Under Appreciated Features

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Under Appreciated Features

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Andy Warren

Posted Thursday, December 16, 2010 10:02 PM

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Comments posted to this topic are about the item Under Appreciated Features

Andy
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Post #1036317

Nakul Vachhrajani

Posted Thursday, December 16, 2010 10:30 PM

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One thing that immediately comes to mind is the Upgrade Advisor. For ISVs planning for compatibility with an upcoming version of SQL Server, the first thing they should do (I use the word should because technology-aware organizations do, upcoming ISVs don't even know such a utility exists) is to run the Upgrade Advisor. Major issues come up right away and per the 80/20 rule, 80% of your issues are now in front of you awaiting resolution within 20% of the time.

Next is the power of connection strings. Quite often I have seen just the basic 5 parameter connection string (Provider, Server, DB, User, Password) being used in ISV products. Connection strings are much more than this, and their power needs to be demonstrated.

Have a great Friday, and a rocking week-end!

Thanks & Regards,
Nakul Vachhrajani.
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Post #1036325

Lynn Pettis

Posted Thursday, December 16, 2010 10:33 PM

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I would have to say Service Broker as one. There is a lot one can do with it, and quite a bit of the necessay infrastructure is already built. The problem is that you still have a lot that needs to been done manually and it isn't all that intuitive.

Wizards would help, especially if you get to look at the SQL it builds for you instead of just doing it for you (like Database Mirroring - Would benefit from being able to see the scripts that wizard builds and the order they are run).

This is one way some people learn, show me what you do at the basic level, and let me learn how to do the more complex stuff by building on that.

Cool

Lynn Pettis

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Post #1036326

David McKinney

Posted Friday, December 17, 2010 1:46 AM

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Was I alone in getting excited about 'filtered indexes'? (Is that what they're called? An index with a where clause)

The reason I got into a state is that it enabled me to relatively simply accomplish something that previously had obliged me to jump through hoops.

That is to place a unique index on a nullable column. To address the requirement of a column which is nullable but which, when it is populated, must be unique for the table.

David McKinney.

Post #1036381

paul.knibbs

Posted Friday, December 17, 2010 3:16 AM

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I think SQL Management Studio is actually under-appreciated. I was just having to do some work on a client's SQL 2000 install, and I'd forgotten what a pain it is to have to run a separate query analyzer application to check things out! (Yes, I know *real men* use SQLCMD anyway, but you know what I mean Smile

Post #1036420

ben.mcintyre

Posted Friday, December 17, 2010 4:38 AM

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By Toutatis, I hate to be the first naysayer, but SSMS has to be the biggest pile of steaming crap ever to be the excuse for a dev env. Using it is like trying to stride through molasses. I am constantly aware of the productivity it is costing me. Are two tools such an imposition, given that they work much better, and about three times faster ?
I don't use the RedGate tools, but this must be about the spot for a plug for them Wink

On the positive side, I'd like to cite the improvements in the optimiser. Problem queries (that shouldn't be) in SQL2000 run sweetly in SQL2005. It's like oxygen - you only notice it when it's not there.
Now if only I could get SQL2005 to run with the old tools ....

Ben

Post #1036455

Andy Warren

Posted Friday, December 17, 2010 4:54 AM

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I'm torn between Service Broker and missing indexes being shown in the graphical plan. The latter, whether you know how to tune or not, is a real time saver. No, you can't blindly follow all the suggestions, but I bet I create the suggested indexes 95% of the time.

Andy
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Post #1036460

bkubicek

Posted Friday, December 17, 2010 5:06 AM

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I think a cool feature of sql server 2005 and above that you don't always hear a lot about is the recursive query with the CTE. We use this a lot. In our software product we have a Bill Of Material (BOM) structure. This BOM structure starts with a parent Item Nbr and then lists which children Items make up the parent. Some of our clients have BOM structures that go quite deep. Anyway, a recursive query with using a CTE has worked really nicely to return the whole bom structure for a parent item quickly and easily.

Ben

Post #1036464

steven.malone

Posted Friday, December 17, 2010 5:47 AM

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To a certain extent any new feature, because we don't trust Microsoft to not pull the rug out from under us.
You mentioned "DTS lead to SSIS"
More like Microsoft threw DTS under the bus and brought out SSIS.

I think the most under appreciated feature was the ability to create system functions.
Clearly it was under appreciated since they yanked it.
It was really nice having a business rule in one place that could be called from any database without a three part name. A bonus was being able to create and test a new version in a test database and then updating the system version.

Microsoft's arrogance and hubris in deciding what they think is best for us (don't get me started on Office 2007) and their total lack of commitment to backwards compatibility leads many of us to not trust them.

Post #1036470

peterhe

Posted Friday, December 17, 2010 6:25 AM

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I would say catalouge views and DMVs added in 2005. Those really changed the ways that DBAs get meta-data and troubleshoot problems. But DMVs are still not widely adopted. They have lots of potential.

In programing, window functions like ROW_NUMBER() is a real help.

Post #1036486

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