The sample databases for SQL Server 2012 haven’t been completely finalized, but I was able to find the latest version here for AdventureWorks. This download gives you an mdf, and that’s it. You can’t directly attach that in SSMS, but you can use T-SQL to do it.

CREATE DATABASE… Read more

Today I want to talk about Statistics Enhancements in SQL Server 2012. As you already know SQL Server uses Statistic Objects in a database to estimate the cardinality of queries. The cardinality estimation is the input for the generation of the physical Execution Plan of a given T-SQL query. Data… Read more

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If you are attending the PASS SQLRally this May in Dallas, I will be presenting a one day preconference session called “How to Perform a SQL Server Health Check”. Here’s the abstract for the session:

Are all the SQL Server instances you manage healthy, running optimally, and providing the high…

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I saw a note about an outage on Windows Azure, apparently one that’s been going on for seven hours. Once again it seems that February 29 has struck again with a computer issue, and it makes me worry that if we mess with daylight savings time, we might have… Read more

Extended Events is a general event-handling system for performance monitoring that was introduced in SQL Server 2008.  It has a highly scalable and highly configurable architecture that allows users to collect as much or as little information as is necessary to troubleshoot or identify a performance problem.

While there are… Read more

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It’s that time of the month again, no not that one, it’s T-SQL Tuesday time and this weeks topic is hosted by Wayne Sheffield (blog|twitter).

If you don’t know what T-SQL Tuesday is, you’re either new to the SQL community or have had your head buried… Read more

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Problem

I’ve a SSIS package. When it fails execution, I want to write a custom message including the package name and error description to a text file.

Solution

One way to accomplish this is to declare a variable, populate it with the message you want, and write it’s value to… Read more

Dell has teased us with some images of their upcoming 12th Generation servers (that will support the Intel Sandy Bridge-EP processor). The PowerEdge R720xd is shown below. I want one of these…

Some more detailed information about these new servers is listed here.

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Update: Jen Lussier has blogged a summary of the talks she had at the MVP summit last week. Take a look!

I’m at the Microsoft MVP Summit in Bellevue, WA this week (and having a simply lovely time, thanks for asking!)  MS Community Program Manager Jen Lussier tweeted:

Looking 4…

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Since it is nearly March, I will go ahead and jump the gun by a few days and post an updated version of my SQL Server 2008/2008 R2 Diagnostic Queries for March 2012.

For this version, I have added information about the latest SQL Server 2008 R2 Cumulative Updates Read more

Welcome back to another addition of Monday Morning Mistakes series. Today’s issue is one I tend to run into quite often with clients and is an important topic to know about as a database administrator. Without further ado, let’s get to our issue

Issue

You have SQL Server database engine… Read more

Today one of my user complained that a report was missing one particular ticket from the output. The report in question is very simple, it accepts start date & end date and filters on the ticket creation date time column to get the list of tickets.

The report query was… Read more

On Saturday, March 10, 2012, I’ll be presenting “Table Vars and Temp Tables – What you NEED to know!” at SQL Saturday #110 in Tampa, FL. Come out and join me in this code filled session, where we’ll discover the differences and similarities of Temporary Tables and Table Variables, dispel… Read more

To list a SQL Server Agent Job Steps use the T-SQL example below.

This example displays the step id, SQL Server Agent Job name, Step name.

The code has 1 input parameter - @job_name

DECLARE @job_name VARCHAR(128)
SET @job_name = 'My SQL Server Agent Job'
SELECT js.step_id ,j.name,js.step_name FROM…

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