As you will see by the dates in my screenshots, I wrote them quite a while back while touring the world mastering the art of Ultimate Fighting. Yes, I consider it a form of art. Maybe that is why I forgot about this in my blog pile. One too many hits… Read more

One of the more exciting features in SQL Server code-named “Denali” (which is the current official name for the next major version of SQL Server) is called SQL Server AlwaysOn, which Microsoft describes like this:

The new SQL Server AlwaysOn will provide a set of capabilities to help businesses maximize…

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It’s official, I’ll be speaking at SQLSaturday #63 April 2nd. It is something near and dear to my heart, solid state storage. If you have seen me speak recently at any of the other SQLSaturdays you know I love talking about I/O. This time around I’ll be focusing on one… Read more

Have you wondered how much memory was being consumed by SQL Server?  Have you wondered if there was a way to find out that information from a tSQL command?

On occasion it would be nice to be able to find this information.  A command was provided for this very purpose.… Read more

Those of us over a certain age (read – old as dirt) can remember the theme songs to certain TV shows better than we can the National Anthem. Try these lines out and see if you don’t immediately remember the tune that goes along with them:

• Come and knock on…

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Generally when designing a data warehouse (at least in my experience) you don’t think about NULL values appearing often in measure data of a fact table.  You may have unknown foreign keys from your dimension data but even those unknown foreign keys relate to some kind of fact data.  If… Read more

Recently I had the chance to do some tuning on a system that was built using Grails (formerly Groovy on Rails) and the short and hopefully accurate enough scoop for our purposes is that includes an ORM layer – a data abstraction layer. ORM’s excel at rapid development/time to market…

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Last week I attended the inaugural training event of the new four-week SQL Server Immersion Training offered by Kimberly Tripp and Paul Randall of SQLskills.com. The four available training weeks include:

• Internals and Performance
• Performance Tuning
• High Availability and Disaster Recovery
• Security, PowerShell, and Development Support

I attended the… Read more

 

Most of my examples utilize either adhoc type of data samples or one of the versions of AdventureWorks. I do this so that the reader (you) can see and duplicate my efforts. In working with the various versions of the AW databases, I’ve often completed web searches to look for… Read more

I just wanted to take a moment to thank Kevin Kline, Brent Ozar, Christian Bolton, Bob Ward, Rod Colledge and Raoul Illyaos for creating the SQL Server PerfMon Counters of Interest PDF file available for download on Quest.com. If you ever have to dig into some serious performance… Read more

Overview

Today was the fifth and final day of the Internals & Performance immersion event. I have really enjoyed learning from not only Paul and Kimberly, but my classmates as well. There were many smart people in that room and hearing each others’ perspectives is a part of the class… Read more

I took the MCM test today, and finished it. I needed the time allotted and it was, well, an experience.

I’m glad it’s done as I have a number of other things to work on. I’ll get results in a few weeks and in the meantime, I’ll get permission to… Read more

Have you been working with compression?  Have you inherited a database that may or may not have some tables compressed?  On occasion you may want to know what the compression type being used on a table is.  There is a really easy way to figure that out.

This is also… Read more

This week we posted some pending changes to the PASS bylaws. We try to do a review at least once a year and it’s a hard process. Hard because we have to agree on the change we want first, and then we have to figure out how to state it… Read more

Probably not the kind of change you're expecting.  I've recently been contacted by the Kimball Group, and they've asked me to stop using the word "Kimball" to identify the component.  They have every right to make sure nobody is confused about who they are and what they do, or…

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Depending on your anticipated workload and which SQL Server components you have installed, there are a number of instance level settings that you should consider changing from their default values. These include Max Server Memory, optimize for ad-hoc workloads,  default backup compression, max degree of parallelism, and the number of…

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The Call for Speakers for SQL Saturday #70 - Columbia, SC, ended on February 17, 2011. We wanted to put the schedule up two days later, on February 19, 2011. Last year we had a good number of submissions, but it wasn't a number that was overwhelming. So we… Read more

Overview

We just finished the fourth day of SQLskills learning. Today was all on indexes and statistics. We learned about choosing a clustering key, what makes a good one, what makes a bad one. We also have to keep in mind the consequences to non-clustered indexes when choosing the clustered… Read more

In case you’re in need of some images to help us promote the largest PASS event on the East Coast this year, I’ve gathered some together for you For all you chapter leaders I’ve also included a flyer that you can print out and hand out at your user group… Read more

You've probably noticed I've been quiet on this blog lately, eeking out a post every other week on average. I've been pretty wrapped up in SQLRally planning, getting MagicPASS started, and spending time with my family (note: everyone who warned me ahead of time was right, having a 3rd child… Read more