Few of my regular readers may have noticed I am not actively blogging @ SSC at frequent interval.

There is a reason behind this.

Update 1:

As I mentioned in my previous blog post, I was quite active in my facebook page for the past few months in

sharing resources, attending queires on couple… Read more

Chennai SQL Server user group meet is scheduled for Mar'2013.

Venue: Microsoft Training Centre, Radhakrishnan Salai, Chennai
Landmark: Opposite to President hotel
Timing: 09:00 AM to 01:00 PM
Date: 30th Mar 2013 (Saturday)

Session Details:

SQL Server 2008 Performance Tuning – Part 3 by Ramkumar
Data warehouse design concepts by Sonar Kumar Read more

Chennai SQL Server Group (CSSUG), one of the most active UG in India planning to conduct major SQL Server event (Q2 this year)  in Chennai, India.

Working on to invite India's leading technology experts for this event.

We are looking for sponsers for this event and to have long term relationship with CSSUG

Contact details:

Vidhya Sagar
kvs1983@gmail.com Read more

 Chennai SQL Server user group meet is scheduled for Feb'2013.

Venue: Microsoft Training Centre, Radhakrishnan Salai, Chennai
Landmark: Opposite to President hotel
Timing: 09:30 AM to 01:00 PM
Date: 23rd Feb 2012 (Saturday)

Session Details:

1. SQL Server 2008 Performance - Part 2 by Ramkumar

2. PowerPivot & SSIS by Sonar… Read more

I would like to share few thoughts/updates with our SQL Server community.

1. While checking my SSC blog posts, i realised that my 40+ blog posts has attracted 30,000+ user visits in last 2 years.
Think this is the good time to have a website for LivingForSQLServer.
I 've just registered website named… Read more

 Database Normalization (some useful links)

http://www.ischool.utexas.edu/~wyllys/DMPAMaterials/normstep.html
http://www.guru99.com/database-normalization.html
http://www.aliencoders.com/content/basics-normalization-examples

SQL Server Programming Fundamentals (some useful links)
http://www.blackwasp.co.uk/SQLProgrammingFundamentals.aspx
http://beginner-sql-tutorial.com/sql-select-statement.htm

SQL Server Database Administration

DBA Responsibilities
http://www.bradmcgehee.com/2011/12/the-day-to-day-tasks-of-the-average-dba/

DBA Best Practices
http://www.bradmcgehee.com/presentations/

Free eBooks (to begin with)

How to become an Exceptional DBA by Brad McGehee
http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/books/67441/

Troubleshooting SQL Server: A Guide for…

Chennai SQL Server User Group (CSSUG) meet is happening tomorrow (15-Dec-2012) in Microsoft Training Centre, Chennai.

You can download presenation and demo scripts here
http://www.sqlservercentral.com/blogs-admin/blogs/livingforsqlserver/CSSUG_SQLOS_Basics_15Dec2012/SQLOS_CSSUG_Meet_15Dec2012.zip

Tomorrow,  I am going take 2 hour session on SQLOS Basics (Skill level 200-300).

Topics to be covered:

SQL Server Architecture
SQLOS  - Basics
SQLOS – Responsibilities
CPU
   … Read more

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  Read more

Here is updated list of *free* invaluable SQL Server learning resources.

Unknown is an ocean. 

You think I missed some important  freely available Sql Server resources? please share the link with me.

Technet Resources
http://technet.microsoft.com/hi-in/library/bb545450(en-us).aspx
http://technet.microsoft.com/hi-in/magazine/ff628330(en-us).aspx?sdmr=sql&sdmi=topics
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/bb978517.aspx

MCM Resources
http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/certification/master-sql.aspx (Section 7.6 and 7.7)
http://www.sqlskills.com/mcm.asp
http://sqlserverpedia.com/wiki/Microsoft_Certified_Master_Reading_List

SQLServerPro
http://www.sqlmag.com/authors?fl=A

SQL Skills
http://www.sqlskills.com/Resources.asp
http://www.sqlskills.com/blogs/paul/commonsqlservermyths.pdf Read more

Chennai SQL Server user group meet is scheduled for Dec'2013.

Venue: Microsoft Training Centre, Radhakrishnan Salai, Chennai
Landmark: Opposite to President hotel
Timing: 09:30 AM to 01:00 PM
Date: 15th December 2012 (Saturday)

Register here: http://sql-articles.com/cssug/december-2012-ug-meeting-scheduled/

Chennai friends, register yourself to get your seats confirmed.

  Read more

It's been 2 years since I wrote my first blog post on SQLServerCentral ("What happens when a query is submitted").

No need to say how nervous I was while posting my first blog on worlds largest SQL Server community.

Remembering that day I was checking user visits once in two minutes for the… Read more

In this article We are going to understand the basics of SQLOS - CPU scheduling.

In high level:

1. When an user connects to SQL Server instance, unique connection id and session id is assigned to the user.
DMV: sys.dm_exec_connections

2. Queries being executed by the user sessions (requests in other… Read more

If you are the regular reader of my blog posts, you could easily judge in which topics i spend much time these days.

I have converted some of my learning as questions and posted it here. These are not necessarily be the interview questions.

I am sure that this will help us to assess our knowledge and hope this… Read more

Conducting technical interview is an art.

Most likely I would start a discussion with simple questions like "What is your favourite topic in SQL Server?" .

here are some open ended questions that could be answered in 10 seconds or may lead to an hour long interesting discussion.

1. I have created a Non Clustered Index to improve a query… Read more

 In this article We are going to INSERT a record in a simple table and try reading Transaction log record.

Note: This article is incomplete. I could not interpret lots of Hex values (no clues) and also you can expect inaccuracy in interpreted values.

USE MASTER
GO

-- Drop this… Read more

In this article,  We are going to CREATE/ ALTER/ DROP a table and observe transaction log records created for those DDL statements.

Our focus is to observe schema level impacts in lower level.

1. CREATE TABLE

Lets create a simple table named tEmployee in a sample database EXPLORE_TLOG

USE MASTER
GO

-- Drop…

As part of this Transaction Log Internals series, In this article we are going to observe the use of fn_dblog and some of its important columns.

fn_dblog is an undocumented function introduced in SQL Server 2005. This function is used to return active (or un-truncated) part
of transaction log file.

Syntax:
fn_dblog({BeginLSN | NULL}, {EndLSN… Read more

As a new blogger, It is a little pain for me to blog on a technical topic.  

It starts from learning, exprimenting, being comfortable with topic, decide what to write and how to convey, make sure no or minimum technical inaccuracies,  preparing relavent demo scripts, formatting and so on.

But while going thru his blog post count, varity, depth and… Read more

As part of this Transaction Log internal series, In this article We are going to revisit some basic properties of Transaction log.

Though architecture, purpose and properties of data and transaction log files are not similar, I have tried to compare some similarities
and differences of data and t-log files. Tried to cover some common myths around data and…

Hundreds of expert level books, articles, videos and blogs has talked much about Transaction Logs and How well to manage it.

Everything from basics to best practices are documented in various format except "How to read Transaction Log Entries"

Yes. this series of articles is just an attempt to try reading  transaction log records *of some basic… Read more