18Dec 2008 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

2008 Index Fragmentation

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I forgot all about this, but a script I wrote on using all the new functionality of dynamic management views & functions to do index defragmentation and rebuilds got published over at SQL Server Central. It could stand a bit of tweaking, but gets the job done on several of the systems I've tested it on so far.
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08Dec 2008 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

SQL Server 2008 Upgrade Whitepaper

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One of my tasks for the coming year is to evaluate each and every SQL Server 2000 system, identify all the databases, the applications they belong to, and provide an upgrade to SQL Server 2008 cost estimate. I've only started reading this new white paper from Microsoft, but I can already tell it's going to be a huge help.
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21Nov 2008 by Grant Fritchey 15 Comments

PASS Summit 2008: Day 3

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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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08Oct 2008 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

Database Engine Tuning Advisor

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I did receive a response to my post on the Microsoft forum. Unfortunately it was just a suggestion to post the problem on Connect since it might be a bug. Good, but not helpful information. If anyone can confirm the issue, please follow the link to Connect and vote for validation. If you can show a query that gets a recommendation, I'm excited to hear about it.
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15Aug 2008 by Grant Fritchey 2 Comments

SQL Server 2008 Install

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I just finished the install of SQL Server 2008 RTM on my laptop. No real issues except that it wanted SP1 of Visual Studio installed before it would complete. Once I had that done, everything was up and running. The new install routines are nicer than the old ones if a bit more detailed. My desktop is another matter. SQL Server 2008 objected to a SQL Server 2005 Express install. I removed that. It still thinks Express is installed. I'm removing all of SQL Server 2005 to see what happens.  The error reported was pretty non-helpful. This is a bit odd since the laptop also has a copy of Express installed. Well, uninstalling all things SQL Server didn't work. Sql2005SsmsExpressFacet is failing. It simply states: "The SQL Server 2005 Express…
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13Jun 2008 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

Performance Data Warehouse

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The new functionality coming out with 2008 includes the Data Collector which feeds to the Performance Data Warehouse. I presented this topic at the SNESSUG Heroes Launch event. It's pretty slick functionality. I posted about it once before. A new article by Derek Comingore is available now over at SQL Mag. It's worth the read. The beauty of the new tool is the fact that it's not all that new. It's doing all this work using tools that we know and are comfortable with. This makes it very easy to implement and maintain. I agree with Mr. Comingore and I hope they expand the client to cover SQL Server 2000 and 2005.
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02Jun 2008 by Grant Fritchey 6 Comments

Spatial Data Types in SQL Server 2008

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I'm pretty excited about this new data type and the functionality associated with it. I'm sure our company will have some application for this. However, I saw this interesting post over at SQL Server Central. If anyone can help shed some light on this question, I'm sure a lot of people would be interested in the answers. UPDATE: I made an incorrect link above in the original posting. It was just an oopsie, not an intentional misdirection. My apologies.
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28Mar 2008 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

SQL Server 2008 Free Instance

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If you don't want to risk blowing up your laptop (like I did) and you're not interested in setting up and maintaining a virtual server, but you still want to test SQL Server 2008. Then, PASS (Professional Association of SQL Server Users), Dell & MaximumASP have a solution. Just go to SQL Server Beta. You can set up a private instance and it will persist between sessions.
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18Mar 2008 by Grant Fritchey 1 Comment

SCOM SQL Agent Job Defaults

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I'm working through implementing SCOM, specifically the SQL Server Management Packs. I've been tweaking and tuning and for the most part I'm really impressed with how MS configured the defaults. Until today. Since I've hit all the really big and important monitors & rules (at least the ones that have caused problems) I'm starting to drill down a bit. I just hit the Duration monitor for SQL Agent Jobs. The run time for a warning state is 1 minute and an error state in 2 minutes. OK. So any backup on a database over about 2gb in size is going to go into a warning state? I don't think so. What the heck were these guys thinking of?
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06Mar 2008 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

SQL Server 2008 November CTP

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My fault, my fault, my most grevious fault... I installed the November CTP to my virtual machine without making a backup of the virtual first. Now I can't get the November CTP to uninstall and the February CTP won't install on top of it. ARRRGGGGH! Anyway, I'll be getting back to 2008 tomorrow, hopefully, after the admin guys get me a new virtual.
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