In March, Paul and I began blogging in a new column for SQL Server Magazine. This column is solely a Q&A based column… yes, we'll still write feature articles and yes, we'll still be blogging on each of our own blogs (in fact, have you noticed that I've actually blogged more this month than almost [...]
Kimberly L. Tripp
Improving my SQL skills through your questions!
SQL Server Magazine’s new column: Kimberly & Paul – Questions Answered
Posted on: April 22, 2010 2:35 pm
Media Alert: Microsoft Announces Conference Call With Senior Vice President Ted Kummert
Posted on: April 20, 2010 2:18 pm
This event is scheduled for TOMORROW (April 21) at 7:30am PDT. So, if you haven't already put this on your schedule – you might want to! And, if you miss it, a replay will be available for 30 days beginning one hour after the end of the call. Here's the official press release. And, here's [...]
Microsoft eLearning Resources – Developer Content – 2008 & 2008 R2
Posted on: April 20, 2010 1:27 pm
In addition to the SQL Server 2008 Database Infrastructure and Scalability content that Paul and I delivered for SQL Server 2008, our colleague Bob Beachemin (blog) also delivered complementary content under the Developer track. This course is officially titled and available as: Clinic 10164: Essential SQL Server 2008 for Developers. Additionally, this content has been updated [...]
Microsoft eLearning Resources – Clinic 10259 (SQL 2008 DBIS)
Posted on: April 20, 2010 1:11 pm
When SQL Server 2008 was in beta, Paul and I worked on a project to create content that would "jumpstart" folks in learning and working with SQL Server 2008. We delivered these "new features" courses at various locations and finally, we recorded the content. All of this content is now available FOR FREE from Microsoft [...]
Backup Resources – Where, oh where, can they be?
Posted on: April 2, 2010 8:48 am
In our Boston SQL Training workshop today, we were discussing disaster recovery and minimizing data loss. One of the key discussions is around backup/restore so we started discussing resources and found that there just isn’t a great single place where a bunch of resources are listed (ok, maybe there is but we didn’t find one) [...]
Our new Q&A on SQL Server Magazine is LIVE!
Posted on: March 30, 2010 6:38 am
Paul and I have started a new Q&A blog on SQL Server Magazine. Our first couple of posts have been made live in the past few days (here's my first post titled: Comparing Execution Plans). Please check it out and consider asking your questions there! We're both still blogging here but our blogs tend to [...]
Interviews with MidnightDBA are posted
Posted on: November 16, 2009 3:47 pm
At PASS we hung out with Sean McCown and Jen McCown (of MidnightDBA) and chatted… and, despite our better judgement, it was recorded. ;-) These aren't overly technical but they are fun! Enjoy!! Part 1 of 2: http://midnightdba.itbookworm.com/VidPages/DBAsAtMidnightTripps1of2/DBAsAtMidnightTripps1of2.aspx Part 2 of 2: http://midnightdba.itbookworm.com/VidPages/DBAsAtMidnightTripps2of2/DBAsAtMidnightTripps2of2.aspx And, our favorite "travel tip" from the video is to know your plane [...]
SQL Server MVP Deep Dives (book for charity)
Posted on: November 11, 2009 3:17 pm
Well… it's finally been released and last week was the book launch. This book came together first as a goal by Paul Nielsen who was motivated by Steve Ballmer's request that MVPs "give back" even more and even outside of the direct technical community. Paul had the idea of a book – written for charity [...]
Companion content for Chapter 6 (Index Internals) of SQL Server 2008 Internals
Posted on: April 12, 2009 11:20 pm
Recently, the SQL Server 2008 Internals title was released (and only in the past few days have people actually received their copies)! In fact, I still haven't seen the book in person… soon though! Anyway, Kalen, Paul, Conor, Adam and I worked to create a comprehensive resource on SQL Server 2008 internals and to supplement the written [...]
RunAsRadio Interview about Developers and DBAs – whose job is it?
Posted on: April 10, 2009 10:52 am
A couple of weeks ago I wrote a blog post titled Whose job is it anyway? It's an interesting debate and something I've been hearing more and more – that SQL Server is a "set it and forget it" technology – a black box where you just don't need to know how it works to do [...]
Don’t worry – it’s not facebook…
Posted on: March 20, 2009 8:08 pm
OK, I've been pretty quiet this week… I had high hopes that I'd blog at least once or twice this week but the week turned out to be crazy busy as I presented T-W-Th at the SQL MCM (Microsoft Certified Masters) and then Fr at the Sharepoint MCM. The groups were really fun and wanted to [...]
Server consolidation and Green IT Computing
Posted on: March 2, 2009 4:55 pm
Just published! A colleague/friend of ours – Mark Pohto – has been working on server consolidation issues and the environmental costs of IT (it's an eye opening article!!!). And, the article "Green IT in Practice: SQL Server Consolidation in Microsoft IT" came out recently: Here's the link to the The Architecture Journal you can see [...]
Getting the most from the system you have now!
Posted on: February 24, 2009 1:30 pm
Given the general state of the economy…many companies are looking to cut back. Going back over what we've done and "optimizing" things -> budgets, expenses, etc. is the norm right now. And, scaling back is not always a bad thing – unless the wrong things are cut. Unless the wrong things are used to motivate [...]
Where in the world does time go?
Posted on: February 5, 2009 12:24 am
I know where I go but where the heck does the time go (it seems to move much faster than I)? First off, I hope everyone had a truly lovely holiday season. I know they've long since past for everyone but maybe this reminder will bring back a nice memory from the holidays as it [...]
RunAs Radio Interview Posted – “Kim Tripp Indexes Everything”
Posted on: October 3, 2008 6:51 pm
Well… I think I had had too much tea that morning ;-). But, as always, chatting with Richard and Greg was great. Here’s the specific show link: http://www.runasradio.com/default.aspx?showNum=76. Oh, and just for the record, I didn’t come up with that title. But, I do hope that all your [high-priority and important] queries are indexed! Enjoy!kt
SQL2008HOLsVPC setup instructions and a note for the August 2008 release
Posted on: October 3, 2008 6:36 pm
OK, I know this post doesn't really apply to most folks but I did want to have the setup instructions on my blog so that I could refer people to it. For the August release we updated all 17 labs and all of the demos for SQL Server 2008 RTM; however, we did use a [...]
Resources: A panel on HA and a second on Women In Tech
Posted on: August 25, 2008 8:13 pm
OK, in my quest to blog more often, I realized I have the perfect thing to blog about today… stuff I did that I haven't yet told you about. :) :) At TechEd US, Paul and I were on a panel created to debunk some of the more common questions/concerns when setting up High Availability. [...]
Updates (fixes) to sp_helpindex2
Posted on: August 24, 2008 7:23 pm
NOTE: I've released other versions of sp_helpindex since this post. Check out the category: sp_helpindex rewrites for all of the options! I first posted an update to sp_helpindex here. My version of sp_helpindex was solely to expand what sp_helpindex showed and adds 1 or 2 things based on version: for SQL2005+ it adds included columns and [...]
TechEd has completed!
Posted on: June 11, 2008 7:54 pm
I started this post while Paul and I were in the TechEd Bloggers Lounge… which, from the number of folks “stopping by” must be more of an online thing :). We did have lots of folks visit with us in the DAT “Green” area but in the bloggers lounge, I thought I’d blog (maybe that’s [...]
Time for TechEd ITPro and, it’s hot as hell here in Orlando………
Posted on: June 8, 2008 1:57 am
Memorial Day weekend we were in Chicago to celebrate my Father’s life. We did a “Celebration of Life” memorial and we had a few drinks (celebratory Meyers, Tonic and lime – which was my Father’s favorite drink), we (7 of us) gave a few heartfelt speeches, and a few friends wrote a song (and passed [...]
When did you last backup your home/personal/less-critical system… is it really less-critical?
Posted on: May 9, 2008 10:11 pm
Have you ever written something and then lost it… for whatever reason: your own stupidity (come on we’ve all accidentally done something at some point where we lost data or a spreadsheet or a document or something…), the software eats it (this might be self-inflicted but I’ve been in apps that just hang and that’s [...]
Catching up on resources – the Accidental DBA workshops!
Posted on: April 28, 2008 1:29 am
OK, we were in Iceland and then Florida for our Accidental DBA workshops and both went really well. People agree that there are quite a few involuntary/accidental DBAs out there and overall, we helped quite a few to see a lot of options for better performance, availability, recovery, and/or just manageability. So, this is our [...]
sp_helpindex2 to show included columns (2005+) and filtered indexes (2008) which are not shown by sp_helpindex
Posted on: April 2, 2008 6:22 pm
IMPORTANT NOTE: Use the updated version of sp_helpindex2… see this post: Updates (fixes) to sp_helpindex2. OK – so this has been frustrating me for many months… when you create indexes with included columns (which was a new feature of SQL Server 2005), they're not shown by sp_helpindex or by DBCC SHOW_STATISTICS. I understand this not [...]
TechNet Radio Interviews are ready for download
Posted on: March 12, 2008 4:11 pm
A couple of weeks ago, Paul and I recorded two interviews with TechNet Radio… both are ready for download and in multiple formats! Our specific interviews can be downloaded from the following links/formats: SQL 2008 Part 1 of 2: Security and Availability WMA | MP3 High | MP3 Low SQL 2008 Part 2 of 2: Management, Troubleshooting [...]
Statistics, query plans, and are you reading Conor’s blog?
Posted on: February 5, 2008 8:06 am
I know that Paul and I recommended that you subscribe to Conor's blog… but have you? He's posted some great details on Partitioning (Part 1 and Part 2) as well as statistics and it always reminds me of how much I can learn from other people's perspectives! And, just to dove-tail on some of his statistics [...]
Starting to catch up (finally)………………………. and, Happy New Year!
Posted on: January 13, 2008 8:50 am
I had started to write this blog post when we (Paul and I) were on our way back from Zurich on November 21. We had been in Zurich presenting a TechNet DeepDive on Database Maintenance Best Practices…after presenting at ITForum in Barcelona…after presenting at SQLConnections in Las Vegas (well, we did spend 30 hours at [...]
Releasing the DDM (Dual Database Monitor)
Posted on: January 13, 2008 7:41 am
Over the past couple of years, we’ve had *tons* of requests for the DDM (the Dual Database Monitor – which is a little utility for testing and checking out a mirroring partnership…) and finally, we’ve (ha, pretty much only Paul :)) made it more flexible (it was hard-coded with specific insert procs). He’s created an ini to [...]
Question for all of you…. interest in printouts++ of our workshops?
Posted on: December 6, 2007 1:51 am
Every time we’re at a conference, we get asked whether we’re going to write any books on the kinds of things we talk about. Well, at present the answer is no – we just don’t have time unfortunately. And, honestly, we like doing smaller chunks of more timely content rather than a complete book which [...]
Resources and Q&A from our SQLConnection [PRE] pre-conference workshop: Database Maintenance – from Planning to Practice to Post-Mortem
Posted on: November 5, 2007 4:11 am
OK, well, the first day is over and we’re starting to relax… just had a nice meal in our room and we’re off to each do a blog post (or what might turn into a couple :) regarding the things we each discussed in our full day workshop today. So, it was a great day [...]
Exciting news from SQLskills… Paul Randal has officially started AND moved his blog over!
Posted on: September 5, 2007 3:38 am
OK, if you’ve been reading at all… you know that Paul’s leaving Microsoft (ok, he’s left… yippie!) and joining SQLskills (ok, he’s joined). And, well, that’s the reason for this blog entry. He’s going to work on some updates to his prior posts (in the very near term) on the SQL Server Storage Engine blog [...]
Exciting news from TechEd 2007 – SQL Server 2008′s CTP3 is ready for public download!
Posted on: June 5, 2007 4:23 am
Well, I’m not sure where May went but I do know that part of it went to my 2 weeks in Hyderabad, India at Microsoft IDC (the India Development Center) and what was left was spent getting ready for upcoming events such as TechEd (and some personal events too :). And, the first big hurdle [...]
SP2, VLDB Maintenance and TechEd
Posted on: April 27, 2007 12:06 am
OK…SP2, the SP2 refresh and then the parallel/subsequent GDRs has seemingly (and rightly so) confused some of us… However, thanks to the PSS Engineers blog (and specifically Bob Ward – Senior Escalation Engineer, Microsoft PSS), this blog entry clears up a lot of that confusion. The end result is that you should be at 9.00.3054 [...]
SQL Server 2005 Books Online Scoped Search
Posted on: April 2, 2007 10:00 pm
In the quest for more (and more and more ;) information, I’ve been told about a new link – from the SQL Server Books Online team… it’s call the “SQL Server 2005 Books Online Scoped Search” and it allows you a “live” search format for accessing content in the SQL Server books online. And – [...]
Whitepapers, whitepapers and more whitepapers – where the heck are they???
Posted on: March 26, 2007 11:02 pm
OK, I’ve been complaining about finding resources – for a long time… AND, I’ve been complaining about how I can never tell if a whitepaper is on MSDN or on TechNet or on Microsoft.com or on x, y, or z. Well…….. finally, I’ve done something about it. I’ve *started* to put together (and verify) a [...]
I was ambushed…
Posted on: March 6, 2007 11:47 am
Another great DotNetRocks interview has been completed. It’s Paul Randal‘s session on Disaster Recovery, DBCC, Index fragmentation (and defrag) and [unfortunately for me] a lot more. All I can say is that I was ambushed… thanks Richard thanks Carl… Enjoy: http://www.dotnetrocks.com/default.aspx?showNum=217kt
Moving databases around – what are your options and across what versions?
Posted on: March 5, 2007 11:22 pm
I had a discussion earlier today (with Paul Randal) about many misconceptions that exist about upgrading databases and more importantly, about “downgrading” databases. Really, the issue is that I’ve heard people get frustrated when they find that things like backup/restore works FROM SQL 7.0/2000 TO SQL Server 2005 but not the other way around – [...]
Instant Initialization – What, Why and How?
Posted on: March 4, 2007 10:28 pm
Instant Initialization is a new feature of SQL Server 2005 that is based on an NTFS feature that was added to Windows XP (and therefore is also available in Windows 2003 Server). It's a feature that's seemingly simple; it allows file allocation requests to skip zero initialization on creation. As a result, file allocation requests [...]
SP2 was released today… and, did you know about the Feature Pack?
Posted on: February 20, 2007 3:58 am
OK – I feel like I know a fair amount about SQL Server but sometimes I also feel like I don’t :) :) I’m continuously amazed at how big a product SQL Server is… today was one of those days when I felt “I don’t”! I’ve been wanting to know more and more about the [...]
Time to make the doughnuts!
Posted on: January 31, 2007 5:41 pm
Ok – a strange title indeed but it’s been a strange couple of months. It all started with a “much needed” vacation and I thought that would get me through the persistent “cold” that I was having all through my travels. Anyway, vacation didn’t help and I came back to find that what I had [...]
Way, way, way overdue
Posted on: December 1, 2006 6:42 am
OK, it’s been a heck of a long time since I blogged… and for that I apologize. I’m also WAY overdue in my posting my demo scripts from a TON of conferences BUT… now everything has been posted. Check out the past events page on SQLskills and you can find the demo scripts that you’re [...]
DasBlog 1.9 ROCKS
Posted on: September 28, 2006 2:31 am
There are SO many new features in the updated DasBlog that I don’t even know where to start. Here’s just a quick list of the things I really love: 1) Scrolling through the entries – if you click a specific entry’s title, you will get a “last blog entry” | main | “next blog entry” section [...]
Is it really September? Here are some resources to check out!
Posted on: September 1, 2006 1:37 pm
Hey there everyone – Been a LONG time since I last blogged (sorry!)… key reason (fyi) is that I’m trying to find the ever-challenging work/life balance during the best months of the year (here in Seattle July/Aug are GREAT! months – September is almost always good too). Anyway, it’s been a few weeks and I [...]
Welcome to Blogging Liz!
Posted on: July 3, 2006 6:20 pm
Hey there everyone – If you’re into Analysis Services, Integration Services, Reporting Services and BI in general – you’ll want to check out Elizabeth Vitt’s new blog. Liz has been specializing in BI since SQL Server started adding BI-centric components. She’s got a wealth of information to share and many great insights into performance tuning [...]
Events, Events and more Events
Posted on: June 23, 2006 2:24 pm
I’ve posted all of my demo content from TechEd 2006 and wow – it was a lot of fun! I created many new and fun demos as I tried to keep everyone awake through the sessions (cause it seems like there were way too many evening events – didn’t it? ;-)). All of the content [...]
Getting ready for TechEd – it’s amazing what goes on behind the scenes!
Posted on: June 8, 2006 5:05 am
Well, if you’re wondering why I’ve been so quiet this week… it’s a myriad of events all coming together and/or being finalized right in time for TechEd. In working really hard (especially crazy was today) for some final TechEd content, I realized that a lot of people don’t really know what goes on behind the [...]
DBAs definitely should NOT read this blog entry…
Posted on: June 2, 2006 8:53 pm
Ha… did that get your attention? Well, what I really hope to do is make everyone aware of what’s made the Developer Community rounds this week. On Wednesday, Microsoft announced “Data Dude” (aka the Visual Studio sku for Database Developers). This was an announcement that may be glanced over by many DBAs thinking it’s just [...]
SQL Server Migration Assistants
Posted on: May 31, 2006 11:05 am
In part 11 of the TechNet webcast series for the ITPro, I spoke briefly about the Oracle Migration Assistant and the recent release of the Community Tech Preview versions of both the Access and Sybase Migration Assistants… A few of you asked for their download location and there were even a few replies that folks [...]
SQL Server Team Blogs – a new one and some existing ones!
Posted on: May 30, 2006 12:11 am
The SQL Server team has a few *very* interesting blogs and the Engine Team just started blogging – check it out here: http://blogs.msdn.com/sqlserverstorageengine/ (thanks for the heads up Sunil). For completeness, here are the bulk of the other SQL team blogs – which I leveraged (aka stole – thanks Euan!) from Euan Garden’s EXCELLENT list (his [...]
TechNet Webcast Series for the ITPro – Series Links
Posted on: May 25, 2006 4:02 pm
Hey there everyone – The series has completed and I know that many of you struggled to get access to the surveys… Microsoft has asked me to post links to the surveys…so, for completeness, I decided to create this blog entry to have links for every session, every blog link (resources, demo scripts, etc.) and [...]
TechNet Webcast Series for the ITPro – Part 11 of 11
Posted on: May 22, 2006 4:29 am
Well… 11 of 11 has completed. Friday was our last chat – until next time ;). It was a summary event where I took a slightly different spin on things focusing on grouping technologies by the amount of effort that’s needed to implement them. Simply put, we looked at the technologies in order of what [...]
TechNet Webcast Series for the ITPro – Part 9 of 11
Posted on: May 14, 2006 11:34 pm
In part 9 of our webcast series titled: Implementing Database Mirroring, we covered the steps from setup to failover to monitoring. There were lots of great questions and I think we could easily go back and do a couple more hours on database mirroring, failover combinations – including manual failover and client application questions. Having said [...]
TechNet Webcast Series for the ITPro – Part 10 of 11 – errata
Posted on: May 13, 2006 9:48 pm
In the last few minutes of the webcast (part 10), I goofed up one line of code and didn’t realize it until today. As my very last demo (and there were at least 10 different scenarios/concepts/demos yesterday) in my webcast, I decided to show a Database Snapshot on a Mirror database. It was the second [...]
TechNet Webcast Series for the ITPro – Part 10 of 11
Posted on: May 12, 2006 7:02 pm
OK – today's session was quite fun… lots of demos and quite a few "tie-ins" where I tried to bring together many things that we've touched on in our series. And – that's really the point of the series – creating a reliable, robust, scalable and available environment takes MANY different features. You really need [...]
Sun caused brain damage (not really) but…
Posted on: May 11, 2006 5:27 am
I completely spaced in blogging about a recent interview I did…poolside, in Orlando, FL when I was at SQL Connections back in April. I had the pleasure of meeting Chuck Boyce (a DBA from Philly, PA) who feverishly works in his spare time to spread the word about technology and specifically about all things SQL. [...]
TechNet Webcast Series for the ITPro – Part 8 of 11
Posted on: May 5, 2006 1:11 pm
Last week Mark Wistrom (Program Manager in the SQL Server Team at Microsoft), delivered part 8 of our TechNet webcast series. Most of the resources needed to prepare for this session – as well as learn more about Database Mirroring – have already been posted in the blog entry for part 7 (as homework!). However, [...]
TechNet Webcast Series for the ITPro – Part 7 of 11
Posted on: April 24, 2006 2:50 am
Well, Part 7 has completed and we're on the home stretch… focusing on part of the new Always On technologies of SQL Server 2005. We've made our way through quite a few discussions and my main point for the sequence – as defined – was to make clear that keeping a system available takes a [...]
What, am I crazy??? 11 features/topics for this Friday’s TechNet webcast!
Posted on: April 18, 2006 2:35 pm
In doing my final preparations for part 7 of my TechNet webcast series on Building Robust, Reliable and Recoverable Systems, I decided to (once again) review my abstract. I do this as a last step to make sure I cover everything I said I would cover. Here’s the abstract: TechNet Webcast: SQL Server 2005 for [...]
TechNet Webcast Series for the ITPro – Part 5 of 11
Posted on: April 10, 2006 5:53 am
Well, Friday brought another flood of great questions from everyone as we moved our way through many of the new 2005 tools. The one thing that I really wanted to stress was that *many* SQL Server 2005 tools (SQLCMD, SSMS and SQL Profiler) offer important features that can be leveraged today, even if your primary [...]
TechNet Webcast Series for the ITPro – Part 4 of 11
Posted on: April 1, 2006 1:58 am
And another one bites the dust! Wow – what a great group today… soooooo many questions! For those of you that weren’t there – the lecture was 80 minutes and the additional Q&A went on for another 45 minutes. So – as a result, there were *a lot* of additional resources needed. Let me get started [...]
TechNet Webcast Series for the ITPro – Part 3 of 11
Posted on: March 27, 2006 2:03 am
OK – so Bob Beachemin delivered Part 2 and I was back for Part 3. We had lots of folks on board with this session (more than 400) and as a result, I had a lot of questions. More than anything it seems like a lot of you wanted to know which versions of which [...]
TechNet Webcast Series for the ITPro – Part 1 of 11
Posted on: March 10, 2006 9:01 pm
Hey there everyone – Well there was lots of excitement around our first session…so much so that apparently a Live Meeting server went down and caused MANY of you to get booted-out or even blocked-from attending (figures, right!)…. Ugh (talk about the irony here – a series on high availability that isn’t available because a [...]
MSDN Webcast Series Wrap-up Resources
Posted on: November 5, 2005 4:53 pm
Hey there everyone! I know I still owe you a few Q&A entries (for sessions 7, 8 and 9) but I wanted to get this blog entry out there so that you can play a bit with some of the resources. This series was targeted at developers but really helps to "bridge the gap" between [...]
MSDN Webcast Q&A: A Primer to Proper SQL Server Development, Part 6 of 10
Posted on: September 23, 2005 4:40 am
Effectively Designing a Scalable and Reliable Database A Primer to Proper SQL Server Development SQL Server Mixed Workloads, Secondary Databases, Locking and Isolation, Part 6 of 10 Presented by Kimberly L. Tripp, SQLskills.com Q: Can I view a recording of this webcast?Part 6 can be replayed by clicking here. Q: Where can we get the demo scripts [...]
PDC Pre-conference Workshop Resources…and what a list it is!
Posted on: September 18, 2005 10:51 pm
Brian A. Randell’s Blog: http://www.mcwtech.com/CS/blogs/brianr/default.aspxMCWTechnologies Website: http://www.mcwtech.com/ Kimberly L. Tripp’s Blog: http://www.SQLskills.com/blogs/KimberlySQLskills Website: http://www.SQLskills.com Presentation ResourcesPresentation in PDF formKimberly’s Demo ScriptsBrian’s Demo Scripts and Code Running SQL Server 2000 tools and SQL Server 2005 tools side-by-sideWe talked about re-registering all of your COM components and I didn’t have a slide for this. So, if SQL [...]
Understanding TempDB, table variables v. temp tables and Improving throughput for TempDB
Posted on: September 5, 2005 6:28 pm
This is a much needed and much overdue blog entry… In 8 Steps to Better Transaction Log throughput, I mentioned a customer that was helped by TWO typical optimization problems I see. In that blog entry, I said I would write two blog entries – that one on transaction log optimization and another on common [...]
MSDN Webcast Q&A: A Primer to Proper SQL Server Development, Part 5 of 10
Posted on: September 5, 2005 2:41 am
Effectively Designing a Scalable and Reliable Database A Primer to Proper SQL Server Development New Features in Indexing and Index Maintenance Best Practices, Part 5 of 10 Presented by Kimberly L. Tripp, SQLskills.com Q: Can I view a recording of this webcast? Part 5 can be replayed by clicking here. Q: Where can we get the demo [...]
MSDN Webcast Q&A: A Primer to Proper SQL Server Development, Part 4 of 10
Posted on: August 31, 2005 5:41 am
Effectively Designing a Scalable and Reliable Database A Primer to Proper SQL Server Development Indexing Best Practices, Part 4 of 10Presented by Kimberly L. Tripp, SQLskills.com For a list of the non-technical Resources related to this webcast, please review the following blog entry:MSDN Webcast Q&A for Resources: Indexing Best Practices, Part 4 of 10 Technical Questions [...]
MSDN Webcast Q&A for Resources: Indexing Best Practices, Part 4 of 10
Posted on: August 26, 2005 9:43 pm
Effectively Designing a Scalable and Reliable Database A Primer to Proper SQL Server Development Indexing Best Practices, Part 4 of 10 Presented by Kimberly L. Tripp, SQLskills.com Q: Can I view a recording of this webcast? The webcast will be available for viewing within 24 hours. All “on-demand” webcasts can be found here. Q: Where [...]
MSDN Webcast Q&A: A Primer to Proper SQL Server Development, Part 3 of 10
Posted on: August 26, 2005 7:09 am
MSDN Webcast: A Primer to Proper SQL Server Development Designing Tables that Scale, Best Practices in Data Types and Initial Table Structures, Part 3 of 10 Presented by Kimberly L. Tripp, SQLskills.com Q: Can I view a recording of this webcast? Here’s the specific replay link. Q: Where can we get the demo scripts? The [...]
Getting ready for Part 4, “Best Practices in Indexing” in the MSDN Webcast Series on Effectively Designing a Scalable and Reliable Database
Posted on: August 25, 2005 3:43 pm
Two days isn't enough time! In fact, that's really true. There are so many interesting (well, I think they're interesting) aspects to Indexing that we could in fact do a whole 10-part Series on Indexing and it's likely that we'd still have other things to look at and talk about. So, in preparation for part [...]
The Database Administrator’s Guide to the SQL Server Database Engine .NET Common Language Runtime Environment
Posted on: August 23, 2005 6:22 am
OK, you’ve clicked through… Here’s the link: The Database Administrator’s Guide to the SQL Server Database Engine .NET Common Language Runtime Environment
MSDN Webcast Q&A: A Primer to Proper SQL Server Development, Part 2 of 10
Posted on: August 20, 2005 7:33 am
MSDN Webcast Q&A: A Primer to Proper SQL Server Development Creating a Reliable and Automated Backup Strategy, Part 2 of 10 Presented by Kimberly L. Tripp, SQLskills.com Q: Can I view a recording of this webcast? Here’s the specific replay link. Q: Where can we get the demo scripts? The demo scripts are in this zip [...]
MSDN Webcast Q&A: A Primer to Proper SQL Server Development, Part 1 of 10
Posted on: August 12, 2005 6:40 am
MSDN Webcast Q&A: A Primer to Proper SQL Server Development Creating a Recoverable Database, Part 1 of 10 Presented by Kimberly L. Tripp, SQLskills.com Q: Can I view a recording of this webcast? Here’s the specific Replay Link: http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032278585&Culture=en-US Q: Where can we get the demo scripts? The demo scripts are in this zip (20050805 [...]
MSDN Webcast Series to start tomorrow!
Posted on: August 4, 2005 3:09 pm
Wow, I've been horribly bad at blogging these days and I owe you a few entries as well… But, good news, I have a new MSDN Webcast series that will help to answer a lot of best practices in database design strategies that can help you achieve better scalability, availability and reliability. All of my [...]
GrokTalks have been posted!
Posted on: June 27, 2005 6:02 pm
Scott Stanfield, a Microsoft Regional Director, had a great idea for Tech*Ed US (well, it was a great idea before he knew exactly how much work was involved :)… He decided that he would get other Microsoft Regional Directors together to discuss (and record) interesting topics for just 10 minutes (of course, some of us [...]
8 Steps to better Transaction Log throughput
Posted on: June 25, 2005 11:33 pm
(Be sure to join our community to get our monthly newsletter with exclusive content, advance notice of classes with discount codes, and other SQL Server goodies!) NOTE/UPDATE: Be sure to read this post as well: Transaction Log VLFs too many or too few? after reading this one. Not only can you have too many small [...]
An interview with theServerside.net has been posted!
Posted on: June 24, 2005 6:09 pm
Many of you in the .NET Community are already familar with theServerSide.NET but many of you in the SQL Server community are not…well, here’s your chance to bridge the gap over to .NET and hear a bunch of great .NET interviews! My interview is more SQL-centric but there are lots of great ones on Development [...]
SQL Server 2005 Tools – Resources to effectively use SQLCMD
Posted on: June 23, 2005 7:17 pm
On Tuesday, June 21, I had the pleasure of assisting on a TechNet webcast delivered by Michiel Wories – a Program Manager from the SQL Server Development Team at Microsoft. My assistance was limited as I really just listened and helped answer some of the questions that came up during the session. In fact, there [...]
You learn something new everyday!
Posted on: June 6, 2005 2:26 pm
I think there are numerous reasons for why I love technology but at the top of the list: learning. It’s amazing to me that not a day goes by where I don’t dig deeper into something or clarify it further. Even learning something trivial, like a new keystroke, can make our work easier to do [...]
So many ways to get your hands on SQL Server 2005
Posted on: April 11, 2005 10:03 pm
For the past couple of years, the early betas of SQL Server 2005 were very limited and even the events were somewhat limited – limited primarily to large customers under NDA, MVPs, RDs, and very dedicated SQL Server specialists. So far, only the SQL Express 2005 Edition made it on microsoft.com for download (click here [...]
SQL Server 2005 Developer Webcast Series Coming Soon to MSDN
Posted on: October 26, 2004 7:43 am
Starting the week of December 6th, Microsoft will launch a series of webcasts focused on SQL Server 2005 Development. During the week of December 6th, Microsoft/MSDN will host 15 webcasts introducing all the new features of SQL Server 2005 for Developers. Then, starting in January, there will be at least one webcast per week focused [...]
When did SQL Server stop putting indexes on Foreign Key columns?
Posted on: October 25, 2004 11:51 pm
The title is a common question I've received in the past and I thought I'd take a few minutes to explain a bit about keys and indexes… This is by no means a lot of detail regarding relational theory, etc. but there are a few things that we should quickly review to make sure that [...]
SQL Server 2005 Partitioned Tables and Indexes
Posted on: September 26, 2004 3:57 pm
While getting ready for the PASS Community Summit in Orlando this week (where I plan to talk about SQL Server 2005 Partitioned Tables/Indexes), I realized we were close but not quite ready to release the post-beta II whitepaper on MSDN. So, in preparation for PASS we decided to post a pre-release of the partitioning paper [...]
SQL Server 2005 – Profiler with Performance Monitor Integration and a bit more with Management Studio
Posted on: September 3, 2004 6:56 am
I began setting up for Profiler and Performance Monitor by first launching Profiler and then launching Performance Monitor within it (there’s an icon for PerfMon second from the Right or you can select Performance Monitor from the Tools Menu). I had already created a Performance Monitor Counter Log so all I needed to do was [...]
MSDN Webcast Q&A: Index Defrag Best Practices – Fragmentation, Deletes and the “Sliding Window” Scenario and it’s the LAST one!
Posted on: August 27, 2004 3:26 am
People always ask me how I keep up to date with SQL Server and how I could possibly know so many intricate details about SQL Server… Well, I test/play/figure it out until it’s obvious (painfully sometimes and sometimes it’s not obvious). So, this blog entry is based on a specific question that made me want [...]
MSDN Webcast Q&A: Index Defrag Best Practices – Fragmentation Questions, Part III
Posted on: August 26, 2004 2:45 am
Q: How do I interpret DBCC SHOWCONTIG WITH ALL_INDEXES on index id = 255 on a table with multiple text columns. I’m looking at a copy of last night’s production after running Maintenance Plan Optimizations. Scan density on table and all indexes is 99 – 100%. Logical Fragmentation is 0% for everything except text column [...]
MSDN Webcast Q&A: Index Defrag Best Practices – Fragmentation Questions, Part II
Posted on: August 23, 2004 5:54 am
Q: Can I automate DBCC DBREINDEX to rebuild all tables on all databases on a server? Actually, yes and no… With stored procedures you’ll have a hard time changing database context without having to use dynamic string execution…. And so this can add a bit of frustration. BUT – it’s your lucky day (and really, [...]
MSDN Webcast Q&A: Index Defrag Best Practices – Fragmentation Questions, Part I
Posted on: July 26, 2004 5:39 pm
Q: Is there another way to determine fragmentation? I don’t want to use DBCC SHOWCONTIG as it locks objects. Well, this is a good question and unfortunately, there really isn’t a way to generate information such as Scan Density or Average Page Density without running DBCC SHOWCONTIG. However, if you decide that you’re only interested [...]
MSDN Webcast Q&A: Index Defrag Best Practices – Index Usage Questions
Posted on: July 26, 2004 5:14 am
Before I launch into the Q&A from this area there are a few other resources with Index Usage Q&A that you should also check out: Review the Q&A from the June 11 Webcast here. Review the Q&A page on SQLskills here. Q: How does SQL server decide what index to use when [...]
MSDN Webcast Q&A: Index Defrag Best Practices – Clustering Key Choice
Posted on: July 24, 2004 5:39 am
Q: What about using uniqueidentifier fields for keys in a clustered index, will this affect performance? They are random numbers so they are not monotonically increasing… Ha, I always want to time how long it’s going to take for me to get this question. Seriously, I don’t think I’ve EVER given an indexing lecture (where [...]
MSDN Webcast Q&A: Index Defrag Best Practices – General Questions
Posted on: July 24, 2004 5:37 am
Q: Does clustering rely on the operating system for performance? Well, I have to admit I am not entirely sure of the question here… But – I think I understand from where it might originate (well, I’ll try). First – and unfortunately (and also somewhat seriously), I think many people lack creativity in choosing a [...]
MSDN Webcast Q&A: Index Defrag Best Practices – Related Resource Questions
Posted on: July 24, 2004 5:35 am
Q: Can I view a recording of this webcast? On demand MSDN webcasts (in general) can be found here. The Index Defragmentation Best Practices session is ready and available here. The prerequisite Indexing Best Practices session (from June 11) is here. Q: Where can we get a print out of the slides? I have [...]
MSDN Webcast Q&A – almost ready….
Posted on: July 21, 2004 5:31 am
NOTE: These have NOT yet been completed and there are still a few questions that need to be answered. I will wrap these up shortly and also break them down into separate blog entries so they’re easier to wade through. I will also post the pdf, the webcast link (when it’s available), the demo scripts [...]
Upcoming MSDN Webcast – Index Defrag Best Practices
Posted on: July 15, 2004 6:06 am
Abstract: In SQL Server, Performance Tuning can be achieved through many avenues: hardware, software, the database and the client. While there are many pathes that yield gains, finding the imporvements that give the greatest gain with the least impact on your current systems is a must. In SQL Server there is no other area in [...]
Stored Procedure Parameters giving you grief in a multi-purpose procedure?
Posted on: June 16, 2004 3:53 pm
Well… the performance ramifications are… not good! Without seeing more of the proc I’d have to suggest that you avoid this like the plague! I think I can convince you with this simple example which shows why it’s better to have multiple procedures and limit the flexibility a bit OR use DSE = dynamic string [...]
MSDN Webcast Archive Available but…
Posted on: June 15, 2004 6:34 pm
OK – I’ve requested that MSDN create a new “support webcast” page that has all of these links added to it (for a more complete archive/reference item) but it’s not yet been completed. For completeness – here are ALL of the resources: The actual archive of the MSDN Webcast is here. The full Q&A in [...]
MSDN Webcast SQL Index Tuning Q&A: Index Management/Maintenance Questions
Posted on: June 12, 2004 10:38 pm
Index Management/Maintenance Questions: Q: Is there a tool or method for monitoring a database for awhile to identify indexes that are rarely or never used – that should be considered for removing? I think I mentioned this one late in the presentation but it certainly warrants an answer. Unfortunately, the answer is both yes and [...]
MSDN Webcast SQL Index Tuning Q&A: Index Creation Questions
Posted on: June 12, 2004 10:30 pm
Index Creation Questions: Q: In an OLTP server do clustered indexes create a negative performance impact to the constant inserts and updates? The wrong clustered index can for sure… In most environments, having the right clustered index (an index on an ever-increasing key) will be better than a heap (a table without a clustered index) [...]
MSDN Webcast SQL Index Tuning Q&A: General Questions
Posted on: June 12, 2004 10:24 pm
General Questions: Q: If you want to know the value of the key prior to your insert statement, how can you use identity? You could insert a “place-holder” row (i.e. a row that uses only defaults and/or just basic information so that you can get the @@identity of the row) and then come back later [...]
MSDN Webcast SQL Index Tuning Q&A: Tools
Posted on: June 12, 2004 10:18 pm
Tools Questions: Q: Isn’t there some issue with profiler where it does not recognize DBName but only the DBID? Well, this is a good one – and a frustrating one as well. It is true that Profiler doesn’t always generate a data column value for every type of event. So – if you setup filters [...]
MSDN Webcast SQL Index Tuning Q&A: Related Resources
Posted on: June 12, 2004 10:15 pm
Related Resources: Q: Can I view a recording of this webcast? It should be available on www.microsoft.com/usa/webcasts/ondemand shortly. Q: Where can we get the powerpoint file? The powerpoint will be available on the MSDN webcast resource page. I will post the exact link here and on SQLskills.com as soon as the final link is [...]
