SQL Feeds

Excellent new books for SQL Server professionals

KKline — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 15:53:00 GMT

Hello from Vancouver, BC! I'm enjoying the proceedings at the annual DevTeach conference and looking forward to some great sessions today. I was recently given the privilege to tech review a new book put out by Manning Publications, written by Rod Colledge, called SQL Server 2008 Administration in Action. I liked the book so much that I was thrilled to be given the chance to write the forward for the book. Let me assure you that this admin book is unlike any other admin book fo

The Tipping Point Query Answers

kimberly.nospam@nospam.sqlskills.com (kltripp) — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 21:29:00 GMT

OK, I'll definitely take a beating from all of you for having gone so long between my survey posts and now. I won't even go into the details but between some crazy work schedules, multiple sinus problems and even migraines... well, I've been a bit behind. Let's just say that April/May were rough at best. I'm feeling better and well, now I'm trying to catch up. I had really gotten the blogging bug in March but I completely lost it in April. But, this tipping point series

SQLCMD Execution Order

Andrew Kelly — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 23:53:15 GMT

I find that many people don’t realize since SQL Server 2005 that you have the ability to execute SQLCMD commands or scripts directly in the Query Editor but it can come in handy at times. Even I don’t use it that as much as I should and I am aware of it:). One of the things I find it most useful for is during demos at presentations when I want to invoke an OS level command without having to use xp_cmdshell or opening a DOS window. For instance once you have enabled SQLCMD mode in the

SQL Server blocked access to procedure 'dbo.sp_sqlagent_get_startup_info' of component 'Agent XPs'

Jack Vamvas — Wed, 27 May 2009 05:03:11 GMT

SQL Server blocked access to procedure 'dbo.sp_sqlagent_get_startup_info' of component 'Agent XPs' because this component is turned off as part of the security configuration for this server. A system administrator can enable the use of 'Agent XPs' by using sp_configure. For...

Fast ordered delete

LuborK — Thu, 21 May 2009 00:54:00 GMT

We have a visit from MySpace database team in our lab this week. I have used this opportunity and asked Kevin Stephenson, MySpace’s Senior Database Developer, about “pain points” he encounters while doing his everyday job supporting SQL Server. He brought up a problem of efficient ordered delete. He needs to delete large portions of older custom log entries periodically and he needs to delete them in certain order. He also knows that it is efficient to break huge update operations into more smal

Why did the size of my indexes expand when I rebuilt my indexes?

mssqlisv — Mon, 18 May 2009 17:57:00 GMT

Recently I worked with a partner who was seeing some interesting behavior. Upon rebuilding their indexes they noticed that the total space used by all indexes increased significantly. The table has no clustered index but does have a total of nine non-clustered indexes. The sequence of events is as follows: · Step 1: Approximately 12 million rows are inserted into an existing table via some batch loading of the data.

MySQL forking heats up, but not yet to the benefit of non-GPLed storage engine vendors

Curt Monash — Fri, 15 May 2009 08:01:53 GMT

Last month, I wrote “This is a REALLY good time to actively strengthen the MySQL forkers,” largely on behalf of closed-source/dual-source MySQL storage engine vendors such as Infobright, Kickfire, Calpont, Tokutek, or ScaleDB. Yesterday, two of my three candidates to lead the effort — namely Monty Widenius/MariaDB/Monty Program AB and Percona — came together to [...]

Are We There Yet, Mom?

KKline — Wed, 13 May 2009 17:04:00 GMT

You've probably heard by now that Microsoft just announced at TechEd 2009 the next release of SQL Server, called SQL Server 2008 R2, will have a focused set of features around BI self-service and some enhancements in multi-server management. SQLMag has a nice summary here: http://www.sqlmag.com/Article/ArticleID/102089/102089.html. These features implement some very nice increments in functionality across the board, while continuing to advance SQL Server's lead in the BI space. Howev

Assigning surrogate keys to early arriving facts using Integration Services

tkejser — Wed, 13 May 2009 14:26:00 GMT

In data warehouses, it is quite common that fact records arrive with a source system key that has not yet been loaded in the dimension tables. This phenomena is known as “late arriving dimensions” or “early arriving facts” in Kimball terminology. When you see a fact record that cannot be resolved to a dimension surrogate key, the typical solution is this: Create a dummy member in the dimension table using the source system key Assign a surrogate key to this dummy member Use the newly create s

SSMS Error possibly related to database compatibility mode

kimberly.nospam@nospam.sqlskills.com (kltripp) — Thu, 07 May 2009 09:55:00 GMT

I've seen (and heard of a few other cases where people received) the following error: Index (zero based) must be greater than or equal to zero and less than the size of the argument list. And, the problem (when I got this error) was the compatibility mode of the database I was in didn't support what was being attempted. In SQL Server 2005, the reports used to generate an "Incorrect syntax near '('." error. For what I was trying to do (execute/access some of