Blogs

May 2009 - Posts

• DBADiagnostics – My DBA Database

  A couple years ago I started consolidating all of my DBA scripts into a portable DBA database that I could use for diagnostics (hence the silly name) and for maintenance scripts. To help me to continue to be inspired to update the database and to get Read More... Posted Friday, May 29, 2009 8:00 AM by Jason | 0 Comments Filed under: SQL 2005, SQL 2008, SQLServerSyndication, DBADiagnostics

• Free Hyper-V Training

  I was reading the high-availability blog on MSDN today and found a post with some free training mentioned within it.  Here are the details from the blog: Microsoft is offering some free training for Hyper-V which includes modules on HA and Failover Read More... Posted Wednesday, May 27, 2009 1:11 AM by Jason | 1 Comments Filed under: Certification

• DreamSpark Certification Vouchers (aka Free Tests)

  I was reading Glenn Berry’s blog and found out about an opportunity for free Microsoft Exam vouchers .  This is a great deal that is part of Microsoft’s DreamSpark program.  Through this program, students at accredited academic institutions Read More... Posted Friday, May 22, 2009 5:13 PM by Jason | 0 Comments Filed under: Certification

• Are You Down With The BPA?

  Yesterday I talked about installing the Best Practices Analyzer 2005 (BPA) for a client that I was working with.  After some initial installation issues, I was ready to check out their SQL Server environment. While the tool was running, I started Read More... Posted Thursday, May 21, 2009 1:04 PM by Jason | 0 Comments Filed under: SQL 2005, SQLServerSyndication, Tools and Tips

• BPA Installs But Doesn’t Work

  I was hoping to have a case of the Mondays the other day.  Whenever one hopes for “the Mondays”, Monday will always deliver.  I was using a new PC at a client and installing some tools for an assessment that I was working on. After some download Read More... Posted Wednesday, May 20, 2009 9:00 AM by Jason | 0 Comments Filed under: SQL 2005, SQLServerSyndication, Tools and Tips

• SQL Load Generator

  This project has been on CodePlex for a while, but I thought I would give it a plug.  It’s a really good way to generate a load against a SQL Server without a lot of effort.  I’ve used it quite a number of times with presentations and use it Read More... Posted Tuesday, May 19, 2009 11:30 AM by Jason | 0 Comments Filed under: Tools and Tips

• May PASSMN Meeting Today

  It probably won’t be as interesting as Old School, but come out this afternoon if you are in the Twin Cities for the PASSMN meeting you could attend.  It starts at 3:00 PM and we meet at 2:30 PM for snacks and socializing.  And by snacks, I Read More... Posted Tuesday, May 19, 2009 8:30 AM by Jason | 0 Comments Filed under: MNSSUG, SQLServerSyndication, PASS

• Your 2nd Chance End June 30

  I’ve mentioned the 2nd Chance Certification offer that Microsoft provides in the past.  And if you’ve tuned in at the PASS MN meetings, I’ve thrown the plug out there a few times. 2nd Chance offers test takers the opportunity to take a run at an Read More... Posted Monday, May 18, 2009 10:26 AM by Jason | 0 Comments Filed under: Certification, SQLServerSyndication

• May PASSMN Meeting Tomorrow

  If you are still trying to make plans for tomorrow afternoon… there is a PASSMN meeting you could attend.  This month we’ll be hearing about SSIS – Team Development, Deployment and Configuration & Securing and Troubleshooting Service Broker .  Read More... Posted Monday, May 18, 2009 8:30 AM by Jason | 0 Comments Filed under: MNSSUG, SQLServerSyndication, PASS

• SQL Server 2008 R2

  The final answer has mostly arrived, the long awaited projects “Madison” and “Kilimanjaro” are getting near to CTP stage and will be available soon as SQL Server 2008 R2 CTP.  This was announced earlier today at TechEd; which also concided with the Read More... Posted Monday, May 11, 2009 10:00 PM by Jason | 0 Comments Filed under: SQL 2008, SQLServerSyndication

• From h4ppyd4y to StrateSQL

  I changed my twitter name from h4ppyd4y to StrateSQL earlier this week.  This shouldn’t have made much of a difference to people that are following me since twitter now allows for name changes without having to create a new account.  Very cool! Read More... Posted Friday, May 08, 2009 12:00 PM by Jason | 0 Comments

• More Parallelism

  It’s quite often at clients that I spend time working on issues revolving around parallelism.  In fact, just this week it’s been the single most irritating performance problem that I’ve had to deal with.  If you aren’t up to snuff on parallelism Read More... Posted Friday, May 08, 2009 9:15 AM by Jason | 0 Comments Filed under: SQL 2005, SQL 2008, Performance Tuning, SQLServerSyndication, Parallelism

• I Didn’t Receive My Subscription

  Ever have a Reporting Services (SSRS) subscription that didn’t fire off as you thought it should? Or was SQL Agent offline when subscriptions should have been fired? Or did you just create a subscription and want to find out if it’s been configured properly? Read More... Posted Thursday, May 07, 2009 9:25 AM by Jason | 0 Comments Filed under: SQL RS, SQL 2005, SQL 2008, SQLServerSyndication

• May PASSMN Meeting (05/19/2009)

  The topics and speakers for this months PASSMN meeting have been announced… SSIS – Team Development, Deployment and Configuration & Securing and Troubleshooting Service Broker May 19, 2009 3:00 PM - 5:15 PM SSIS – Team Development, Deployment and Read More... Posted Thursday, May 07, 2009 9:16 AM by Jason | 0 Comments Filed under: SSIS, MNSSUG, SQLServerSyndication, PASS

• Finding Objects In Schema

  A while back I was asked to identify schemas that didn’t have any objects.  Since it was a useful query, I thought I’d share it. SELECT s.name as schema_name ,COALESCE(o.type_desc, '--NO ITEMS--') as type_desc ,NULLIF(COUNT(DISTINCT o.name),0) as Read More... Posted Thursday, May 07, 2009 1:14 AM by Jason | 0 Comments Filed under: SQL 2005, SQL 2008, SQL Tips

• Querying for Parallelism

  While working on some parallelism issues today I started using the query that detects whether there are queries currently running utilizing parallelism.  It’s the same query that can be found in the white paper Troubleshooting Performance Problems Read More... Posted Wednesday, May 06, 2009 1:04 AM by Jason | 0 Comments Filed under: DM Views, SQL 2005, SQL 2008, Performance Tuning, SQLServerSyndication, SQL Tips

• Please Update Your RSS Subscription

  To make things easier on both you and myself, please update your RSS feed to http://feeds2.feedburner.com/StrateSql .  In the next month or two I’m hoping to get an upgrade to both of the blog sites that I upload to and the old rss feeds will most Read More... Posted Wednesday, May 06, 2009 12:06 AM by Jason | 0 Comments

• Snapshots of Index Contention

  Occasionally, I need to determine where index hotspots are located within databases.  To do this, I use the DMV sys.dm_db_index_operational_stats .  I’ve talked about this DMV before while I was going through the index analysis blogs posts .  Read More... Posted Tuesday, May 05, 2009 1:52 AM by Jason | 0 Comments Filed under: DM Views, SQL 2005, SQL 2008, Performance Tuning, SQLServerSyndication, SQL Tips

• Sorting Project Files in SSMS

  Ever need to sort your project files for SSMS and SSIS?  I did.  So in case anyone could use this… and since I needed to use it again tonight… http://www.sqldbatips.com/showarticle.asp?ID=78&reason=0 A good tool and easy to use. Read More... Posted Monday, May 04, 2009 8:55 AM by Jason | 0 Comments Filed under: SQL 2005, SQL 2008, Tpis & Tricks, SQL Tips