09Oct 2008 by Grant Fritchey 5 Comments

PASS Schedule Posted

PASS
Finally, the PASS Summit schedule has been posted. I'm presenting on Wednesday afternoon from 3pm to 4:15pm. Unfortunately, Gert Drapers is presenting at the same time. So my one hope/fear that he would be in the audience is gone. I did a dry-run on the presentation last night at the SNESSUG meeting. It went over well, but it was a bit short at 53 minutes. I realized after I was done that there was a bit structure missing from the presentation, so I was able to add a couple of slides that allows me to describe the methods I'm going to employ and why and then summarize at the end of each section. It seemed to be well received. No one fell asleep or walked out. I even saw a…
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08Oct 2008 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

Database Engine Tuning Advisor

Uncategorized
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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07Oct 2008 by Grant Fritchey 5 Comments

Composite Projects in DBPro

Visual Studio
I know the name is supposed to be Visual Studio Team System Database Edition, but DBPro, like Data Dude, slides off the tongue and the other doesn't. Anyway... I've been working with CTP 17 since it came out this week. So far, knock wood, no issues. I was trying to work out how to get multi-platform security working in some manner other than post-deployment scripts. Everything I tried failed. I finally posted a question on the MS forum. It was suggested that I use composite projects... What? A little research later and I'm off and running. Now, with the ability to chain projects together, you can provide two projects, one with all the structures, and the other with only specialized differences, such as you might find in a development server.…
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07Oct 2008 by Grant Fritchey 2 Comments

SQL Server 2008: Database Engine Tuning Advisor

Tools
I don't think this thing works. I posted a bug report in Connect. If you can replicate my problem, described below, please go here and confirm the issue. Get a copy of AdventureWorks2008. Pick any of the bigger tables. In my case I went with the Sales.SalesOrderHeader table. Write a query, a simple one or a complex one, that has performance problems that can be easily fixed by the right query. Here's a simple example: SELECT  soh.Freight, soh.SalesOrderNumber FROM    Sales.SalesOrderHeader AS soh WHERE   soh.SalesOrderNumber LIKE 'SO' + CAST(6 AS VARCHAR) + '%' AND soh.Freight > 50 If you run this query and get an execution plan, it immediately flags a missing index. The plan itself is a clustered index scan and a filter operation. Take the index it suggests and build it:…
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01Oct 2008 by Grant Fritchey 2 Comments

PASS Summit T-Shirt

PASS
Apparently, if you write a friends name in who is also registered for the PASS Summit, you can both get nifty t-shirts. Well, doggone it! I want a nifty t-shirt. So someone, please, click this link and include my name in your registration in the Friend-To-Friend box. Assuming you know my name.
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01Oct 2008 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

Simple Talk Editorial on PASS

PASS
If you don't subscribe to the Simple-Talk newsletter, why not? This month's newsletter is chock full of interesting stuff, a DBA checklist from Brad McGehee, a workbench on keys, an article on how covering indexes are faster than clustered indexes (they are too), and an article on why one DBA is learning PowerShell (I want to, but my spare time is taken up with writing a new book). All great stuff and worth reading. I'm going to be reading all these articles, but the most fascinating piece of the current newsletter is the editorial by Tony Davis. I was actually a little shocked by it. I'm a PASS volunteer for the Special Interest Groups and the Editorial Committee. I've attended the last three PASS events. I'm the current president and…
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29Sep 2008 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

Dissecting SQL Server Execution Plans at PDC

PASS, SQL Server, T-SQL
I just got word that Red Gate has printed more copies of the book that they'll be distributing at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference that's taking place in LA. I just wish we had a 2008 version of the book now because, while most of it is still applicable, there's more that can be done with execution plans now. Have I mentioned I think the missing index information that's displayed with the statement text in the graphical execution plan in SQL Server 2008 is pretty slick? Well it is. I hope they're going to distribute it at the PASS Summit this year too. I think they are, but I don't know that for a fact.
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29Sep 2008 by Grant Fritchey 3 Comments

Loop Joins, More rows on top or bottom?

T-SQL
I've seen this question come by in the web searches multiple times. The nested loop join is also called an iterative join. This is because it takes the rows from the inner part of the join and compares them through an iterative process (one-by-one) to the rows in the outer part of the join. So, if the optimizer has correctly chosen this operation for your query, you should see FEWER rows in the top, or outer, part of the join and MORE rows in the bottom, or inner, part of the join. Take this query as an example (run against AdventureWorks2008): SELECT * FROM [Sales].[SalesOrderHeader] soh JOIN [Sales].[SalesOrderDetail] sod ON soh.[SalesOrderID] = sod.[SalesOrderID] WHERE soh.[SalesOrderID] = 47716 Here we have a single row from the SalesOrderHeader table and 55 rows…
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24Sep 2008 by Grant Fritchey 2 Comments

Index Statistics

T-SQL
The other day a developer showed up at my desk. They were getting time-outs in production on a query that didn't normally give them trouble. With the parameters they provided, I ran the query. It ran for over 30 seconds, the application side timeout, before it returned it's data. So I ran it again with an execution plan. It had a bunch of index scans with loop joins across thousands of rows and even created a table spool with 700 million rows as part of the process. Clearly not good. Next I looked at the query plan. It wasn't too bad, as these things go. It was probably moving too many columns and apparently the business wanted a pivot on the data since they were using an aggregate method to pivot some…
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16Sep 2008 by Grant Fritchey 2 Comments

JumpStartTV

SQL Server, T-SQL
All the videos I recorded on execution plans for JumpStartTV are now available. Please, go and check them out. Then hang around JumpStartTV and check out all the videos that Brian Knight did on SSIS. Also, if you're interested, I think Andy and the team would like other people to submit videos as well. So if you're watching my stumbling attempts and are convinced you can do better, do it and submit it.
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