SQLUG.be

Monthly interview: Brent Ozar

Steve — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 13:48:00 GMT

This month we were able to talk with Brent Ozar from Brent Ozar PLF.

Full name
Brent Gregory Ozar. My dad's John Gregory Ozar Jr, and my parents kinda wanted me to have that same name, but they didn't want a "the third" kid.

Where are you born?

Illinois. I grew up all over the midwest US, moving every couple of years as my dad opened up stores for Goodyear Tires. I've lived in Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, Georgia, Texas, Florida, Michigan, and I'm sure I'm leaving stuff out.

Where do you live?

Downtown Chicago, Illinois. I telecommute full time, so I can live anywhere. I like living in places that are really walkable - so far Chicago and Miami Beach are my favorites. Chicago's got a great mass transit system - very unusual for America.

What company do you work for?

Everybody's! I co-founded Brent Ozar PLF, a consulting firm that specializes in high-performance SQL Servers. We've worked with companies big and small including StackOverflow.com, AllRecipes.com, Discovery Channel, financial companies, hospitals, universities, and tiny 3-person software developers.

Education/Degree

I dropped out of college after a year and a half. I just couldn't figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up, and I didn't find any insights on campus, so I figured I'd be better off experimenting with different jobs out in the real world. After a handful of years managing hotels, doing budgets, and working in IT, the dot-com boom hit. I rode that for a while and enjoyed IT work the most.

Certifications

I'm a Microsoft Certified Master (or as they're renaming it, the MCSM) of SQL Server 2008. There's not many of us out in the wild - most Masters work for Microsoft, but I'm lucky enough to have started Brent Ozar PLF with another MCM - Kendra Little.

Role (Production DBA/Development DBA/BI)

Clients bring me in when database applications aren't performing. I track it down to the root cause - sometimes it's storage, sometimes it's hardware, sometimes it's queries. Being an MCM means I have to know the entire stack at a very deep level, so I'm able to follow the problem no matter where it goes.

Number of years experience with SQL Server (including which SQL Server version did you start with?)

I worked with 7 but only briefly, and I was really happy when 2000 came out. I've been working with SQL Server since the late 1990s.

Tell us one of your SQL Server related horror stories you came across in your career

I had a SAN firmware upgrade go very horribly wrong in the summer of 2007. We lost dozens of servers at once. We discovered that some servers were doing backups to the very same SAN that held their data, so we lost days of data. We worked a very, very long weekend - one guy worked 40 straight hours - and got the last of the servers up by Monday afternoon.

My only vindication was that the vendor's own staff flew in to do the same upgrade on another one of our SANs a few weeks later. They lost the entire SAN too.

Describe a typical day in your job

Nobody calls me when they're happy. Companies call me when the application's on fire, and their staff have been struggling with internal developers, sysadmins, and outside vendors all pointing fingers at each other. I put everybody in the same room (or on the same conference call), get to the bottom of the problem, and teach everybody how to fix it with the least amount of effort and expense. I'm usually in and out in 2-3 days.

It probably sounds like a terrifying battleground, but I love it. Every gig is different, and I get to work with all kinds of companies doing amazing things with databases. People are angry when I arrive, and I make them happy. It doesn't get much better than that.

What is your best or greatest accomplishment with SQL Server?

This is going to sound strange, but my best accomplishment is helping other people take their skills and their careers to the next level. Sure, I can make jobs run faster, I can wring more performance out of existing hardware, but the real fun is watching somebody get excited about their job again. I love it when I can show someone a technique they've never thought of using, and suddenly it opens new doors for their work. Every now and then, somebody blogs about how my work made a big difference in their life, and that's just the greatest accomplishment I can have.

What is your favorite new feature of SQL Server 2012?

Without a doubt, AlwaysOn Availability Groups. I love solving high availability, disaster recovery, backup, and scale-out problems simply by implementing one feature. As I'm writing this, I've got 2 clients working on Availability Groups deployments plus another one planning it. This is the killer feature.

What book(s) are your currently reading?

For work, I'm reading Inside the SQL Server Query Optimizer by Benjamin Nevarez. It's not a practical book for beginners - it's for experts with a lot of time on their hands who are really curious about how the engine works.

For fun, I'm reading Saving Fish from Drowning by Amy Tan. It's written from the point of view of a recently murdered woman who's watching her friends take a trip she'd coordinated herself, and she's watching the trip unravel. The author's voice is sarcastic, witty, and beautiful.

Blog address

My personal blog at http://www.BrentOzar.com has turned into a consulting company. Yay! I love watching it grow.

Twitter handle

I'm @BrentO. If this Twitter thing doesn't make any sense to you, check out the free ebook I wrote about it at http://www.BrentOzar.com/twitter/book/.

LinkedIn

http://www.linkedin.com/in/brentozar - although I hardly ever update it. I love helping people get better jobs, though, so feel free to connect with me.

Hobbies

Life is like a role-playing game, and I'm working on leveling up. You can read about my Epic Life Quest at http://ozar.me/quest/, where I'm documenting the achievements I'm working on. In 2012, I'm running my second half-marathon, hiring our first employee at Brent Ozar PLF, and more.

Next SQLUG event with Chris Webb and Alberto Ferrari, May 14th (Brussels)

Steve — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 07:21:00 GMT

We are very proud to announce Chris Webb and Alberto Ferrari as speakers on the next SQLUG evening event. The two SSAS Maestros will present no less than 3 sessions on xVelocity, DAX in Action and Choosing between Tabular and Multidimensional.

Inside xVelocity (VertiPaq)

PowerPivot and BISM Tabular models in Analysis Services share a great columnar-based database engine called xVelocity in-memory analytics engine (VertiPaq). If you want to improve performance and optimise memory used, you have to understand some basic principles about how this engine works, how data is compressed, and how you can design a data model for better optimisation. Prepare yourself to change your mind. xVelocity optimisation techniques might seem counter intuitive and are absolutely different than OLAP and SQL ones!

DAX in Action

What is new in DAX and when it is better/faster than other existing languages? Does it makes the project development faster and cheaper? Discover the answer to these questions by looking at some real-world scenarios that will give you the elements to compare DAX with other languages such as SQL and MDX.

Choosing between Tabular and Multidimensional

You have a new project and you have to make an important decision upfront. Should you use Tabular or Multidimensional? It is not easy to answer, because sometime there is a clear choice, but most of the times both decisions might be correct, at least at the beginning. In this session we’ll help you making an informed decision, correctly evaluating pros and cons of each one according to common scenarios, considering both short-term and long-term consequences of your choice.

Alberto Ferrari is a Business Intelligence consultant. Alberto helped several software houses to build complex BI solutions, from the OLTP to the final OLAP cubes, providing planning hints all over the development lifecycle. He is a book author also, having worked on "Expert Cube Development with Microsoft SQL Server 2008" with Marco Russo and Chris Webb and Microsoft PowerPivot for Excel 2010: Give Your Data Meaning with Marco Russo.

Chris Webb is an independent consultant specialising in Analysis Services, MDX, PowerPivot and DAX. He is a co-author of "Expert Cube Development with SQL Server 2008 Analysis Services", and "MDX Solutions with Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services 2005 and Hyperion Essbase", and blogs at http://cwebbbi.wordpress.com

Agenda:

18:00 Registration

18:30 Session start

21:00 Session end

Location:

Kohera - The Oak3 Campus

Telecom Gardens

Medialaan 36

1800 Vilvoorde

Brussels, Belgium

April 26th, Free event IT in Transformation: BI and Productivity for Your Business Solutions with Rafal Lukawiecki

Frederik — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 11:53:00 GMT

On April 26th Rafal Lukawiecki is coming to Belgium for a full day event on Microsoft Business Intelligence.

Today, IT strives for increased business relevance in the ever-changing environment of continuous demands for business growth and transformation, while needing to offer day-to-day mission-critical business systems for its employees. Microsoft’s Business Intelligence, Application and Relationship Management platforms have been undergoing a strategic shift towards employee self-service empowerment. 2012 sees the introduction of some of the most impressive, and powerful technologies, such as Power View.

Not only will he cover the present, but he will also outline the roadmap for the future of the platform, in particular looking at the support for the emerging technologies of Big Data, and its relevance to public and private cloud environments.

As Strategic Consultant at Project Botticelli Ltd (projectbotticelli.com), Rafal Lukawiecki focuses on making advanced analytics easy, insightful, and actionable, helping clients achieve better organisational performance. Passing those skills to consulting companies, development teams, investors, and management boards is important to him. While he specialises in business intelligence and data mining, he is also known for his work in the fields of information security and cryptography, enterprise architecture, and solution delivery. Rafal is a popular speaker at major IT conferences.

Full agenda: http://www.microsoft.com/belux/events/itintransformation/default.aspx#agenda

Free Registration: https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032509093&Culture=en-US

Location:Utopolis Mechelen, Spuibeekstraat 5,Mechelen

Live Meeting: Who did what and when on my database? April 19th, 2:00 PM

Steve — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 09:42:00 GMT

Abstract
With SQL Server Audit, SQL Server 2008 introduced an important new feature that provides a true auditing solution for enterprise customers. SQL Server Audit offers a number of attractive advantages that may help DBAs more easily achieve their goals such as meeting regulatory compliance requirements. SQL Server Audit permits fine-grained auditing whereby an audit can be targeted to specific actions by a principal against a particular object.
This session provides a comprehensive description of this feature along with usage guidance and then provides some practical examples.
We will also highlight the SQL Server Audit Enhancements of SQL 2012.

Speaker: Pieter Vanhove
Pieter is a SQL Server Consultant at Kohera, and has been working with SQL Server since 2000. He has a lot of experience with managing large databases in telecom and finance environments. Pieter has also a profound knowledge in implementing high availability and disaster recovery solutions (Microsoft Failover Clustering, Database Mirroring, Replication).

https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?culture=en-US&EventID=1032508971

Next Event: ColumnStore Indexes in SQL Server 2012 with Ludo Bernaerts on April, 16th (Brussels)

Steve — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 07:56:00 GMT

In this session we will focus on a data warehouse redesign to SQL Server 2012 using ColumnStore indexes.
The data warehouse holds a daily load of 100 million records with a three year retention time.

About the speaker

Ludo Bernaerts works as a ITN Senior Operational Engineer at Belgacom and has over 11 years of experience with SQL Server.

Agenda:

18:00	Registration
18:30	Session Start
21:00	Session End

Location:
Microsoft België
Corporate Village
Leonardo Da Vincilaan 3
1935 Zaventem

Tel: +32.2.503.31.13
Fax: +32.2.704.35.35

This Event is brought to you by Microsoft

Click here to register

Monthly Interview with Jonathan Kehayias

Steve — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 14:06:00 GMT

Last month, SQLUG.BE started with a monthly interview with one of the best SQL Server experts on the planet.
This month we were able to catch Jonathan Kehayias from SQLSkills for an interview.

Full Name
Jonathan Matthew Kehayias

Where were you born?
A small town outside of Memphis, Tennessee named Atoka in the United States.

Where do you live?
I currently reside in Boston, Massachusetts, but I own a home and hold permanent residence in Tampa, FL. I am currently in Boston because my wife is finishing her PhD in Psychology and has a year long internship/residency at a hospital in Boston. We currently plan to return to Tampa in Setptember of this year when her residency is complete.

What company do you work for?
SQLskills

Education/Degree
I have a BA in History from the University of Florida.

Certifications
I am a SQL Server 2005 and 2008 MCITP for Database Development and Database Administration as well as a SQL Server 2008 Microsoft Certified Master.

Role (Production DBA/Development DBA/BI)
My career has primarily been focused on Database Development and Database Administration, but my current role is as a Principal Consultant where I do a mix of Development, Administration, and occasionally BI work, as well as training for the SQLskills Immersion Events

Number of years experience with SQL Server (including which SQL Server version did you start with?)
I am approaching 8 years of experience with SQL Server in April 2012, and I started off working on SQL Server 2000, but I have had to support and maintain SQL Server 6.5 and 7.0 instances as a DBA in the past.

Tell us one of your SQL Server related horror stories you came across in your career
I've blogged about a few of my horror stories with SQL Server in the past. Two of them can be found on my blog post http://sqlblog.com/blogs/jonathan_kehayias/archive/2008/12/09/sql-quiz-1.aspx. However, I have to say that my worst horror as a DBA has to be finding out that a system was converted from development/test to production without my knowing it, and as a result the database backup configuration hadn't been changed to adequately cover the databases being used to allow for recovery when a problem occurred. As luck would have it, I only found this out because a problem occurred, and the result was nearly 2 weeks of lost productivity as data had to be converted manually from a legacy system into a rebuilt copy of the new production system and then verified by end users before being considered complete.

This occurred in my first year as a production DBA, and we were making a migration from SharePoint 2003 to MOSS 2007 as a proof of concept in the environment. The specific environment I was working in required segregation of duties for backups, and all of the SQL Server backups were managed by a separate backup administrator in the environment. The development/test servers used a weekly full, biweekly differential backup policy that was based on the ability to recover changes in the environment from source control if necessary, but no real consideration had been made for content as data in the original design of the policy. With SharePoint and MOSS the content data is incredibly important and as a part of the proof of concept a number of document libraries that were previously maintained on file shares had been migrated into document libraries in SharePoint to provide auditing and versioning control in the environment. This should have dictated FULL recovery with frequent transaction log backups, but the appropriate backups had not been configured, and to make matters worse, the backup retention for the development/test environments had been set to 7 days. At the point of disaster discovery, the most recent weekly full backups had occurred of the damaged databases, and the previous weeks full backups had been flushed from storage resulting in an inability to recover the databases using the remaining differential backups. The only recourse was to manually rebuild the environments and then attempts to reconcile any changes that had occurred to the data from copies stored on individual's systems.

The biggest lesson learned here was the importance of inter-team communications when working with distributed environments like SharePoint for managing backups. As a result backup retention policies for development/test environments was extended to 21 days allowing the ability to recover from multiple full/differential backups in the event of failure.

Describe a typical day in your job
As a consultant, I can't really say that I have a typical day. One day I am performance tuning code and the next day I might be performing a health check of an existing environment, and the following day I might be working with a VMware or SAN administrator to try and pinpoint the bottleneck in a specific environment. One of the things that I love about being a consultant is that there is never a dull moment, and I get to work on all kinds of environments. I've worked on a couple of the largest edge case environments in the last year where the problems are incredibly complex and challenging, and I've worked a number of the smallest environments where the problems are equally as complex and challenging due to the environmental limitations. One of the biggest challenges as a consultant is being able to tailor the best solution to the problem and environment that you are working in and this is what keeps things interesting as a consultant for SQL Server.

What is your best or greatest accomplishment with SQL Server?
This is really hard to choose. Passing the MCM for SQL 2008 was a big accomplishment along with the first time I was awarded the MVP award in 2008, and being hired by SQLskills last year as a consultant, but I'd have to say one of my greatest accomplishments with SQL Server was writing the Extended Events Manager SSMS Addin for SQL Server 2008, which won the SQL Server 2008 Heros contest at PASS in 2008. This tool provides UI integration for Extended Events in SQL Server 2008 as a SSMS Addin. (http://extendedeventmanager.codeplex.com)

What is your favourite new feature of SQL Server 2012?
The UI integration for Extended Events along with the .NET API's for Extended Events management and the streaming provider, followed in a really close second place by Contained Databases and then Availability Groups.

What book(s) are your currently reading?
I am currently writing a book on SQL Server 2012 Extended Events which is taking most of my free time from being able to read new books, but the last book I read was John Grishams "The Litigators".

Blog address
http://sqlskills.com/blogs/jonathan

Twitter handle
http://twitter.com/sqlpoolboy

This is actually the third twitter handle that I've had since I started using Twitter. I started out using my name jmkehayias as my twitter handle but at that time autocomplete hadn't been implemented for most applications and people had problems typing in my last name so I changed to SQLSarg, a play on my current role in the Army Reserves as a Drill Sergeant. At SQL Connections in the Spring of 2011 as a joke I changed my handle to SQLPoolBoy based on a joke made by one of Kimberly's friends after I got her a napkin and it's been a ongoing joke between us ever since.

Linkedin
http://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathankehayias

Hobbies
I have a number of hobbies that keep me busy outside of SQL Server. My favorite thing to do is spend time with my kids at the pool, on a playground or just being a goof around the house. I also like building things with my hands, and I have built a number of toys with my kids out of wood including an automated marble elevator and race track and a couple of furniture pieces. I also have a 1966 Mustang coupe that I was restoring when I lived in Tampa, FL that is waiting for me when I get back.

12 Hours of SQL Server 2012: Partially Contained Databases Slide Deck Online

Steve — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 13:58:00 GMT

The webcast will be published soon. In the meantime I've put the slide deck online at http://blog.steveverschaeve.be/2012/03/05/12-hours-of-sql-server-20 Publish 12-partially-contained-databases-slide-deck/

Next SQLUG event: Power View with Johan Van Hoye. March, 27th

Steve — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 08:40:00 GMT

Power View is a new and exciting self-service data visualization capability in SQL Server 2012 for data from Analysis Services Tabular or PowerPivot. In early 2012, Financial Architects and Kohera joined forces to explore the potential of this technology from the perspective of a Microsoft ISV in the Finance Industry. The result of the project is an end-to-end solution that seamlessly adds these capabilities onto FinArch’s existing suite of applications. If you are planning to evaluate this technology or want to get started, join this session to learn all about the best practices and lessons we learned.

Johan Van Hoye is an independent consultant with 15 years of day-to-day experience on SQL Server and enterprise software development. Holding a degree in Applied Economics with specialization in Management ICT from the University of Antwerp, he has been at the intersection of the functional world of the Finance Industry and the Microsoft technology world ever since. Past roles include CTO at Financial Architects and CTO at 2imagine. In his current role at Financial Architects, he advises the company on product strategy and architecture from a technology viewpoint.

We are also pleased to be able to welcome a guest speaker from Microsoft Belgium who will give a short update on the current state of affairs in Microsoft BI.

Agenda:

18:00	Registration
18:30	Session Start
21:00	Session End

Location:
Financial Architects nv
Verlorenbroodstraat 122B
9820 Merelbeke

Road description

tel : +32 9 272 64 10
fax : +32 9 272 64 59

This Event is brought to you by Financial Architects

Click here to register

Monthly interview: Mr.Denny

Steve — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 16:32:00 GMT

As of now, SQLUG.BE starts with a monthly interview with the best SQL Server experts on the planet.
This month we were able to catch Mr. Denny for an interview. Mr.Denny was one of the speakers
a couple of months ago at SQL Server Days 2011.

SQLUG.BE: What’s your full Name?
Mr.Denny: Denny Cherry

SQLUG.BE: Where were you born?
Mr.Denny: Los Angeles, CA

SQLUG.BE: Where do you live?
Mr.Denny: Corona, CA (about 60 miles from Los Angeles)

SQLUG.BE: What company do you work for?
Mr.Denny: I’m an independent consultant, working for myself.

SQLUG.BE: What is your Education/Degree?
Mr.Denny: I’ve got no formal training besides working for various companies over the years and figuring all this technology stuff out.

SQLUG.BE: What certifications do you have?
Mr.Denny: I’ve got a bunch of Microsoft Certifications including all 12 of the SQL Server 2000, SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server 2008 MCDBA, MCTS and MCITP Certifications. I also am one of the few people to hold the Microsoft Certified Master certification for SQL Server 2008.

SQLUG.BE: Describe your primary role (Production DBA/Development DBA/BI)
Mr.Denny: I’m a consultant so I’m mostly dealing with production database systems, but I also support storage arrays like EMC, NetApp, etc. and virtualization platforms like VMware’s vSphere and Microsoft’s Hyper-V.

SQLUG.BE: How many years of experience with SQL Server do you have(including which SQL Server version did you start with?)
Mr.Denny: At least 14 years starting with SQL Server 6.5 all the way up to SQL Server 2012.

SQLUG.BE: Describe a typical day in your job
Mr.Denny: It really depends on what client I’m working for, but it usually involves either planning a new server build out, or doing performance tuning of an existing system so that the business unit that uses the system can continue to use it without just throwing hardware at the problem.

SQLUG.BE: What is your best or greatest accomplishment with SQL Server?
Mr.Denny: My best accomplishment with SQL Server would probably be a client that I worked with a few years ago. They wanted a hardware upgrade for their only SQL Server as the hardware was already 6 years old. On top of that they wanted to do normal performance tuning to improve performance even further. After two weekends of work, and with no impact to the business we upgraded the system and did the performance tuning. The head of the business unit actually contacted the head of IT to tell him how great the system was performing.

SQLUG.BE: What is your favourite new feature of SQL Server 2012?
Mr.Denny: My favorite new feature is by far AlwaysOn.

SQLUG.BE: What book(s) are your currently reading?
Mr.Denny: At the moment I’m reading the EMC books to prepare for the EMC certification exams.

SQLUG.BE: Do you have any hobbies?
Mr.Denny: Riding my motorcycle, and playing games on my Xbox.

SQLUG.BE: Thank you Mr.Denny

Blog address: http://www.mrdenny.com has links out to all my blogs which include itke.techtarget.com/sql-server/ and sqlmag.com

Twitter handle: @mrdenny

Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/mrdenny

Would you like to keep posted on the monthly interviews, register here

12 hours of SQL Server 2012 on Feb, 24th

Frederik — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 20:41:00 GMT

Welcome to the 12 hours of SQL Server 2012, the next release of the Microsoft Cloud-Ready Information Platform that is scheduled to be released in the first half of 2012. During the 12 hours of SQL Server 2012 we'll walk you through all the new innovations we're bringing to the platform, or as we call them "The Fantastic 12 of SQL Server 2012". Together with our 12 speakers, both local and international, we'll deliver 12 webcasts over 12 hours starting 12:12 CET on February 24th (too bad February 12th is a Sunday).

We'll dive into all the new things around Business Intelligence, Tier-1 Performance & Reliability, the Manageability enhancements and of course the Cloud readiness and integration of SQL Server 2012 and SQL Azure.

Make sure to Register Today and explore the next release of SQL Server 2012 together with us.
By following at least 5 sessions, you get a chance to win a Nokia Lumia Windows Phone!

Technet Livemeeting - What’s New in Microsoft SQL Server 2012 for SSIS, Nov 3rd

Frederik — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 18:23:00 GMT

This session shows off the new features of Microsoft SQL Server Integration Services in SQL Server code-named “Denali”. We will highlight the migration process and the benefits of the new SSIS server architecture. We cover the many improvements made to increase developer productivity,as well as the enhancements to the current configuration,deployment,and management experiences.

Speaker Wesley Backelant

Registration info: https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032495615&Culture=nl-BE

TechNet Live Meeting - How many nines do we need? Introducing SQL Server 2012 AlwaysOn on Oct 25

Frederik — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 19:15:00 GMT

With natural disasters like earthquakes and fires in the news so often, and the economy still struggling to stabilize, IT Professionals know that many disasters can shut down a SQL Server.

Microsoft has already implemented a lot of high availability solutions in previous editions of SQL Server, like failover clustering, database mirroring, log shipping,... But,when it comes to high availability, Denali changes the game for SQL Server deployments by introducing SQL Server AlwaysOn. You can increase application availability and get a better return on your hardware investments through a simplified high availability deployment and management experience.

In this session you will see the key capabilities and concepts of Database Availability and Instance Availability, deploying availability groups, configuration Application Failover using a Virtual Name, Initiating a failover to the secondary and possibilities with the active secondary.

Speaker Pieter Vanhove

Tuesday, October 25, 2011 2:00 PM

Level 300

Database Mirroring, Microsoft Clustering and Virtualization - 27/10/2011

Frederik — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 19:10:00 GMT

Our next session is planned for October, 27th: "Database Mirroring, Microsoft Clustering and Virtualization" with three seasoned SQL Server professionals.
Ludo Bernaerts (Belgacom), Karel Coenye (Kohera) and Peter De Seranno (bPost) will bring you 3 different types of solutions for your HA/DR plan for SQL Server 2008 (R2): Database mirroring, Microsoft clustering and virtualization.

You can expect an overview by technology followed by question time & panel discussion.

About The Speakers
Ludo Bernaerts, Karel Coenye and Peter De Seranno are seasond SQL Server professionals.

Some details will follow.

Agenda:

18:00	Registration
18:30	Session Start
21:00	Session End

Locking during debugging stored procedure in Visual Studio 2005

Steve — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 15:03:00 GMT

I had this weird situation for almost two days whilst debugging a stored procedure in Visual Studio 2005. Just after a few minutes, over and over again at the same line, I got an error popping up:

Failed to retrieve data for this request.
Lock request time out period exceeded.

So obviously it had something to do with locking which is not unusal but it shouldn't give me an error from within Visual Studio right?

I'm working on a standalone instance here, so no interferance from other applications or people with open connections in SSMS.

When I looked at the Activity Monitor in SSMS, I could see a LCK_M_S key lock caused by the query below which is not part of my stored procedure(It almost looks like Visual Studio is executing this query).

SELECT
db_name() AS [Database_Name],
udf.name AS [Name],
SCHEMA_NAME(udf.schema_id) AS [Schema],
udf.object_id AS [ID],
CAST(
 case 
  when udf.is_ms_shipped = 1 then 1
  when (
    select 
      major_id 
    from 
      sys.extended_properties 
    where 
      major_id = udf.object_id and 
      minor_id = 0 and 
      class = 1 and 
      name = N'microsoft_database_tools_support') 
    is not null then 1
  else 0
end     
       AS bit) AS [IsSystemObject],
CAST(CASE WHEN ISNULL(smudf.definition, ssmudf.definition) IS NULL THEN 1 ELSE 0 END AS bit) AS [IsEncrypted],
(case when 'FN' = udf.type then 1 when 'FS' = udf.type then 1 when 'IF' = udf.type then 3 when 'TF' = udf.type then 2 when 'FT' = udf.type then 2 else 0 end) AS [FunctionType],
usrt.name AS [DataType],
sret_param.name AS [DataTypeSchema],
ISNULL(baset.name, N'') AS [SystemType],
CAST(CASE WHEN baset.name IN (N'nchar', N'nvarchar') AND ret_param.max_length <> -1 THEN ret_param.max_length/2 ELSE ret_param.max_length END AS int) AS [Length],
CAST(ret_param.precision AS int) AS [NumericPrecision],
CAST(ret_param.scale AS int) AS [NumericScale],
case when amudf.object_id is null then N'' else asmbludf.name end AS [AssemblyName],
case when amudf.object_id is null then N'' else amudf.assembly_class end AS [ClassName],
case when amudf.object_id is null then N'' else amudf.assembly_method end AS [MethodName],
CASE WHEN udf.type IN ('FN','IF','TF') THEN 1 WHEN udf.type IN ('FS','FT') THEN 2 ELSE 1 END AS [ImplementationType]
FROM
sys.all_objects AS udf
LEFT OUTER JOIN sys.sql_modules AS smudf ON smudf.object_id = udf.object_id
LEFT OUTER JOIN sys.system_sql_modules AS ssmudf ON ssmudf.object_id = udf.object_id
LEFT OUTER JOIN sys.all_parameters AS ret_param ON ret_param.object_id = udf.object_id and ret_param.is_output = 1
LEFT OUTER JOIN sys.types AS usrt ON usrt.user_type_id = ret_param.user_type_id
LEFT OUTER JOIN sys.schemas AS sret_param ON sret_param.schema_id = usrt.schema_id
LEFT OUTER JOIN sys.types AS baset ON baset.user_type_id = ret_param.system_type_id and baset.user_type_id = baset.system_type_id
LEFT OUTER JOIN sys.assembly_modules AS amudf ON amudf.object_id = udf.object_id
LEFT OUTER JOIN sys.assemblies AS asmbludf ON asmbludf.assembly_id = amudf.assembly_id
WHERE
(udf.type in ('TF', 'FN', 'IF', 'FS', 'FT'))
ORDER BY
[Database_Name] ASC,[Schema] ASC,[Name] ASC

The query started to show up in the Activity Monitor as soon as I expanded the stored procedure node from the Server Explorer pane where you connect to a database. I guess Visual Studio 2005 uses the info from the resultset to build the nodes in the Server Explorer/Database connection.

I started experimenting with the Visual Studio settings including the time out setting but I didn't make any progress until I decided to switch to Visual Studio 2010.
The query responsable for the locking did no longer appear.

Denali - Import Text Editor settings from Visual Studio

Steve — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 19:26:00 GMT

Up until SQL Server 2008 R2, you had to customize the font and background colors manually in SSMS.

SQL Server Denali lets you import your Visual Studio settings such as the custom colors in the Text Editor.
The fact that the Denali SSMS splash screen shows Powered By Visual Studio probably has a lot to do with that.

In Visual Studio go to Options, Environment, Import and Export Settings and copy the location where your settings are stored with the .vssettings extension.

Next open SSMS, go to Options, Environment, Import and Export Settings and locate your .vssettings file you copied from Visual Studio using the team settings file option.

Dive into the Summer with TechNet

Steve — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 15:28:00 GMT

What about some light reading on virtualizing SQL Server during the holidays whilst sipping a nice cocktail?

Sure, your wife might be rolling her eyes when she sees you reading a Hyper-V whitepaper but hey, nowadays virtualized SQL Servers are everywhere so virtualization has become a technology that needs to be mastered by SQL Server experts as well and not only by system administrators.

TechNet has started its summer campaign with the first part on virtualization. You won't have to spend the entire afternoon by the swimming pool reading white papers. There's material for the ones having only half an hour to spend, half a day and a full day (be careful on the cocktails!)

A good document to start with is Hyper-V Getting Started Guide followed by Hyper-V : Using Hyper-V and Failover Clustering and Virtualizing SQL Workloads

Read why Hyper-V is the Best Virtualization Solution for SQL Server Whitepaper which covers the advantages over VMware such as performance, high availability, management, monitoring and costs.

Read all about SQL Server in a virtualized environment here.

Happy holidays!

Announcing Belgian SQL Server Days on November 14th and 15th

Frederik — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 13:22:00 GMT

Yes, you read well, DAYS. SQL Server day has become a household name when you talk about SQL Server technology. And this year we go big, really big. Off course we'd like to welcome you again and hopefully snow won't be a kill-joy on this year's edition. Our team is working really hard on building the agenda so keep an eye on www.sqlserverdays.be for more information.

TechNet Live Meeting : Database Mirroring on SQL Server 2008 R2

Frederik — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 07:07:00 GMT

Database mirroring was introduced since Microsoft SQL Server 2005. It can be used to design high-availability and high-performance solutions for database redundancy. It is designed to maintain a hot standby server with a transitionally consistent copy of the database. Mirroring is cost-effective, speedy, requires no special hardware, and ensures transactional consistency. This live meeting will describe the database mirroring components, the different modes of database mirroring, failure types, failure scenarios, how it is different from other technologies and client redirection. Also a demo on how to setup databases mirroring with GUI and T-SQL will be shown.

Speaker: Pieter Vanhove (Kohera)

Time: Tuesday, June 28, 2011 2:00 PM

Registration: https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032487684&EventCategory=2&culture=en-US&CountryCode=US

PowerPivot / BISM and the future of a BI Solution - Slides available

karim — Tue, 24 May 2011 13:58:00 GMT

Last thursdya we had an exilirating presentation made by Marco Russo. The slide deck is available for download here.

Community Day 2011

karim — Thu, 19 May 2011 04:51:00 GMT

Community Day is back with the Fifth Edition of this annual community event on Microsoft technologies!

14 Microsoft User Groups combine their efforts to organize this unique networking and knowledge sharing

event.

Microsoft Community Day will take place on Thursday 23th June 2011 in Utopolis, Mechelen.

Click here for more details.

Be careful with cloned VMs of SQL Server production servers

Steve — Thu, 05 May 2011 20:03:00 GMT

Imagine this,

You're handed a new clean and crisp full functioning copy of a SQL Server production server VM which you can use to experiment with.

Of course the clone has a new computer name. You might want to execute a select @@servername to see what the actual name is which is used by SQL Server itself.
Unless the original server has been dropped from table sysservers en replaced with the new server name, you will still see the server name of the production server.

Now, be very carefull when executing statements on the cloned VM where @@servername is used in the code. Sometimes the @@servername variable is used to dynamically build file paths...

Use the following statements to change the server name:

sp_dropserver <'old_name\instancename'>

sp_addserver <'new_name\instancename'>, local

Also check: Rename a computer that hosts a stand-alone instance of SQL Server

!= gets converted to <> in Query Designer

Steve — Thu, 05 May 2011 19:51:00 GMT

One of my colleagues today asked me why != is accepted in a query but gets automatically converted into <> when it's written using the Query Designer.

I didn't have an immediate answer but found out that some of the server-specific syntax gets converted into ANSI standard syntax.

No, it's not a bug!

MSDN Live Meeting : SQLServer self-service BI on May 10th

Frederik — Wed, 04 May 2011 06:19:00 GMT

In this fast paced and ever changing world, insight in your company’s data becomes more and more crucial to stay ahead.
Power users need this insight in data now, not in the next week or month. Due to this trend, BI has to evolve into a more mobile, quick and personal approach.
Microsoft addresses this need for self-service BI for Power Users with Report Builder 3.0 and PowerPivot.
This session gives you a quick overview of the SQL Server BI stack and introduces you to the concepts of self-service BI.

Speaker : Luc Lemaire

Full details and registration info can be found here.

Next SQLUG.be event - PowerPivot / BISM and the future of a BI Solution - May 19th with Marco Russo and Alberto Ferrari

Frederik — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 14:02:00 GMT

We are very proud to announce our next event: PowerPivot / BISM and the future of a BI Solution on May 19th with Marco Russo and Alberto Ferrari

The next version of Analysis Services will offer the BI Semantic Model (BISM) that is based on Vertipaq, the same engine that runs PowerPivot. DAX and PowerPivot have been created as tools for Excel users but in Denali they will be available on the Corporate BI stack technology for Microsoft, as part of Analysis Services.

The impact of this technology is huge, because many assumption that are made today for an OLAP cube (star schema models, surrogate keys and so on) might be no longer the optimal way to design a complete BI solution.

This session is about this impelling change: after an initial introduction about PowerPivot, DAX and Vertipaq changes that are relevant to this topic and some consideration about design impact on Data Warehouse, Data Mart and ETL pipeline, the session will become an open discussion with all attendees, in order to share experience, needs, technical challenges and understand future directions in corporate BI world.

About The Speakers

About Marco Russo:
Marco Russo is a Business Intelligence consultant and mentor.
His main activities are related to data warehouse relational and multidimensional design, but he is also involved in the complete development lifecycle of a BI solution. He has particular competence and experience in sectors like financial services (including complex olap designs in banking area), manufacturing and commercial distribution.
Marco is also a book author and, apart from his BI-related publications, he also wrote some books about .NET programming. He is also a speaker in international conferences like European PASS Conference and PASS Summit. He is an MCT and has several certifications (MCPD, MCIP, MCTS, MCAD and MCDBA).
Blog | Twitter | Linkedin

About Alberto Ferrari:
Alberto Ferrari is a Business Intelligence consultant.
He his interests lie in two main areas: BI development lifecycle methodologies and performance tuning of ETL and SQL code. His main activities are with SSIS and SSAS for the banking, manufacturing and statistical sectors.
He is also a speaker in international conferences like European PASS Conference and PASS Summit.
Blog | Twitter | Linkedin

Location:

The Oak3 Campus - Brussels
Telecom Gardens
Medialaan 36
1800 Vilvoorde

This Event is brought to you by Kohera

As usual the event is free, but registration is required.

Slide Deck and SQL scripts available for SQL Server Locking: Taking back control of SQL Server

Steve — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 19:15:00 GMT

Allright, the slide deck and SQL scripts came in today from last week's event: SQL Server Locking: Taking back control of SQL Server by Marc Mertens.

Download them from the media gallery and enjoy!