SQLTeach (a part of the larger DevTeach event) will be held in Vancouver, BC this June 8-12, 2009. It will offer 136 sessions in 8 different tracks, including 37 SQL Server sessions, 17 Agile sessions, 17 software architecture sessions, and 57 .NET sessions. In addition, there are both full-day pre-con and post-con sessions to attend. There will be about 60 different experts speaking at the event, making it the largest Microsoft-related technical event held in Canada.
If you are thinking about attending, take advantage of early registration discounts. In addition, for every two attendees your company sends to the event, a third one gets in free. This offer expires June 8th, 2009.
If you are a current, or aspiring Microsoft MVP, you can keep up with what other MVPs are doing by reading the MVP Award Program blog. For the most part, the blog focuses on individual MVPs and their contributions to their respective communities.
The 2009 European PASS Conference, which was held April 22-24, 2009, had 254 attendees from 22 different countries. In spite of a difficult economy, attendance was up from 187 attendees last year.
The event was held at the Swissôtel Conference center, which over looks the Rhine river, in Neuss, Germany, which is just outside of Düsseldorf.
On April 22, there were two pre-conference sessions, and on April 23-24 there were 36 different sessions in four different tracks.
The keynote address was presented by Rushabh Mehta, the Executive Vice President of Finance and Technology for PASS, who at the last moment had to take over the keynote, as the scheduled keynote speaker, Donald Farmer, had to cancel at the last minute.
Some of the many speakers included András Belokosztolszki, Brad M McGehee, Christian Bolton, Bill Graziano, Ross Mistry, Simon Sabin, Dejan Sunderic, Dejan Sarka, Steve Simon, Bob Ward, and many more.
The Rhine river as seen from the conference center.
In theory, the SQL Server Maintenance Plan Wizard is supposed to make it easier for non-DBAs or novice DBAs to create database maintenance plans that help to optimize the performance of their SQL Server databases. The problem is that unless you really know what you are doing, you can hurt the performance of your SQL Server if you make poor choices. Unfortunately, the Wizard does not tell you if you make poor choices.
For example, check out the following screen, which is part of the SQL Server 2008 Maintenance Plan Wizard.
If you are an experienced DBA, your first thought should be, “Why are all the maintenance tasks checked?” This is because experienced DBAs know that you only need to perform some of these tasks, not all of them, and in fact, if you choose all of them, you can cause your server to waste a lot of valuable resources. For example, performing all three of the following tasks: reorganizing, rebuilding, and updating statistics is redundant, as rebuilding your indexes essentially performs the same tasks as reorganizing and updating statistics. In other words, if you rebuild your indexes, reorganizing and updating statistics is a duplication of effort. There are also some additional problems that can occur when selecting all of the options, but I don’t have time to write about them all now, but I think you get the point.
Now, let’s look at the above screen from the perspective of the non-DBA, or novice DBA who isn’t familiar with what maintenance plans do, or how they work. From their point of view, don’t you think that the more options you select, the better off your SQL Server will be? Isn’t more always better than less? What has prompted me to write about this topic is because I just reviewed a SQL Server instance that was installed and set up by a non-DBA, and as you have already probably guessed, they selected every maintenance task on the menu, thinking that more is better than less. Because the non-DBA made this choice (which is not all than uncommon), the maintenance plan took more than twice the time it really needed to run, wasting a lot of the server’s resources. There were some additional problems as well, but that is another story.
The point I want to make is that the Maintenance Plan Wizard can sometimes be useful in the hands of an experienced DBA, but it can be very dangerous in the hands of a non-DBA or novice-DBA. In fact, most experienced DBAs I know write their own maintenance plans because using the Wizard just has too many limitations and problems. If you are an experienced DBA, you know what I mean. If you are a non-DBA or novice DBA reading this, please take heed of my message, more is not better. If you decide to use the Wizard instead of writing your own custom maintenance plans, please do your research before you begin, learning what should, and what should not be done, within a maintenance plan.
Just today, I was reviewing the indexing of a database used by a third-party application. As part of my review, I ran a script against it that is used to identify duplicate indexes. The script I used was written Paul Nielsen, the author of the SQL Server Bible; and Itzik Ben-Gan. The script is available here.
After running Paul’s script against the database to find duplicate indexes, I discovered that almost every table had a duplicate index. As I delved into this a little closer, I discovered what the designer of this database had done.
First, it looked like he created primary keys using non-clustered indexes on an identity column for most of the tables in his database. Second, he then added a clustered index on the same identity column for each of these same tables. By doing so, he ended up having two identical indexes on the same identity column, one clustered and one non-clustered. Instead, the designer should have created his primary keys using clustered indexes instead of using non-clustered indexes. This would give him the same end effect, but requiring only a single index, not two. Obviously, by having duplicate indexes on most of his tables, he was causing SQL Server a lot of additional work to maintain extra indexes that were not needed.
If you have never checked your databases for duplicate indexes before, you should do so, as you might find duplicate indexes that can be removed, helping to boost the performance of your existing databases.
Bill Ramos, a SQL Server Product Manager, has written a three part series on how to use the SQL Server 2008 SQL Server Transact Debugger. If you are a Transact-SQL Developer, this is a must-read series. You can find the series here:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
If you ever get a chance to hear Bill speak, be sure you do. He is a font of knowledge on how to take the best advantage of the tools that come with SQL Server.
The Richmond Code Camp 2009.1, will be held on Saturday 25, 2009 at the J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College in Richmond, VA. For more information, or to register, visit: richmondcodecamp.org/. The call for speakers has ended and speakers are currently being selected for this event.
The Portland Code Camp will be held at Reed College on Saturday, May 30, 2009. This free event will include many sessions for developers and DBAs. Check out portlandcodecamp.org for more information. If want to speak at the event, the call for speakers is still open.
Microsoft has finally updated their classis Troubleshooting SQL Server Performance white paper for SQL Server 2008, which is available at:
Troubleshooting Performance Problems in SQL Server 2008 (Word document 102 pages)
download.microsoft.com/download/D/B/D/DBDE7972-1EB9-470A-BA18-58849DB3EB3B/TShootPerfProbs2008.docx
If you are still using SQL Server 2005, you can still download that version also.
Troubleshooting Performance Problems in SQL Server 2005 (Word document 107 pages)
download.microsoft.com/download/1/3/4/134644fd-05ad-4ee8-8b5a-0aed1c18a31e/TShootPerfProbs.doc
If you have been procrastinating about submitting a speaking abstract for the 2009 PASS Community Summit, you have been given a short reprieve. The Call for Speakers has now been extended until midnight on April 24, 2009. See this link for more details: www.sqlpass.org/Community/SpeakerResource.aspx.
If you have already submitted an abstract for the 2009 PASS Community Summit, or you are still thinking about it, be sure to check out the new information that has been added to Speaker’s Resource page.
Specifically, two new content pages have been recently added to the original page. They include the “Minimum Criteria to submit a Pre-/Post-Conference Abstract” and the other is ”Understanding How the PASS Community Summit Abstract Selection Process Works.”
You may find both useful in your understanding of how the 2009 PASS Community Summit selects speakers.
