11Jun 2008 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

VSTS 2008 Database Edition GDR: More First Impressions

Tools, Visual Studio
Because I was having so many problems yesterday after I tried doing everything at once, creating multiple deployments to multiple servers with a variety of different settings... Anyway, it didn't work. So today I went back to square one. I created a blank project.  Yesterday I used the schema compare to capture the database, but today I right clicked on the project and found "Import Database Objects and Settings..." which did it all for me. Yee Ha! Anyway, after getting all the objects in, I started trying to deploy. This time I got errors on FK's. It somehow changed the order on the compound keys columns. While editing, I found that if I messed up the syntax and then saved the file, I didn't get an instantaneous error. That bummed…
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11Jun 2008 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

SNESSUG Speaker

Misc, PASS
Tonight we have Rob Walters of Microsoft speaking on Visual Studio 2008 Reporting Services. This should be a good one. Rob also recently published a book, Accelerated SQL Server 2008. I'm going to a party at the MS building in Waltham next week to celebrate the release of Rob's book. Hopefully that means I can finagle a copy too.
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10Jun 2008 by Grant Fritchey 2 Comments

VSTS 2008 Database Edition GDR: First Impressions

Tools, Visual Studio
Since I have to work through this thing to set up a test project to verify our build & deployment processes with the new tool (see my teeth grinding post below) I might as well post a spot evaluation of the tool as I go through it. I'm creating a new database project (and I'd rather not talk about that). Rather than go through a wizard, I decided to create a blank database project and now I'm capturing the database by using the new Schema Compare. It looks mostly the same. One new thing that came up immediately is a "Permissions" folder. It has all the GRANT CONNECT, GRANT EXECUTE ON SCHEMA that I had in my database. In the 2005 version of VSTS, we maintained this stuff in post…
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10Jun 2008 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

VSTS 2008 Database Edition GDR

Visual Studio
OK. I'm jazzed about this. I'm diving in to test it out & try it out. <kicking desk> I can't convert existing projects to it... CRUD! Fine. Reverse engineering a database and then building all the customizations by hand will be a good learning experience. Yes, that sound you hear is my teeth grinding, not tectonic plates shifting... CRUD! A quick & easy test, no real work was that too much to ask?
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10Jun 2008 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

Visual Studio Team Edition for Databases 2008

SQL Server, Visual Studio
Great news. All the processes we had created for automating our deployments and builds in VSDB 2005 work in VSDB 2008. Bad news. All the work arounds and crutches we had to figure out and maintain are still necessary. I've heard that it makes the MS guys crazy, but we found that the only way to get the configurations to work with VSDB 2005, and now 2008, was to check-in the .USER file along with the code. This then needed to be checked out of source control, replacing the local copy (and heaven help you if you don't use a forced get on the check out) before doing any work with the project. I did a full build & deploy from 2008 through our usual batch file. No problems at…
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05Jun 2008 by Grant Fritchey 1 Comment

Operations Manager 2007 SQL Collection Article

T-SQL, Tools
It took me a while to find all the little pieces to put together a custom rule that used data collected through TSQL. In fact, because it took so much work to pull all the little pieces together, I wrote an article describing how I did it. This isn't a wonderful new invention. It's just the publication of a bunch of research. If you're an Operations Manager expert, this isn't for you. If you're like I am, trying to find your way through the forest, this little bit of map will hopefully provide some assistance. Available at SQL Server Central.
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04Jun 2008 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

Top Vs Max

SQL Server, T-SQL
I finished a set of research and tests. I put it all together and gave it to Chuck Heintzleman at SQL Server Standard (that web site can use some help). Hopefully he likes it and publishes it. I understand that the upcoming issue will be on performance tuning. If he doesn't like it, I'll get it over to Peter Ward at SQL Server Performance or to Steve Jones at SQL Server Central. I'm posting this because I see so many web searches looking for information comparing TOP to MAX. Here are some short answers for those interested. Data to support these suggestions is included with the article. ROW_NUMBER works best with smaller data sets. TOP has more consistent operation over a range a data. MAX frequently resolves as a TOP operation, but sometimes…
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