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  • July, the 31 Days of SQL Server DMO’s – Day 27 (sys.dm_db_file_space_usage)

    - by Tamarick Hill
    The sys.dm_db_file_space usage DMV returns information about database file space usage.  This DMV was enhanced for the 2012 version to include 3 additional columns. Let’s query this DMV against our AdventureWorks2012 database and view the results. SELECT * FROM sys.dm_db_file_space_usage The column returned from this DMV are really self-explanatory, but I will give you a description, paraphrased from books online, below. The first three columns returned from this DMV represent the Database, File, and Filegroup for the current database context that executed the DMV query. The next column is the total_page_count which represents the total number of pages in the file. The allocated_extent_page_count represents the total number of pages in all extents that have been allocated. The unallocated_extent_page_count represents the number of pages in the unallocated extents within the file. The version_store_reserved_page_count column represents the number of pages that are allocated to the version store. The user_object_reserved_page_count represents the number of pages allocated for user objects. The internal_object_reserved_page_count represents the number of pages allocated for internal objects.  Lastly is the mixed_extent_page_count which represents the total number of pages that are part of mixed extents. This is a great DMV for retrieving usage space information from your database files. For more information about this DMV, please see the below Books Online link: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms174412.aspx Follow me on Twitter @PrimeTimeDBA

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  • Community Events and Workshops in November 2012 #ssas #tabular #powerpivot

    - by Marco Russo (SQLBI)
    I and Alberto have a busy agenda until the end of the month, but if you are based in Northern Europe there are many chance to meet one of us in the next couple of weeks! Belgium, 20 November 2012 – SQL Server Days 2012 with Marco Russo I will present two sessions in this conference, “Data Modeling for Tabular” and “Querying and Optimizing DAX” Copenhagen, 21-22 November, 2012 – SSAS Tabular Workshop with Alberto Ferrari Alberto will be the speaker for 2 days – you can still register if you want a full immersion! Copenhagen, 21 November 2012 – Free Community Event with Alberto Ferrari (hosted in Microsoft Hellerup) In the evening Alberto will present “Excel 2013 PowerPivot in Action” Munich, 27-28 November 2012 - SSAS Tabular Workshop with Alberto Ferrari The SSAS workshop will run also in Germany, this time in Munich. Also here there is still some seat still available. Munich, 27 November 2012 - Free Community Event with Alberto Ferrari (hosted in Microsoft ) In the evening Alberto will present “Excel 2013 PowerPivot in Action” Moscow, 27-28 November 2012 – TechEd Russia 2012 with Marco Russo I will speak during the keynote on November 27 and I will present two session the day after, “Developing an Analysis Services Tabular Project BI Semantic Model” and “Excel 2013 PowerPivot in Action” Stockholm, 29-30 November 2012 - SSAS Tabular Workshop with Marco Russo I will run this workshop in Stockholm – if you want to register here, hurry up! Few seats still available! Stockholm, 29 November 2012 - Free Community Event (sold-out!) with Marco Russo In the evening I will present “Excel 2013 PowerPivot in Action” If you want to attend a SSAS Tabular Workshop online, you can also register to the Online edition of December 5-6, 2012, which is still in early bird and is scheduled with a friendly time zone for America’s countries (which could be good for Europe too, in case you don’t mind attending a workshop until midnight!).

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  • SQLCruise Alaska was Amazing

    - by AllenMWhite
    You'd think that providing in-depth SQL Server training on a cruise ship would be an excuse for a vacation disguised as a business trip, but you'd be wrong. This past week I traveled with the founders of SQLCruise, Tim Ford and Brent Ozar , along with other top professionals in the SQL Server world - Jeremiah Peschka , Kendra Little , Kevin Kline and Robert Davis - and me. The week began with Brent presenting a session on Plan Cache Analysis, which I plan to start using very soon. After Brent, Kevin...(read more)

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  • Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Analysis Services – The BISM Tabular Model #ssas #tabular #bism

    - by Marco Russo (SQLBI)
    I, Alberto and Chris spent many months (many nights, holidays and also working days of the last months) writing the book we would have liked to read when we started working with Analysis Services Tabular. A book that explains how to use Tabular, how to model data with Tabular, how Tabular internally works and how to optimize a Tabular model. All those things you need to start on a real project in order to make an happy customer. You know, we’re all consultants after all, so customer satisfaction is really important to be paid for our job! Now the book writing is finished, we’re in the final stage of editing and reviews and we look forward to get our print copy. Its title is very long: Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Analysis Services – The BISM Tabular Model. But the important thing is that you can already (pre)order it. This is the list of chapters: 01. BISM Architecture 02. Guided Tour on Tabular 03. Loading Data Inside Tabular 04. DAX Basics 05. Understanding Evaluation Contexts 06. Querying Tabular 07. DAX Advanced 08. Understanding Time Intelligence in DAX 09. Vertipaq Engine 10. Using Tabular Hierarchies 11. Data modeling in Tabular 12. Using Advanced Tabular Relationships 13. Tabular Presentation Layer 14. Tabular and PowerPivot for Excel 15. Tabular Security 16. Interfacing with Tabular 17. Tabular Deployment 18. Optimization and Monitoring And this is the book cover – have a good read!

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  • SQL SERVER – Various Leap Year Logics

    - by pinaldave
    Earlier I wrote one article on Leap Year and created one video about Leap Year. My point of view was to demonstrate how we can use SQL Server 2012 features to identify Leap year. How ever during the conversation I had some really good conversation. Here are updates for those who have missed reading the excellent comments on the blog. Incorrect Logic There are so many people still think Leap Year is the event which is consistently happening at every four year and the way to find it is divide the year with 4 and if the remainder is 0. That year is leap year. Well, it is not correct. Comment by David Bridge Check out this excerpt from wikipedia page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leap_year “most years that are evenly divisible by 4 are leap years…” “…Some exceptions to this rule are required since the duration of a solar year is slightly less than 365.25 days. Years that are evenly divisible by 100 are not leap years, unless they are also evenly divisible by 400, in which case they are leap years. For example, 1600 and 2000 were leap years, but 1700, 1800 and 1900 were not. Similarly, 2100, 2200, 2300, 2500, 2600, 2700, 2900 and 3000 will not be leap years, but 2400 and 2800 will be.” If you use logic of divide by 4 and remainder is 0 to find leap year, you will may end up with inaccurate result. The correct way to identify the year is to figure out the days of February and if the count is 29, the year is for sure leap year. Valid Alternate Solutions Comment by sainswor99insworth IIF((@Year%4=0 AND @Year%100 != 0) OR @Year%400=0, 1,0) Comment by Madhivanan Madhivanan has written a blog post about an year ago where he listed multiple ways to find leap year. Comment by Jayan DECLARE @year INT SET @year = 2012 IF (((@year % 4 = 0) AND (@year % 100 != 0)) OR (@year % 400 = 0)) PRINT ’1' ELSE print ’0' Comment by David DECLARE @Year INT = 2012 SELECT ISDATE('2/29/' + CAST(@Year AS CHAR(4))) Comment by David Bridge Incidentally – Another approach would be to take one day off March 1st and see if it is 29. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL DateTime, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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  • 24 hours to pass until 24 Hours of PASS

    - by Rob Farley
    There’s a bunch of stuff going on at the moment in the SQL world, so if you’ve missed this particular piece of news, let me tell you a bit about it. Twice a year, the SQL community puts on its biggest virtual event – 24 Hours of PASS. And the next one is tomorrow – March 21st, 2012. Twenty-four sessions, back-to-back, featuring a selection of some of the best presenters in the SQL world, speakers from all over the world, coming together in an online collaboration that so far has well over thirty thousand registrations across the presentations. Some people are signed up for all 24 sessions, some only one. Traditionally, LiveMeeting has been used as the platform for this event, but this year we’re going with a new platform – IBTalk. It promises big, and we’re hoping it won’t let us down. LiveMeeting has been great, and we thank Microsoft for providing it as a platform for the past few years. However, as the event has grown, we’ve found that a new idea is necessary. Last year a search was done for a new platform, and IBTalk ticked the right boxes. The feedback from the presenters and moderators so far has been overwhelmingly positive, and we’re hoping that this is going to really enhance the user experience. One of my favourite features of the platform is the language side. It provides a pretty good translation service. Users who join a session will see a flag on the left of the screen. If they click it, they can change the language to one of 15 on offer. Picking this changes all the labels on everything. It even translates the text in the Q&A window. What this means is that someone from Brazil can ask their question in Portuguese, and the presenter will see it in English. Then if the answer is typed in English, the questioner will be able to see the answer, also in Portuguese. Or they can switch to English to see it as the answerer typed it. I know there’s always the risk of bad translations going on, but I’ve heard good things about this translation service. But there’s more – IBTalk are providing staff to type up closed captioning live during the event. So if English isn’t your first language, don’t worry! Picking your language will also let you see subtitles in your chosen language. I’m hoping that this event is the start of PASS being able to reach people from all corners of the world. Wouldn’t it be great to find that this event is successful, and that the next 24HOP (later in the year, our Summit Preview event) has just as many non-English speakers tuning in as English speakers? If you haven’t been planning which sessions you’re going to attend, you really should get over to sqlpass.org/24hours and have a look through what’s on offer. There’s some amazing material from some of the industry’s brightest, covering a wide range of topics, from classic SQL areas to the brand new SQL 2012 features. There really should be something for every SQL professional. Check the time zones though – if you’re in the US you might be on Summer time, and an hour closer to GMT than normal. Massive thanks must go to Microsoft, SQL Sentry and Idera for sponsoring this event. Without sponsors we wouldn’t be able to put any of this on. These companies are helping 24HOP continue to grow into an event for the whole world. See you tomorrow! @rob_farley | #24hop | #sqlpass

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  • 24 hours to pass until 24 Hours of PASS

    - by Rob Farley
    There’s a bunch of stuff going on at the moment in the SQL world, so if you’ve missed this particular piece of news, let me tell you a bit about it. Twice a year, the SQL community puts on its biggest virtual event – 24 Hours of PASS. And the next one is tomorrow – March 21st, 2012. Twenty-four sessions, back-to-back, featuring a selection of some of the best presenters in the SQL world, speakers from all over the world, coming together in an online collaboration that so far has well over thirty thousand registrations across the presentations. Some people are signed up for all 24 sessions, some only one. Traditionally, LiveMeeting has been used as the platform for this event, but this year we’re going with a new platform – IBTalk. It promises big, and we’re hoping it won’t let us down. LiveMeeting has been great, and we thank Microsoft for providing it as a platform for the past few years. However, as the event has grown, we’ve found that a new idea is necessary. Last year a search was done for a new platform, and IBTalk ticked the right boxes. The feedback from the presenters and moderators so far has been overwhelmingly positive, and we’re hoping that this is going to really enhance the user experience. One of my favourite features of the platform is the language side. It provides a pretty good translation service. Users who join a session will see a flag on the left of the screen. If they click it, they can change the language to one of 15 on offer. Picking this changes all the labels on everything. It even translates the text in the Q&A window. What this means is that someone from Brazil can ask their question in Portuguese, and the presenter will see it in English. Then if the answer is typed in English, the questioner will be able to see the answer, also in Portuguese. Or they can switch to English to see it as the answerer typed it. I know there’s always the risk of bad translations going on, but I’ve heard good things about this translation service. But there’s more – IBTalk are providing staff to type up closed captioning live during the event. So if English isn’t your first language, don’t worry! Picking your language will also let you see subtitles in your chosen language. I’m hoping that this event is the start of PASS being able to reach people from all corners of the world. Wouldn’t it be great to find that this event is successful, and that the next 24HOP (later in the year, our Summit Preview event) has just as many non-English speakers tuning in as English speakers? If you haven’t been planning which sessions you’re going to attend, you really should get over to sqlpass.org/24hours and have a look through what’s on offer. There’s some amazing material from some of the industry’s brightest, covering a wide range of topics, from classic SQL areas to the brand new SQL 2012 features. There really should be something for every SQL professional. Check the time zones though – if you’re in the US you might be on Summer time, and an hour closer to GMT than normal. Massive thanks must go to Microsoft, SQL Sentry and Idera for sponsoring this event. Without sponsors we wouldn’t be able to put any of this on. These companies are helping 24HOP continue to grow into an event for the whole world. See you tomorrow! @rob_farley | #24hop | #sqlpass

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  • I Start!

    - by andyleonard
    I originally titled this post "I Quit!" but decided that doesn't set the proper tone and definitely does not match my feelings about the upcoming transitions in my life. "I Start!" is much more appropriate! Introduction I've tendered my resignation from the position of Manager, ETL Team, Data Management Group, Molina Medicaid Solutions effective Friday 14 Jan 2011. "There I Was..." In 2008 my consultant billable-days - the metric I use to determine how business is going - dropped from 20 / month...(read more)

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  • Using SQL Execution Plans to discover the Swedish alphabet

    - by Rob Farley
    SQL Server is quite remarkable in a bunch of ways. In this post, I’m using the way that the Query Optimizer handles LIKE to keep it SARGable, the Execution Plans that result, Collations, and PowerShell to come up with the Swedish alphabet. SARGability is the ability to seek for items in an index according to a particular set of criteria. If you don’t have SARGability in play, you need to scan the whole index (or table if you don’t have an index). For example, I can find myself in the phonebook easily, because it’s sorted by LastName and I can find Farley in there by moving to the Fs, and so on. I can’t find everyone in my suburb easily, because the phonebook isn’t sorted that way. I can’t even find people who have six letters in their last name, because also the book is sorted by LastName, it’s not sorted by LEN(LastName). This is all stuff I’ve looked at before, including in the talk I gave at SQLBits in October 2010. If I try to find everyone who’s names start with F, I can do that using a query a bit like: SELECT LastName FROM dbo.PhoneBook WHERE LEFT(LastName,1) = 'F'; Unfortunately, the Query Optimizer doesn’t realise that all the entries that satisfy LEFT(LastName,1) = 'F' will be together, and it has to scan the whole table to find them. But if I write: SELECT LastName FROM dbo.PhoneBook WHERE LastName LIKE 'F%'; then SQL is smart enough to understand this, and performs an Index Seek instead. To see why, I look further into the plan, in particular, the properties of the Index Seek operator. The ToolTip shows me what I’m after: You’ll see that it does a Seek to find any entries that are at least F, but not yet G. There’s an extra Predicate in there (a Residual Predicate if you like), which checks that each LastName is really LIKE F% – I suppose it doesn’t consider that the Seek Predicate is quite enough – but most of the benefit is seen by its working out the Seek Predicate, filtering to just the “at least F but not yet G” section of the data. This got me curious though, particularly about where the G comes from, and whether I could leverage it to create the Swedish alphabet. I know that in the Swedish language, there are three extra letters that appear at the end of the alphabet. One of them is ä that appears in the word Västerås. It turns out that Västerås is quite hard to find in an index when you’re looking it up in a Swedish map. I talked about this briefly in my five-minute talk on Collation from SQLPASS (the one which was slightly less than serious). So by looking at the plan, I can work out what the next letter is in the alphabet of the collation used by the column. In other words, if my alphabet were Swedish, I’d be able to tell what the next letter after F is – just in case it’s not G. It turns out it is… Yes, the Swedish letter after F is G. But I worked this out by using a copy of my PhoneBook table that used the Finnish_Swedish_CI_AI collation. I couldn’t find how the Query Optimizer calculates the G, and my friend Paul White (@SQL_Kiwi) tells me that it’s frustratingly internal to the QO. He’s particularly smart, even if he is from New Zealand. To investigate further, I decided to do some PowerShell, leveraging the Get-SqlPlan function that I blogged about recently (make sure you also have the SqlServerCmdletSnapin100 snap-in added). I started by indicating that I was going to use Finnish_Swedish_CI_AI as my collation of choice, and that I’d start whichever letter cam straight after the number 9. I figure that this is a cheat’s way of guessing the first letter of the alphabet (but it doesn’t actually work in Unicode – luckily I’m using varchar not nvarchar. Actually, there are a few aspects of this code that only work using ASCII, so apologies if you were wanting to apply it to Greek, Japanese, etc). I also initialised my $alphabet variable. $collation = 'Finnish_Swedish_CI_AI'; $firstletter = '9'; $alphabet = ''; Now I created the table for my test. A single field would do, and putting a Clustered Index on it would suffice for the Seeks. Invoke-Sqlcmd -server . -data tempdb -query "create table dbo.collation_test (col varchar(10) collate $collation primary key);" Now I get into the looping. $c = $firstletter; $stillgoing = $true; while ($stillgoing) { I construct the query I want, seeking for entries which start with whatever $c has reached, and get the plan for it: $query = "select col from dbo.collation_test where col like '$($c)%';"; [xml] $pl = get-sqlplan $query "." "tempdb"; At this point, my $pl variable is a scary piece of XML, representing the execution plan. A bit of hunting through it showed me that the EndRange element contained what I was after, and that if it contained NULL, then I was done. $stillgoing = ($pl.ShowPlanXML.BatchSequence.Batch.Statements.StmtSimple.QueryPlan.RelOp.IndexScan.SeekPredicates.SeekPredicateNew.SeekKeys.EndRange -ne $null); Now I could grab the value out of it (which came with apostrophes that needed stripping), and append that to my $alphabet variable.   if ($stillgoing)   {  $c=$pl.ShowPlanXML.BatchSequence.Batch.Statements.StmtSimple.QueryPlan.RelOp.IndexScan.SeekPredicates.SeekPredicateNew.SeekKeys.EndRange.RangeExpressions.ScalarOperator.ScalarString.Replace("'","");     $alphabet += $c;   } Finally, finishing the loop, dropping the table, and showing my alphabet! } Invoke-Sqlcmd -server . -data tempdb -query "drop table dbo.collation_test;"; $alphabet; When I run all this, I see that the Swedish alphabet is ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVXYZÅÄÖ, which matches what I see at Wikipedia. Interesting to see that the letters on the end are still there, even with Case Insensitivity. Turns out they’re not just “letters with accents”, they’re letters in their own right. I’m sure you gave up reading long ago, and really aren’t that fazed about the idea of doing this using PowerShell. I chose PowerShell because I’d already come up with an easy way of grabbing the estimated plan for a query, and PowerShell does allow for easy navigation of XML. I find the most interesting aspect of this as the fact that the Query Optimizer uses the next letter of the alphabet to maintain the SARGability of LIKE. I’m hoping they do something similar for a whole bunch of operations. Oh, and the fact that you know how to find stuff in the IKEA catalogue. Footnote: If you are interested in whether this works in other languages, you might want to consider the following screenshot, which shows that in principle, it should work with Japanese. It might be a bit harder to run this in PowerShell though, as I’m not sure how it translates. In Hiragana, the Japanese alphabet starts ?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ...

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  • Who is Jeremiah Owyang?

    - by Michael Hylton
    Q: What’s your current role and what career path brought you here? J.O.: I'm currently a partner and one of the founding team members at Altimeter Group.  I'm currently the Research Director, as well as wear the hat of Industry Analyst. Prior to joining Altimeter, I was an Industry Analyst at Forrester covering Social Computing, and before that, deployed and managed the social media program at Hitachi Data Systems in Santa Clara.  Around that time, I started a career blog called Web Strategy which focused on how companies were using the web to connect with customers --and never looked back. Q: As an industry analyst, what are you focused on these days? J.O.: There are three trends that I'm focused my research on at this time:  1) The Dynamic Customer Journey:  Individuals (both b2c and b2b) are given so many options in their sources of data, channels to choose from and screens to consume them on that we've found that at each given touchpoint there are 75 potential permutations.  Companies that can map this, then deliver information to individuals when they need it will have a competitive advantage and we want to find out who's doing this.  2) One of the sub themes that supports this trend is Social Performance.  Yesterday's social web was disparate engagement of humans, but the next phase will be data driven, and soon new technologies will emerge to help all those that are consuming, publishing, and engaging on the social web to be more efficient with their time through forms of automation.  As you might expect, this comes with upsides and downsides.  3) The Sentient World is our research theme that looks out the furthest as the world around us (even inanimate objects) become 'self aware' and are able to talk back to us via digital devices and beyond.  Big data, internet of things, mobile devices will all be this next set. Q: People cite that the line between work and life is getting more and more blurred. Do you see your personal life influencing your professional work? J.O.: The lines between our work and personal lives are dissolving, and this leads to a greater upside of being always connected and have deeper relationships with those that are not.  It also means a downside of society expectations that we're always around and available for colleagues, customers, and beyond.  In the future, a balance will be sought as we seek to achieve the goals of family, friends, work, and our own personal desires.  All of this is being ironically written at 430 am on a Sunday am.  Q: How can people keep up with what you’re working on? J.O.: A great question, thanks.  There are a few sources of information to find out, I'll lead with the first which is my blog at web-strategist.com.  A few times a week I'll publish my industry insights (hires, trends, forces, funding, M&A, business needs) as well as on twitter where I'll point to all the news that's fit to print @jowyang.  As my research reports go live (we publish them for all to read --called Open Research-- at no cost) they'll emerge on my blog, or checkout the research tab to find out more now.  http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/research/ Q: Recently, you’ve been working with us here at Oracle on something exciting coming up later this week. What’s on the horizon?  J.O.: Absolutely! This coming Thursday, September 13th, I’m doing a webcast with Oracle on “Managing Social Relationships for the Enterprise”. This is going to be a great discussion with Reggie Bradford, Senior Vice President of Product Development at Oracle and Christian Finn, Senior Director of Product Management for Oracle WebCenter. I’m looking forward to a great discussion around all those issues that so many companies are struggling with these days as they realize how much social media is impacting their business. It’s changing the way your customers and employees interact with your brand. Today it’s no longer a matter of when to become a social-enabled enterprise, but how to become a successful one. Q: You’ve been very actively pursued for media interviews and conference and company speaking engagements – anything you’d like to share to give us a sneak peak of what to expect on Thursday’s webcast?  J.O.: Below is a 15 minute video which encapsulates Altimeter’s themes on the Dynamic Customer Journey and the Sentient World. I’m really proud to have taken an active role in the first ever LeWeb outside of Paris. This one, which was featured in downtown London across the street from Westminster Abbey was sold out. If you’ve not heard of LeWeb, this is a global Internet conference hosted by Loic and Geraldine Le Meur, a power couple that stem from Paris but are also living in Silicon Valley, this is one of my favorite conferences to connect with brands, technology innovators, investors and friends. Altimeter was able to play a minor role in suggesting the theme for the event “Faster Than Real Time” which stems off previous LeWebs that focused on the “Real time web”. In this radical state, companies are able to anticipate the needs of their customers by using data, technology, and devices and deliver meaningful experiences before customers even know they need it. I explore two of three of Altimeter’s research themes, the Dynamic Customer Journey, and the Sentient World in my speech, but due to time, did not focus on Adaptive Organization.

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  • Load and Web Performance Testing using Visual Studio Ultimate 2010-Part 2

    - by Tarun Arora
    Welcome back, in part 1 of Load and Web Performance Testing using Visual Studio 2010 I talked about why Performance Testing the application is important, the test tools available in Visual Studio Ultimate 2010 and various test rig topologies. In this blog post I’ll get into the details of web performance & load tests as well as why it’s important to follow a goal based pattern while performance testing your application. Tools => Options => Test Tools Have you visited the treasures of Visual Studio Menu bar tools => Options => Test Tools lately? The options to enable disable prompts on creating, editing, deleting or running manual/automated tests can be controller from here. The default test project language and default test types created on a new test project creation could be selected/unselected from here. Ever wondered how you can change the default limit of 25 test results, this can again be changed from here. If you record a lot of Web Tests and wish for the web test recorder to start with “that” URL populated, well this again can be specified from here. If you haven’t so far, I would urge you to spend 2 minutes in the test tools options.   Test Menu => Ready Steady Test Action! The Test tools are under the Test Menu in Visual Studio, apart from being able to create a new Test and Test List you can also load an existing vsmdi file. You can also manage your test controllers from here. A solution can have one or more test setting files, but there can only be one active test settings file at any time. Again, this selection can be done from here.  You can open the various test windows from under the windows option from the test menu. If you open the Test view window you will see that you have the option to group the tests by work items, project, test type, etc. You can set these properties by right clicking a test in the test list and choosing properties from the context menu.    So, what is a vsmdi file? vsmdi stands for Visual Studio Test Metadata File. Placed under the Solution Items this file keeps track of the list of unit tests in your solution. If you open the vsmdi file as an xml file you will see a series of Test Links nested with in the list Test List tags along with the Run Configuration tag. When in visual studio you run tests, the IDE looks at the vsmdi file to see what tests need to be run. You also have the option of using the vsmdi file in your team builds to specify which tests need to run as part of the build. Refer here for a walkthrough from a fellow blogger on how to use the vsmdi file in the team builds. Web Performance Test – The Truth! In Visual Studio 2010 “Web Tests” have been renamed to “Web Performance Tests”. Apart from renaming this test type there have been several improvements to this test type in visual studio 2010. I am very active on the MSDN Visual Studio And Load Testing forum and a frequent question from many users is “Do Web Tests support Pages that run JavaScript?” I will start with a little bit of background before answering this question. Web Performance Tests operate at the HTTP Layer, but why? To enable you to generate high loads with a relatively low amount of hardware, Web performance tests are driven at the protocol layer rather than instantiating a browser.The most common source of confusion is that users do not realize Web Performance Tests work at the HTTP layer. The tool adds to that misconception. After all, you record in IE, and when running a Web test you can select which browser to use, and then the result viewer shows the results in a browser window. So that means the tests run through the browser, right? NO! The Web test engine works at the HTTP layer, and does not instantiate a browser. What does that mean? In the diagram below, you can see there are no browsers running when the engine is sending and receiving requests. Does that mean I can’t test pages that use Java script? The best example for java script generating HTTP traffic is AJAX calls. The most common example of browser plugins are Silverlight or Flash. The Web test recorder will record HTTP traffic from AJAX calls and from most (but not all) browser plugins. This means you will still be able to web performance test pages that use java script or plugin and play back the results but the playback engine will not show the java script or plug in results in the ‘browser control’. If you want to test the page behaviour as a result of the java script or plug in consider using Coded UI Tests. This page looks like it failed, when in fact it succeeded! Looking closely at the response, and subsequent requests, it is clear the operation succeeded. As stated above, the reason why the browser control is pasting this message is because java script has been disabled in this control. So, to reiterate, the web performance test recorder: - Sends and receives data at the HTTP layer. - Does NOT run a browser. - Does NOT run java script. - Does NOT host ActiveX controls or plugins. There is a great series of blog posts from Ed Glas, i would highly recommend his blog to any one performing Load/Performance testing through Visual Studio. Demo – Web Performance Test [Demo] - Visual Studio Ultimate 2010: Test Settings and Configuration   [Demo]–Visual Studio Ultimate 2010: Web Performance Test   In this short video I try and answer the following questions, Why is performance Testing important? How does Visual Studio Help you performance Test your applications? How do i record a web performance test? How do make a web performance test data driven, transaction driven, loop driven, convert to code, add validations? Best practices for recording Web Performance Tests. I have a web performance test, what next? Creating the Web Performance Test was the first step towards load testing your application. Now that we have the base test we can test the page behaviour when N-users access the page. Have you ever had the head of business call you and mention that the marketing team has done a fantastic job and are expecting increased traffic on the web site, can the website survive the weekend with that additional load? This is the perfect opportunity to capacity test your application to see how your website holds up under various levels of load, you can work the results backwards to see how much hardware you may need to scale up your application to survive the weekend. Apart from that it is always a good idea to have some benchmarks around how the application performs under light loads for short duration, under heavy load for long duration and soak test the application run a constant load for a very week or two to record the effects of constant load for really long durations, this is a great way of identifying how your application handles the default IIS application pool reset which by default is configured to once every 25 hours. These bench marks will act as the perfect yard stick to measure performance gains when you start making improvements. BUT there are some best practices! => Goal Based Load Testing Approach Since the subject is vast and there are a lot of things to measure and analyse, … it is very easy to get distracted from the real goal!  You can optimize your application once you know where the pain points are. There is no point performing a load test of 5000 users if your intranet application will only have a 100 simultaneous users, it is important to keep focussed on the real goals of the project. So the idea is to have a user story around your load testing scenarios and test realistically. So it is recommended that you follow the below outline, It is an Iterative process, refine your objectives, identify the key scenarios, what is the expected workload, key metrics you want to report, record the web performance tests, simulate load and analyse results. Is your application already deployed in Production? This is great! You can analyse the IIS Logs to understand the user behaviour… But what are IIS LOGS? The IIS logs allow you to record events for each application and Web site on the Web server. You can create separate logs for each of your applications and Web sites. Logging information in IIS goes beyond the scope of the event logging or performance monitoring features provided by Windows. The IIS logs can include information, such as who has visited your site, what the visitor viewed, and when the information was last viewed. You can use the IIS logs to identify any attempts to gain unauthorized access to your Web server. How to configure IIS LOGS? For those Ninjas who already have IIS Logs configured (by the way its on by default) and need a way to analyse the IIS Logs, can use the Windows IIS Utility – Log Parser. Log Parser is a very powerful tool that provides a generic SQL-like language on top of many types of data like IIS Logs, Event Viewer entries, XML files, CSV files, File System and others; and it allows you to export the result of the queries to many output formats such as CSV, XML, SQL Server, Charts and others; and it works well with IIS 5, 6, 7 and 7.5. Frequently used Log Parser queries. Demo – Load Test [Demo]–Visual Studio Ultimate 2010: Load Testing   In this short video I try and answer the following questions, - Types of Performance Testing? - Perform Goal driven Load Testing, analyse Test Run Result and Generate a report? Recap A quick recap of what we have covered so far,     Thank you for taking the time out and reading this blog post, in part III of this blog series I’ll be getting into the details of Test Result Analysis, Test Result Drill through, Test Report Generation, Test Run Comparison, and the Asp.net Profiler. If you enjoyed the post, remember to subscribe to http://feeds.feedburner.com/TarunArora. Questions/Feedback/Suggestions, etc please leave a comment. See you on in Part III   Share this post : CodeProject

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  • July, the 31 Days of SQL Server DMO’s – Day 20 (sys.dm_tran_locks)

    - by Tamarick Hill
    The sys.dm_tran_locks DMV is used to return active lock resources on your server. Locking is a mechanism used by SQL Server to protect the integrity of data when you have multiple users that may potentially access the same data at the same time. Let’s run a query against this DMV so we can analyze the results. SELECT * FROM sys.dm_tran_locks As we can see, its a lot of lock information returned from this DMV. I will not go into detail about each of the columns returned, but I will touch on the ones that I feel are the most important. The first column in the output is the resource_type column which tells you the type of lock a particular row represents. It could be a PAGE lock, RID, OBJECT, DATABASE, or several other lock types. The resource_database_id represents the id of the database for a particular lock resource. The resource_lock_partition column represents the ID of a lock partition. When you have a table that is partitioned, locks can be escalated to the partition level before going to a table level lock. The request_mode column gives us information about the type of lock that is being requested. From the screenshots above we see RangeS-S locks which represent a share range lock and IS locks which represent Intent Shared locks. The request_status column displays whether the lock has been granted or whether the lock is waiting to be acquired. The request_session_id  shows the session_id that is requesting the lock. This DMV is the best place to go when you need to identify the exact locks that are being held or pending for individual requests. You might need this information when you are troubleshooting severe blocking or deadlocking problems on your server. For more information on this DMV, please see the below Books Online link: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms190345.aspx Follow me on Twitter @PrimeTimeDBA

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  • Java Resources for Windows Azure

    - by BuckWoody
    Windows Azure is a Platform as a Service – a PaaS – that runs code you write. That code doesn’t just mean the languages on the .NET platform – you can run code from multiple languages, including Java. In fact, you can develop for Windows and SQL Azure using not only Visual Studio but the Eclipse Integrated Development Environment (IDE) as well.  Although not an exhaustive list, here are several links that deal with Java and Windows Azure: Resource Link Windows Azure Java Development Center http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/java/  Java Development Guidance http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh690943(VS.103).aspx  Running a Java Environment on Windows Azure http://blogs.technet.com/b/port25/archive/2010/10/28/running-a-java-environment-on-windows-azure.aspx  Running a Java Environment on Windows Azure http://blogs.technet.com/b/port25/archive/2010/10/28/running-a-java-environment-on-windows-azure.aspx  Run Java with Jetty in Windows Azure http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dachou/archive/2010/03/21/run-java-with-jetty-in-windows-azure.aspx  Using the plugin for Eclipse http://blogs.msdn.com/b/craig/archive/2011/03/22/new-plugin-for-eclipse-to-get-java-developers-off-the-ground-with-windows-azure.aspx  Run Java with GlassFish in Windows Azure http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dachou/archive/2011/01/17/run-java-with-glassfish-in-windows-azure.aspx  Improving experience for Java developers with Windows  Azure http://blogs.msdn.com/b/interoperability/archive/2011/02/23/improving-experience-for-java-developers-with-windows-azure.aspx  Java Access to SQL Azure via the JDBC Driver for SQL  Server http://blogs.msdn.com/b/brian_swan/archive/2011/03/29/java-access-to-sql-azure-via-the-jdbc-driver-for-sql-server.aspx  How to Get Started with Java, Tomcat on Windows Azure http://blogs.msdn.com/b/usisvde/archive/2011/03/04/how-to-get-started-with-java-tomcat-on-windows-azure.aspx  Deploying Java Applications in Azure http://blogs.msdn.com/b/mariok/archive/2011/01/05/deploying-java-applications-in-azure.aspx  Using the Windows Azure Storage Explorer in Eclipse http://blogs.msdn.com/b/brian_swan/archive/2011/01/11/using-the-windows-azure-storage-explorer-in-eclipse.aspx  Windows Azure Tomcat Solution Accelerator http://archive.msdn.microsoft.com/winazuretomcat  Deploying a Java application to Windows Azure with  Command-line Ant http://java.interoperabilitybridges.com/articles/deploying-a-java-application-to-windows-azure-with-command-line-ant  Video: Open in the Cloud: Windows Azure and Java http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/PDC/PDC10/CS10  AzureRunMe  http://azurerunme.codeplex.com/  Windows Azure SDK for Java http://www.interoperabilitybridges.com/projects/windows-azure-sdk-for-java  AppFabric SDK for Java http://www.interoperabilitybridges.com/projects/azure-java-sdk-for-net-services  Information Cards for Java http://www.interoperabilitybridges.com/projects/information-card-for-java  Apache Stonehenge http://www.interoperabilitybridges.com/projects/apache-stonehenge  Channel 9 Case Study on Java and Windows Azure http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/Windows-Azure/Gigaspaces/Solution-Provider-Streamlines-Java-Application-Deployment-in-the-Cloud/400000000081   

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  • An MCM exam, Rob? Really?

    - by Rob Farley
    I took the SQL 2008 MCM Knowledge exam while in Seattle for the PASS Summit ten days ago. I wasn’t planning to do it, but I got persuaded to try. I was meaning to write this post to explain myself before the result came out, but it seems I didn’t get typing quickly enough. Those of you who know me will know I’m a big fan of certification, to a point. I’ve been involved with Microsoft Learning to help create exams. I’ve kept my certifications current since I first took an exam back in 1998, sitting many in beta, across quite a variety of topics. I’ve probably become quite good at them – I know I’ve definitely passed some that I really should’ve failed. I’ve also written that I don’t think exams are worth studying for. (That’s probably not entirely true, but it depends on your motivation. If you’re doing learning, I would encourage you to focus on what you need to know to do your job better. That will help you pass an exam – but the two skills are very different. I can coach someone on how to pass an exam, but that’s a different kind of teaching when compared to coaching someone about how to do a job. For example, the real world includes a lot of “it depends”, where you develop a feel for what the influencing factors might be. In an exam, its better to be able to know some of the “Don’t use this technology if XYZ is true” concepts better.) As for the Microsoft Certified Master certification… I’m not opposed to the idea of having the MCM (or in the future, MCSM) cert. But the barrier to entry feels quite high for me. When it was first introduced, the nearest testing centres to me were in Kuala Lumpur and Manila. Now there’s one in Perth, but that’s still a big effort. I know there are options in the US – such as one about an hour’s drive away from downtown Seattle, but it all just seems too hard. Plus, these exams are more expensive, and all up – I wasn’t sure I wanted to try them, particularly with the fact that I don’t like to study. I used to study for exams. It would drive my wife crazy. I’d have some exam scheduled for some time in the future (like the time I had two booked for two consecutive days at TechEd Australia 2005), and I’d make sure I was ready. Every waking moment would be spent pouring over exam material, and it wasn’t healthy. I got shaken out of that, though, when I ended up taking four exams in those two days in 2005 and passed them all. I also worked out that if I had a Second Shot available, then failing wasn’t a bad thing at all. Even without Second Shot, I’m much more okay about failing. But even just trying an MCM exam is a big effort. I wouldn’t want to fail one of them. Plus there’s the illusion to maintain. People have told me for a long time that I should just take the MCM exams – that I’d pass no problem. I’ve never been so sure. It was almost becoming a pride-point. Perhaps I should fail just to demonstrate that I can fail these things. Anyway – boB Taylor (@sqlboBT) persuaded me to try the SQL 2008 MCM Knowledge exam at the PASS Summit. They set up a testing centre in one of the room there, so it wasn’t out of my way at all. I had to squeeze it in between other commitments, and I certainly didn’t have time to even see what was on the syllabus, let alone study. In fact, I was so exhausted from the week that I fell asleep at least once (just for a moment though) during the actual exam. Perhaps the questions need more jokes, I’m not sure. I knew if I failed, then I might disappoint some people, but that I wouldn’t’ve spent a great deal of effort in trying to pass. On the other hand, if I did pass I’d then be under pressure to investigate the MCM Lab exam, which can be taken remotely (therefore, a much smaller amount of effort to make happen). In some ways, passing could end up just putting a bunch more pressure on me. Oh, and I did.

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  • SQL SERVER – Public Training and Private Training – Differences and Similarities

    - by pinaldave
    Earlier this year, I was on Road SQL Server Seminars. I did many SQL Server Performance Trainings and SQL Server Performance Consultations throughout the year but I feel the most rewarding exercise is always the one when instructor learns something from students, too. I was just talking to my wife, Nupur – she manages my logistics and administration related activities – and she pointed out that this year I have done 62% consultations and 38% trainings. I was bit surprised as I thought the numbers would be reversed. Every time I review the year, I think of training done at organizations. Well, I cannot argue with reality, I have done more consultations (some would call them projects) than training. I told my wife that I enjoy consultations more than training. She promptly asked me a question which was not directly related but made me think for long time, and in the end resulted in this blog post. Nupur asked me: what do I enjoy the most, public training or private training? I had a long conversation with her on this subject. I am not going to write long blog post which can change your life here. This is rather a small post condensing my one hour discussion into 200 words. Public Training is fun because… There are lots of different kinds of attendees There are always vivid questions Lots of questions on questions Less interest in theory and more interest in demos Good opportunity of future business Private Training is fun because… There is a focused interest One question is discussed deeply because of existing company issues More interest in “how it happened” concepts – under the hood operations Good connection with attendees This is also a good opportunity of future business Here I will stop my monologue and I want to open up this question to all of you: Question to Attendees - Which one do you enjoy the most – Public Training or Private Training? Question to Trainers - What do you enjoy the most – Public Training or Private Training? Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Optimization, SQL Performance, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Training, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology

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  • SQL Server 2012 content on Channel 9

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

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  • Learning PostgreSql: polymorphism

    - by Alexander Kuznetsov
    Functions in PL/PgSql are polymorphic, which is very different from T-SQL. Demonstrating polymorphism For example, the second CREATE FUNCTION in the following script does not replace the first function - it creates a second one: CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION public .GetQuoteOfTheDay ( someNumber INTEGER ) RETURNS VARCHAR AS $body$ BEGIN RETURN 'Say my name.' ; END ; $body$ LANGUAGE plpgsql ; CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION public .GetQuoteOfTheDay ( someNumber REAL ) RETURNS VARCHAR AS $body$ BEGIN RETURN...(read more)

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  • WCF Error when using “Match Data” function in MDS Excel AddIn

    - by Davide Mauri
    If you’re using MDS and DQS with the Excel Integration you may get an error when trying to use the “Match Data” feature that uses DQS in order to help to identify duplicate data in your data set. The error is quite obscure and you have to enable WCF error reporting in order to have the error details and you’ll discover that they are related to some missing permission in MDS and DQS_STAGING_DATA database. To fix the problem you just have to give the needed permession, as the following script does: use MDS go GRANT SELECT ON mdm.tblDataQualityOperationsState TO [VMSRV02\mdsweb] GRANT INSERT ON mdm.tblDataQualityOperationsState TO [VMSRV02\mdsweb] GRANT DELETE ON mdm.tblDataQualityOperationsState TO [VMSRV02\mdsweb] GRANT UPDATE ON mdm.tblDataQualityOperationsState TO [VMSRV02\mdsweb] USE [DQS_STAGING_DATA] GO ALTER AUTHORIZATION ON SCHEMA::[db_datareader] TO [VMSRV02\mdsweb] ALTER AUTHORIZATION ON SCHEMA::[db_datawriter] TO [VMSRV02\mdsweb] ALTER AUTHORIZATION ON SCHEMA::[db_ddladmin] TO [VMSRV02\mdsweb] GO Where “VMSRV02\mdsweb” is the user you configured for MDS Service execution. If you don’t remember it, you can just check which account has been assigned to the IIS application pool that your MDS website is using:

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  • 2010: It’s a Wrap

    - by merrillaldrich
    So, last day of the year, and I can see many people are in a reflective mood. I don’t usually deep dive into goals or resolutions, but I’m not immune either :-). But I’ll try to keep this short and to-the-point. First a big shout out to Adam for letting me have a presence here on sqlblog.com. I am humbled by the other SQL experts we have on this site, and I am certainly one of the least qualified, but I hope my small contributions are useful. Also thanks, Adam, for all the other community support...(read more)

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  • #PowerPivot Workshop Online for America’s Time Zones #ppws

    - by Marco Russo (SQLBI)
    After so many request we have finally arranged a PowerPivot Workshop online edition dedicated to America’s time zones! It is scheduled for December 19-20, 2012, with this schedule: US Eastern Time (EST): 10:00am-1:00pm / 2:00pm-5:00pm US Central Time (CST): 9:00am-12:00pm / 1:00pm-4:00pm US Pacific Time (PST): 7:00am-10:00am / 11:00am-1:00pm Bogotá (Colombia): 10:00am-1:00pm / 2:00pm-5:00pm São Paulo (Brazil): 1:00pm-4:00pm / 5:00pm-8:00pm Buenos Aires (Argentina): 12:00pm-3:00pm / 4:00pm-7:00pm...(read more)

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  • SQL Server v.Next (Denali) : More on contained databases and "contained users"

    - by AaronBertrand
    One of the reasons for contained databases (see my previous post ) is to allow for a more seamless transition when moving a database from one server to another. One of the biggest complications in doing so is making sure that all of the logins are in place on the new server. Contained databases help solve this issue by creating a new type of user: a database-level user with a password. I want to stress that this is not the same concept as a user without a login , which serves a completely different...(read more)

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  • Cumulative Update 8 for SQL Server 2008 R2 is available

    - by AaronBertrand
    Today the SQL Server Release Services team has published Cumulative Update #8 for SQL Server 2008 R2. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2534352 The build number is 10.50.1797, there are 14 fixes showing on the KB article, and this update includes the security update from last week's Patch Tuesday . Important No, this patch is not for SQL Server 2008, and no, it is not applicable if you've already installed the CTP of Service Pack 1 for SQL Server 2008 R2 (10.50.2418 or 10.50.2425). Please check @@VERSION...(read more)

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  • Have You Heard About Project Lucy?

    - by KKline
    Lucy, You Got Some 'Splainin to Do!' Quest Software's latest community initiative, Windows Azure-based Project Lucy, has debuted! Project Lucy is part infrastructure analytics, part social media experiment, and part performance data warehouse. The best things about Project Lucy include: It’s Free - just like our SQLServerPedia website, Project Lucy is free to anyone who wants to upload a trace file It’s 1oo% web-based - you don’t have to download or maintain anything and updates roll out seamlessly,...(read more)

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  • Some thoughts on the Virtualization Feedback in the SSWUG Newsletters

    - by Jonathan Kehayias
    Last Thursday, March 25, 2010, the topic of Virtualization of SQL Server came up in the SSWUG Newsletter , with Steven Wynkoop asking if peoples perceptions and experiences have changed since the last time he covered virtualizing SQL Server.  I unfortunately missed the last coverage of this topic, but it appears from the newsletter that there was a general consensus that “low-traffic solution could be fine, but if you had a heavy hitting application, the net advise was to avoid a virtual environment...(read more)

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