25Aug 2009 by Grant Fritchey 6 Comments

PASS Board Nominations

PASS
I think the Professional Association of SQL Server users (PASS) is an extremely important organization for SQL Server DBA's. Even if you're not a member, you've never attended the Summit, gone to a local chapter meeting, read the magazine (while it was in print), took part in the special interest groups, or even read the technical articles available on the web site, you know, or work with, someone who has. What's more, the people who get involved with PASS are the ones that are growing and expanding. PASS members are the ones that are becoming leaders in the industry. PASS members influence the direction Microsoft takes with its products. PASS, it's members and volunteers, foster and grow the speakers, teachers, writers and MVP's that are showing you how to perform your craft as a…
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24Aug 2009 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

New Book

Uncategorized
Well, three chapters. The latest book I worked on is up at Apress. I only have three chapters in this one, backup, restore & performance monitoring & tuning. It's written as an introductory book, targeted to help get people started as a DBA. I haven't read the chapters from the other authors, but Rob Walters is a terrific writer & a great guy and Carmen Taglienti has a wonderful reputation, so I suspect their work will be everything you could ask for. Of course, it's not real until you can get it on Amazon.
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21Aug 2009 by Grant Fritchey 15 Comments

What happens when you use WITH RECOMPILE

SQL Server, T-SQL
I saw this question and my immediate thought was "Well, duh, the execution plan is recreated by a recompile." But, someone a bit smarter than myself suggested that, in fact, no plan was stored in cache, forcing a new plan to be created each time the query was run. So, which is it? Does a plan get added to cache and then removed every time the procedure is called, or do you get nothing in cache and the "recompile" is actually a compile every time? As Mr. Owl says, let's find out. I have a small script that looks like this: CREATE TABLE [dbo].[Test]( [col] [varchar] (10) NULL ); CREATE TABLE [dbo].[Test2] ( [col] VARCHAR(10) NULL ); INSERT INTO dbo.Test (col) VALUES ('Val1'), ('Val2'),   ('Val3') ; INSERT INTO dbo.Test2…
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20Aug 2009 by Grant Fritchey 3 Comments

Two Book Recommendations

PowerShell, SQL Server
I have two new books that I can heartily recommend. This isn't a review of either book since I've only just started reading them. However, I've used each to solve a couple of small problems within a day of having them on the shelf. To me, that proves their worth. First up is Michael Coles new book "Pro SQL Server 2008 XML." I'm still a bit jittery with XQuery... OK, I have a hard time writing XQuery and I have to look up how to do every step and I still get things wrong. Anyway... There are two entire chapters devoted to how to use XQuery and an appendix with an XQuery & XPath reference. Great stuff. Look for an extended review several weeks from now after I've had a chance to…
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13Aug 2009 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

SQL Server Standard Writing Guidelines

Misc
Well, actually, these are the guidelines for submitting anything to SQLPASS, but it includes the guidelines for SQL Server Standard. If you're considering submitting an abstract (and please, don't consider it, do it) read through there for the basic information. I've accepted six different abstracts so far on a variety of topics. It's going to be some good stuff from some really smart people. A sampling of topics includes; expanded use of tally tables (table of numbers), designing partitioning schemes (I'm looking forward to this one), multi-level SSIS project dependency and communication, how to read and interpret execution plans (not by me), and a full description on triggers. We need more. If you've got writing experience, please, write an article for SQL Server Standard. Abstracts are all that is required…
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12Aug 2009 by Grant Fritchey 3 Comments

Excellent Blog List

SQL Server, T-SQL
For the one or two you that are not reading Buck Woody's blog (and why aren't you), you may not have seen that he's posted a recommended reading list of the blogs that he reads on a regular basis. This list must be reviewed by you, now. Go on, I'll wait here till you get back.
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12Aug 2009 by Grant Fritchey 4 Comments

SQL Quiz 5: SANs Mirroring

SQL Server
My turn to answer Chris Shaw's questions "Do I feel I have a reliable SAN solution?" and "Describe Database Mirroring for the layman?" Thanks Tim. I've a feeling you're going to be disappointed. SAN: Hell, how should I know? Want to talk about a black box? Our SAN, as far as I'm aware, is run by a group of crack-shot ninja assassins and powered by pureed virgin unicorn. This strange mix of esoteric skill, magic and blood is evidently able to provide us with just about perfect up time. Once, one of the ninja's must have gone rogue (speculation) and had to be put down by his brother ninjas because we had a drive disappear on the cluster server. It took us a couple of hours, but it recovered as if it…
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11Aug 2009 by Grant Fritchey 3 Comments

Some Statement Start Times!

SQL Server, T-SQL
I thought I had captured statement start times within the DMV sys.dm_exec_sessions. I was absolutely wrong. However, this has sparked a bit of discussion, as you can see in the link to my correction. John Vanda (I couldn't find a blog by him, but I think this is his LinkedIn profile), suggested possibly joining between the sys.dm_exec_requests and sys.dm_tran_active_transactions through the transaction_id available in the requests DMV. He ran a series of tests that showed it to be promising. I re-ran my original test, a few long-running statements within a batch; BACKUP, CHECKDB, etc.. This time I captured the transaction information along with the other DMV's. The results were interesting. Rather than pull together any particular set of data as I was testing, I just collected all three DMV's once…
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09Aug 2009 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

Microsoft Thrive

Misc
I was introduced to the Thrive program when my user group held a Thrive event back in March. Since then I've referenced some of their material several times. It's a decent little program from Microsoft to try to help out IT pros in this tough economy. Hopefully this won't create a circular reference and bring down one or more web sites, but I got picked to be the IT Pro of the month for August over at Thrive. Nothing comes with it except ever-lasting glory (measured in weeks).
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08Aug 2009 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

Active August #2

Misc
Hrmmm... 198. Up four pounds. That just doesn't seem possible. I did a tabata on Monday. I did have a light workout on Thursday, but I went walking several days this week and I haven't been overeating (except last night at sushi...hmmmm sushi). It may just be last night & a bit of water. However. I will try to be more aware of my intake and try to get an extra workout or two in during the coming week.
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