25Nov 2008 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

XML to Multiple Queries

T-SQL
One of our development teams created a set of queries that are receiving some rather large XML parameters for processing. Unfortunately, the developers didn't think things through entirely. They passed the same, large, XML string in to the server five times in a row. Needless to say, the performance was substandard since the XML parser had to be instantiated five times. My initial suggestion was to use a wrapper procedure to perform a single load of the XML data and then call the other 5 procedures. I further suggested to load the XML into a temporary table and use that within the other procs. Unfortunately this is all taking place within SQL Server 2000. When my initial set of recommendations was done, we had solved one problem and introduced another. We were getting serious recompiles. If…
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21Nov 2008 by Grant Fritchey 15 Comments

PASS Summit 2008: Day 3

Uncategorized
Two speakers at the keynote. The first, some guy from Dell, whose name I didn't catch, presented a few slides on something. The second presenter was Dr. DeWitt. It was one of those moments where I realized just how stupid I was. This man was scary smart. Not only that, he was witty. He went over parallel databases, shared nothing servers, and related technologies. He drilled down and defined the problems around developing a database that does parallel data storage. It was amazing. I can't properly convey it (I'm flat out, not smart enough), but you should download that video and check it out. One of my favorite quotes from him was "Query Optimizers are fragile." Don't get him wrong. He praised the concept of optimizers, but he was pretty…
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21Nov 2008 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

Multi-Statement Table Value Function Alternative

T-SQL
I was talking with Andrew Novick at the PASS Summit. We ended up talking about multi-statement table valued functions. I was talking about how much the performance of these things is weak (to be kind). He agreed, but suggested an alertnative that might be worth further exploration, if you really think you need multi-statement UDFs. Andrew said that in his testing, using CLR offered a great alernative to using the UDF. I'm still pretty convinced that any type of programming you're doing on the SQL Server end that requires a UDF or CLR is probably either just TSQL gone wrong (see Jeff Moden and the RBAR concept) or it's something that doesn't belong on the SQL Server but instead should be done on the application layer somewhere. Still, it is…
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21Nov 2008 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

PASS Board

PASS
The winners were the other guy, Lynda Rab and Andy Warren. Congratulations to all three. I lobbied hard for one of the three winners, Andy, so my special congratulations go out to him. On the back of my laptop, as I type this, is the logo (probably due for a law-suit soon) of the SQLBatman. He lost his second PASS election in a row. However, he came through like a trooper and says he's going to run again next year (go Susan Lucci, uh, I mean Tom).
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21Nov 2008 by Grant Fritchey 3 Comments

PASS Summit Day 2

PASS
I only half listened to the key notes. The party's the preceding night may have had something to do with it. First session was with Kalen Delaney on Plan Guides. She didn't really do plan guides though. Instead she talked about guiding plans. She is such a great presenter. I like her use of the language and precise definitions. Lubor Kollar (sp?) was in the room and made a point of standing up & addressing some of Kalen's info.  My best take away was that plan guides (she covered those too) do not reduce compile time and can in fact increase compile time. Second best was the use of plan guides as a mechanism for testing since you can apply the guide, enable & disable, without rewriting the proc. Sessions…
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19Nov 2008 by Grant Fritchey 1 Comment

PASS Summit Day 1

PASS
What a day. I'm not going to do justice to the keynote. First off, the room was frigging huge (not Tech-Ed huge, but enormous for PASS). It was pretty full too. The keynote wasn't terribly exciting, but it was terribly interesting. Watching 150tb databases process queries in less than 30 seconds is not something you see every day. Of more interest to me was the info on the new deployment mechanisms across database "fabrics" coming up with the new version of SQL Server (yes, it's at least two years away, but it's only two years away). It pretty clearly incorporates some of VSDB, but it's also a bit different. It includes data for example. This will be something for me to keep an eye on. My first session was with Allen White.…
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19Nov 2008 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

PASS Summit: Tuesday Night Parties

PASS
I visited at three. I went to the Opening Night Reception hosted by the SIGs of course. I kept score in the quiz bowl (I wasn't informed math would be involved). Nice enough party. It was a big room, but we mostly filled it up. Went over to the SQL Server Central party next. Steve still puts on a nice shindig. I tried finding other SQL Server Central posters, but didn't track any others down except for GilaMonster (Gail Shaw). I put all my money on the craps table, 30:1, a single roll of the dice. I guess there is a reason those odds are so high. I had an invite to the Solid Quality Mentors party, so I went over there. It was a little overly crowded (I almost…
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18Nov 2008 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

Pass Volunteer Training 2008 – Part 2

PASS
Next year is going to be in Seattle again... Argggh! Another six hour flight. More jet lag. YUCK! Money review. Yawn. But you'd be horrified how much all this stuff costs at the convention center. BTW, I'm pretty excited to be presenting. I know someone else who pointed at their ribbons and said "The only ones that count are MVP and Speaker." I feel the same way about my Speaker ribbon (I don't have the other one). More so because, of 70 or so available slots, more than 500 abstracts were submitted. If you want to thank any particular set of volunteers, I'd go for the program committee. They bust butt. Of course, if your abstract didn't get picked, you might not be too happy with those guys, but look at what…
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18Nov 2008 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

PASS Volunteer Training 2008 – Part 1

PASS
While it's called training, the PASS volunteer "day" is much more a report on the current status of the organization and planning for the next year. Today we had good start. Pat Wright went over the org chart, something new to PASS volunteers this year. Kevin Kline went over the history of the organization, including a few stories (ask him about escorting an attendee off site because of way too public a display of self-love). Lots of interesting information has come out. PASS is run under international rules as a non-profit which requires it to maintain ~20% of it's operating expenses in the bank. Regional conferences are under consideration (although, as was pointed out, internationally, they're already underway). The C&C management company performs the day-to-day operations above & beyond what…
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