshing the search page shown above we now have two columns of search results (default setting). This looks much much better than a single column view and there is little to no page scrolling required now. To switch to a three column view simply use the keyboard shortcut “Alt + 3”. To return to a single column view use “Alt + 1” and for the default two column view use “Alt + 2”. Three keyboard shortcuts for three different views…definitely a good thing. Note: On our test system we needed to use the number keys at the top of our keyboard to switch views…this is most likely the result of unique settings on our test system. Conclusion If you are wanting a better viewing experience when conducting searches at Google then this user script will make a very nice addition to your favorite browser. For those using Firefox you can add user scripts with the Greasemonkey & Stylish extensions. Using Opera Browser? See our how-to for adding user scripts to Opera here. Links Install the Multi-Column View of Google Search Results User Script Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Hide Flash Animations in Google ChromeEnable Google Search From Shortcut Key in KDE on (k)UbuntuSet Gmail as Default Mail Client in UbuntuSet Up User Scripts in Opera BrowserHow To Enable Favicons for Google Reader Subscriptions TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Yes, it’s Patch Tuesday Generate Stunning Tag Clouds With Tagxedo Install, Remove and HIDE Fonts in Windows 7 Need Help with Your Home Network? Awesome Lyrics Finder for Winamp & Windows Media Player Download Videos from Hulu

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• Unit Testing DateTime – The Crazy Way

  - by João Angelo

  We all know that the process of unit testing code that depends on DateTime, particularly the current time provided through the static properties (Now, UtcNow and Today), it’s a PITA. If you go ask how to unit test DateTime.Now on stackoverflow I’ll bet that you’ll get two kind of answers: Encapsulate the current time in your own interface and use a standard mocking framework; Pull out the big guns like Typemock Isolator, JustMock or Microsoft Moles/Fakes and mock the static property directly. Now each alternative has is pros and cons and I would have to say that I glean more to the second approach because the first adds a layer of abstraction just for the sake of testability. However, the second approach depends on commercial tools that not every shop wants to buy or in the not so friendly Microsoft Moles. (Sidenote: Moles is now named Fakes and it will ship with VS 2012) This tends to leave people without an acceptable and simple solution so after reading another of these types of questions in SO I came up with yet another alternative, one based on the first alternative that I presented here but tries really hard to not get in your way with yet another layer of abstraction. So, without further dues, I present you, the Tardis. The Tardis is single section of conditionally compiled code that overrides the meaning of the DateTime expression inside a single class. You still get the normal coding experience of using DateTime all over the place, but in a DEBUG compilation your tests will be able to mock every static method or property of the DateTime class. An example follows, while the full Tardis code can be downloaded from GitHub: using System; using NSubstitute; using NUnit.Framework; using Tardis; public class Example { public Example() : this(string.Empty) { } public Example(string title) { #if DEBUG this.DateTime = DateTimeProvider.Default; this.Initialize(title); } internal IDateTimeProvider DateTime { get; set; } internal Example(string title, IDateTimeProvider provider) { this.DateTime = provider; #endif this.Initialize(title); } private void Initialize(string title) { this.Title = title; this.CreatedAt = DateTime.UtcNow; } private string title; public string Title { get { return this.title; } set { this.title = value; this.UpdatedAt = DateTime.UtcNow; } } public DateTime CreatedAt { get; private set; } public DateTime UpdatedAt { get; private set; } } public class TExample { public void T001() { // Arrange var tardis = Substitute.For<IDateTimeProvider>(); tardis.UtcNow.Returns(new DateTime(2000, 1, 1, 6, 6, 6)); // Act var sut = new Example("Title", tardis); // Assert Assert.That(sut.CreatedAt, Is.EqualTo(tardis.UtcNow)); } public void T002() { // Arrange var tardis = Substitute.For<IDateTimeProvider>(); var sut = new Example("Title", tardis); tardis.UtcNow.Returns(new DateTime(2000, 1, 1, 6, 6, 6)); // Act sut.Title = "Updated"; // Assert Assert.That(sut.UpdatedAt, Is.EqualTo(tardis.UtcNow)); } } This approach is also suitable for other similar classes with commonly used static methods or properties like the ConfigurationManager class.

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• SQL SERVER – Learn SQL Server 2014 Online in a Day – My Latest Pluralsight Course

  - by Pinal Dave

  Click here watch SQL Server 2014 Administration New Features.  SQL Server 2014 was released earlier this year and it has been extremely popular in Microsoft world. Here is the announcement for everyone, who have been asking me to build a tutorial around SQL Server 2014. I have authored latest Pluralsight courses on the subject of SQL Server 2014. This course is 4 hours and 17 minutes long, but the best part is that this course contains all the latest features of SQL Server 2014. I have build this course with the assumption that DBA is familiar with earlier versions of SQL Server and wants to explore and learn new features of SQL Server 2014. The Challenge I Faced The biggest challenge I faced was how to come up with the outline for the course. The reason is that there are so many different features introduced in SQL Server 2014 that is will be difficult to cover each of the features in a single course. I wanted to cover the topics which are the most relevant and useful to developers, but in addition I also wanted to cover the topics which may be useful to develop if they know that they exists in the product. I finally decided to depend on blog readers and few of the SQL Experts. I reached out to selected 20 people via email and gave them a list of the topics which I should be covering in this course. They all work in different organizations and have a good understanding about the need of the DBA and Developers. Based on their feedback, I was able to come up with a very good outline which is currently very popular with Pluralsight library. Lots of people have asked me how was I able to come up with a course content outline so accurately. The credit for the same goes to the developers and DBA, who have voted in the topics and have helped me to build a very solid outline for the course. Outline of the Course Here is a quick outline for the course: Introduction Backup Enhancements Security Enhancements Columnstore Enhancements Online Data Operations Enhancements Enhancements with Microsoft Azure SSD Buffer Pool Extensions Resource Governor IO Miscellaneous Features Online Index Rebuilding Live Plans for Long Running Queries Transaction Durability Cardinality Estimation In Memory OLTP Optimization Well, I had a great fun working on the topics which I have mentioned in the outline. I am very confident that once you start with the course, you will indeed understand how each of the topics builds and presented. I have made sure that each of the topic has a vivid and clear story to begin with. I first explain the story and right after that I explain the concept. Who Should Attend This Course Everyone who has basic knowledge of SQL Server and wants to update themselves with SQL Server 2014. They should attend this course. One thing I have made sure that this course is easy to understand and I have decided complex subject into multiple parts. This way the learning is progressive and anyone with a poor knowledge of the subject can have enough time to understand the presented concept. Screenshot of the Course Here are few of the screenshot of the courses. How to Watch Video Course This course is available at Pluralsight, and you will need a valid login to Pluralsight. If you do not have Pluralsight login, you can quickly sign up for the FREE Trial. Click here watch SQL Server 2014 Administration New Features.  Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com)Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Training, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Video

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• SQLAuthority News – Book Signing Event – SQLPASS 2011 Event Log

  - by pinaldave

  I have been dreaming of writing book for really long time, and I finally got the chance – in fact, two chances!  I recently wrote two books: SQL Programming Joes 2 Pros: Programming and Development for Microsoft SQL Server 2008 [Amazon] | [Flipkart] | [Kindle] and SQL Wait Stats Joes 2 Pros: SQL Performance Tuning Techniques Using Wait Statistics, Types & Queues [Amazon] | [Flipkart] | [Kindle].  I had a lot of fun writing these two books, even though sometimes I had to sacrifice some family time and time for other personal development to write the books. The good side of writing book is that when the efforts put in writing books are recognize by books readers and kind organizations like expressor studio. Book Signing Event Book writing is a complex process.  Even after you spend months, maybe years, writing the material you still have to go through the editing and fact checking processes.  And, once the book is out there, there is no way to take back all the copies to change mistakes or add something you forgot.  Most of the time it is a one-way street. Book Signing Event Just like every author, I had a dream that after the books were written, they would be loved by people and gain acceptance by an audience. My first book, SQL Programming Joes 2 Pros: Programming and Development for Microsoft SQL Server 2008, is extremely popular because it helps lots of people learn various fundamental topics. My second book covers beginning to learn SQL Server Wait Stats, which is a relatively new subject. This book has had very good acceptance in the community. Book Signing Event Helping my community is my primary focus, so I was happy to see this year’s SQLPASS tag line: ‘This is a Community.‘ At the event, the expressor studio guys came up with a very novel idea. They had previously used my books and they had found them very useful. They got 100 copies of the book and decided to give it away to community folks. They invited me and my co-author Rick Morelan to hold a book signing event. We did a book signing on Thursday between 1 pm and 2 pm. Book Signing Event This event was one of the best events for me. This was my first book signing event outside of India. I reached the book signing location around 20 minutes before the scheduled time and what I saw was a big line for the book signing event. I felt very honored looking at the crowd and all the people around the event location. I felt very humbled when I saw some of my very close friends standing in the line to get my signature. It was really heartwarming to see so many enthusiasts waiting for more than an hour to get my signature. While standing in line I had the chance to have a conversation with every single person who showed up for the signature. I made sure that I repeated every single name and wrote it in every book with my signature. There is saying that if we write a name once we will remember it forever. I want to remember all of you who saw me at the book signing. Your comments were wonderful, your feedback was amazing and you were all very supportive. Book Signing Event I have made a note of every conversation I had with all of you when I was signing the books. Once again, I just want to express my thanks for coming to my book signing event. The whole experience was very humbling. On the top of it, I want to thank the expressor studio people who made it possible, who organized the whole signing event. I am so thankful to them for facilitating the whole experience, which is going to be hard to beat by any future experience. My books Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL PASS, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority Author Visit, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology

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• Application Performance Episode 2: Announcing the Judges!

  - by Michaela Murray

  The story so far… We’re writing a new book for ASP.NET developers, and we want you to be a part of it! If you work with ASP.NET applications, and have top tips, hard-won lessons, or sage advice for avoiding, finding, and fixing performance problems, we want to hear from you! And if your app uses SQL Server, even better – interaction with the database is critical to application performance, so we’re looking for database top tips too. There’s a Microsoft Surface apiece for the person who comes up with the best tip for SQL Server and the best tip for .NET. Of course, if your suggestion is selected for the book, you’ll get full credit, by name, Twitter handle, GitHub repository, or whatever you like. To get involved, just email your nuggets of performance wisdom to [email protected] – there are examples of what we’re looking for and full competition details at Application Performance: The Best of the Web. Enter the judges… As mentioned in my last blogpost, we have a mystery panel of celebrity judges lined up to select the prize-winning performance pointers. We’re now ready to reveal their secret identities! Judging your ASP.NET  tips will be: Jean-Phillippe Gouigoux, MCTS/MCPD Enterprise Architect and MVP Connected System Developer. He’s a board member at French software company MGDIS, and teaches algorithms, security, software tests, and ALM at the Université de Bretagne Sud. Jean-Philippe also lectures at IT conferences and writes articles for programming magazines. His book Practical Performance Profiling is published by Simple-Talk. Nik Molnar,  a New Yorker, ASP Insider, and co-founder of Glimpse, an open source ASP.NET diagnostics and debugging tool. Originally from Florida, Nik specializes in web development, building scalable, client-centric solutions. In his spare time, Nik can be found cooking up a storm in the kitchen, hanging with his wife, speaking at conferences, and working on other open source projects. Mitchel Sellers, Microsoft C# and DotNetNuke MVP. Mitchel is an experienced software architect, business leader, public speaker, and educator. He works with companies across the globe, as CEO of IowaComputerGurus Inc. Mitchel writes technical articles for online and print publications and is the author of Professional DotNetNuke Module Programming. He frequently answers questions on StackOverflow and MSDN and is an active participant in the .NET and DotNetNuke communities. Clive Tong, Software Engineer at Red Gate. In previous roles, Clive spent a lot of time working with Common LISP and enthusing about functional languages, and he’s worked with managed languages since before his first real job (which was a long time ago). Long convinced of the productivity benefits of managed languages, Clive is very interested in getting good runtime performance to keep managed languages practical for real-world development. And our trio of SQL Server specialists, ready to select your top suggestion, are (drumroll): Rodney Landrum, a SQL Server MVP who writes regularly about Integration Services, Analysis Services, and Reporting Services. He’s authored SQL Server Tacklebox, three Reporting Services books, and contributes regularly to SQLServerCentral, SQL Server Magazine, and Simple–Talk. His day job involves overseeing a large SQL Server infrastructure in Orlando. Grant Fritchey, Product Evangelist at Red Gate and SQL Server MVP. In an IT career spanning more than 20 years, Grant has written VB, VB.NET, C#, and Java. He’s been working with SQL Server since version 6.0. Grant volunteers with the Editorial Committee at PASS and has written books for Apress and Simple-Talk. Jonathan Allen, leader and founder of the PASS SQL South West user group. He’s been working with SQL Server since 1999 and enjoys performance tuning, development, and using SQL Server for business solutions. He’s spoken at SQLBits and SQL in the City, as well as local user groups across the UK. He’s also a moderator at ask.sqlservercentral.com.

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• Database Mirroring on SQL Server Express Edition

  - by Most Valuable Yak (Rob Volk)

  Like most SQL Server users I'm rather frustrated by Microsoft's insistence on making the really cool features only available in Enterprise Edition.  And it really doesn't help that they changed the licensing for SQL 2012 to be core-based, so now it's like 4 times as expensive!  It almost makes you want to go with Oracle.  That, and a desire to have Larry Ellison do things to your orifices. And since they've introduced Availability Groups, and marked database mirroring as deprecated, you'd think they'd make make mirroring available in all editions.  Alas…they don't…officially anyway.  Thanks to my constant poking around in places I'm not "supposed" to, I've discovered the low-level code that implements database mirroring, and found that it's available in all editions! It turns out that the query processor in all SQL Server editions prepends a simple check before every edition-specific DDL statement: IF CAST(SERVERPROPERTY('Edition') as nvarchar(max)) NOT LIKE '%e%e%e% Edition%' print 'Lame' else print 'Cool' If that statement returns true, it fails. (the print statements are just placeholders)  Go ahead and test it on Standard, Workgroup, and Express editions compared to an Enterprise or Developer edition instance (which support everything). Once again thanks to Argenis Fernandez (b | t) and his awesome sessions on using Sysinternals, I was able to watch the exact process SQL Server performs when setting up a mirror.  Surprisingly, it's not actually implemented in SQL Server!  Some of it is, but that's something of a smokescreen, the real meat of it is simple filesystem primitives. The NTFS filesystem supports links, both hard links and symbolic, so that you can create two entries for the same file in different directories and/or different names.  You can create them using the MKLINK command in a command prompt: mklink /D D:\SkyDrive\Data D:\Data mklink /D D:\SkyDrive\Log D:\Log This creates a symbolic link from my data and log folders to my Skydrive folder.  Any file saved in either location will instantly appear in the other.  And since my Skydrive will be automatically synchronized with the cloud, any changes I make will be copied instantly (depending on my internet bandwidth of course). So what does this have to do with database mirroring?  Well, it seems that the mirroring endpoint that you have to create between mirror and principal servers is really nothing more than a Skydrive link.  Although it doesn't actually use Skydrive, it performs the same function.  So in effect, the following statement: ALTER DATABASE Mir SET PARTNER='TCP://MyOtherServer.domain.com:5022' Is turned into: mklink /D "D:\Data" "\\MyOtherServer.domain.com\5022$" The 5022$ "port" is actually a hidden system directory on the principal and mirror servers. I haven't quite figured out how the log files are included in this, or why you have to SET PARTNER on both principal and mirror servers, except maybe that mklink has to do something special when linking across servers.  I couldn't get the above statement to work correctly, but found that doing mklink to a local Skydrive folder gave me similar functionality. To wrap this up, all you have to do is the following: Install Skydrive on both SQL Servers (principal and mirror) and set the local Skydrive folder (D:\SkyDrive in these examples) On the principal server, run mklink /D on the data and log folders to point to SkyDrive: mklink /D D:\SkyDrive\Data D:\Data On the mirror server, run the complementary linking: mklink /D D:\Data D:\SkyDrive\Data Create your database and make sure the files map to the principal data and log folders (D:\Data and D:\Log) Viola! Your databases are kept in sync on multiple servers! One wrinkle you will encounter is that the mirror server will show the data and log files, but you won't be able to attach them to the mirror SQL instance while they are attached to the principal. I think this is a bug in the Skydrive, but as it turns out that's fine: you can't access a mirror while it's hosted on the principal either.  So you don't quite get automatic failover, but you can attach the files to the mirror if the principal goes offline.  It's also not exactly synchronous, but it's better than nothing, and easier than either replication or log shipping with a lot less latency. I will end this with the obvious "not supported by Microsoft" and "Don't do this in production without an updated resume" spiel that you should by now assume with every one of my blog posts, especially considering the date.

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• Attend Onsite Product Usability Testing or Tour Oracle HQ Usability Labs during Oracle OpenWorld 2014

  - by gaamoth-Oracle

   By Gozel Aamoth, Oracle Applications User Experience Oracle OpenWorld  is the world’s largest business and technology event, featuring thousands of sessions, including keynotes, technical sessions, demos, and hands-on labs. Hundreds of exhibitors will be sharing what they’re bringing to Oracle technology at this year’s conference, held in downtown  San Francisco from Sept. 29-Oct. 2. If you are an Oracle customer or partner planning to attend this  annual event, there are several ways to  meet face-to-face with members of the Oracle Applications  User Experience (UX) team. We’d like  to invite you to sign up for a usability feedback session, or  hop on one of our special chartered buses  to tour Oracle HQ’s usability labs. Here’s more  information about these exclusive events. Onsite product usability testing: Give us your feedback! Product usability testing is in progress at Oracle OpenWorld 2013. The Oracle Applications User Experience team will host an onsite usability lab, where Oracle customers and partners can participate in a usability feedback session, at Oracle OpenWorld 2014. Usability experts, product managers, and user interface designers have teamed up to provide Oracle customers and partners with the opportunity to contribute to and influence application design and direction while test-driving Oracle’s next-generation applications. Your feedback will affect the existing and future usability of Oracle applications, and help us develop applications that are intuitive and easy to use. What will we test? Participants will get a preview of proposed Oracle product designs for Oracle Human Capital Management Cloud and Oracle Sales Cloud, Oracle Fusion applications for Procurement and Supply Chain, Oracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft applications, Social Relationship Management, BI applications, Fusion Middleware, and more. Who can participate*? Regardless of your current job title, we have a session that might interest you. These one-on-one feedback sessions are popular, and space is very limited, so contact us  today to learn more. Dates: Sept. 29 – Oct. 1, 2014  Location: InterContinental Hotel, San Francisco, CA  Time: Advance sign-up is required for this event. RSVP now. If you have questions about this event, please contact Angela Johnston.  Take a tour of the Oracle HQ Usability Lab during OpenWorld 2014Members of Applications UX team lead Oracle OpenWorld lab tour attendeesto the usability labs at Oracle headquarters in Redwood City, CA. The Applications User Experience team will be offering a limited number of usability lab tours  at Oracle Headquarters in Redwood City, Calif., during Oracle OpenWorld 2014. Come take a look behind the scenes of Oracle’s research and development work on Thursday, Oct. 2, or Friday, Oct. 3. Receive an exclusive look into how Oracle tests applications designs, and see the direction that Oracle’s enterprise applications are heading, including demos of designs for devices such as the tablet and smartphone. Round-trip transportation will be provided. Pick-up and drop-off is at the InterContinental Hotel in San Francisco, next to Moscone West. Spots are limited, so sign up today! How to reserve your spot To RSVP, sign up here. For additional questions, send an e-mail to Jeannette Chadwick. To learn more about our team’s presence at Oracle OpenWorld this year, please visit our website, UsableApps. *Participation requires that your company or organization has a Customer Participation Confidentiality Agreement (CPCA) on file. If your company or organization does not have a CPCA on file, we will start this process.

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