• [How to find out what procedure is doing a data modification]
  • Very simple, yet effective approach to determine what RPC call is altering your data. This is a read it once, you get the ah-ha why didn’t I think of that moment and you wont need to reference it again!
• [Temporary procedures : T-SQL]
  • We all know about temporary tables, but you can do that for stored procedures as well. Neat if you have a need for it
• [Conor vs. FOREIGN KEY join elimination]
  • Explains a bit of the history why a single column foreign key performs better than a multi-column FK. Its the old 80:20 rule at work, or probably more accurately 99.9:0.1 rule
• [SSRS -Report execution failed. Solution: SSPI=NTLM]
  • Seems downgrading to NTLM solves some integrated security issues if Kerberos is not playing nicely. Handy to know.
• [Take advantage of Table Variables NOT being transactional]
  • Ever needed to store state in a transaction that you didnt want to be rolled back? Think log tables! Read and learn
• [SQL SERVER – Fragmentation, Detection and how to resolve it]
  • Nice overview of fragmentation, and shows how to use DMV’s rather than the old school SQL 2000 DBCC approaches
• [CodePlex: SYS2 DMVs]
  • Hopefully this will serve as a good collection point – its very ‘young’ at the moment, but I would like it to live!
• [Locking improvements in SQL 2008 R2]
  • Handy to know about, unfortunately R2 has a price hike associated with it
• [Find the most expensive operations in Execution plans]
  • Handy way to take the XML plan and process it in a way to get a tabular list of the most expensive queries back. Very nice.

I suspect everyone who has dealt with scalar UDF functions in production environments are already VERY aware of the performance sucking capability they can have on your nice server. Here are some nice comments if you are not painfully aware:

• [Do Scalar UDFs give SQL Server a Bad Name?]
• [UDF Overhead – A simple example]

Gareth

• [What's New in SQL Server 2008 R2 Editions]
  • Biggest first – Price increase! To say I’m disappointed is an understatement in this area. Specifically for developers  already have to support 2005 & 2008. Now they have to deal with R2, and persuade their customers to move to R2 if they want certain features.
  • MDS – Master Data Services – more on this one later. Pretty cool
  • Parallel Data Warehouse release
    • The DATAllegro purchase is now seeing the light as a Microsoft product!
    • Support of very large datasets (100Tb-1Pb). This is definitely something I would like to play with, but at $57,496 per processor…
  • Standard now has backup compression – but with the price tag…
• [SQL Server 2008 R2 November CTP – What’s New In Reporting Services?]
  • Report Builder 3.0 is available! Woohoo!
  • Enhanced sharepoint integration
  • Aggregates of aggregates
  • New Data Visualization Report Items
• [Using Filtered Statistics with Partitioned Tables]
  • Learn to appreciate filtered statistics!
• [MDS (Master Data Services) is x64 Only]
  • I totally get this, but this is the tipping point for me to repave my machines
  • With this requiring x64 and many new products requiring Windows 2008, Windows 7 or Vista it seems now is the time to move up.
• [MSSQL End of service dates for Service packs]
  • Support for SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 2 (SP2)  will end on January 12, 2010
  • Support for SQL Server 2008 RTM will end on April 13, 2010

More to come!

Gareth

[http://www.codersrevolution.com/index.cfm/2009/10/21/Sequoia-Voting-System-Witch-Hunt-err-Study-Project"]

The learning we can take away from this is if you don’t adequately cleanse then you can expect the data to become available! While its an interesting concept they apparently tried (and not too successfully) to do. The best way to clean a database is to create a new one and just copy in the data you want exposed. Don’t trust the handy dandy DROP/DELTE

If they wanted to expose/publish the 88 tables, then they should have created a new DB, copied in the tables and released it. Anything less than that you have to be VERY careful! And for the more security conscious it would be created on a recently wiped drive on a recently rebooted computer!

Definitely pretty cool stuff. Now to see how well it performs and verify it supports all the nice SQ L stuff  (sparse columns, PIVOT, stored procedures etc).

This will certainly be hyped by Microsoft over the coming weeks, and we will be trying it out! Much more to come on this topic,

Gareth

• Cumulative Update #3 for SQL Server 2008 SP1 (Build 10.00.2723)
• Cumulative Update #6 for SQL Server 2008 RTM

Things that stand out are:

• [970399]  FIX: The MAXDOP option for a running query or the max degree of parallelism option for the sp_configure stored procedure does not work in SQL Server 2008
• [969844] FIX: You receive inconsistent results when you run index-related DMVs to return statistical information about missing indexes in SQL Server 2005 or in SQL Server 2008
• [969997] FIX: You receive an incorrect result when you query data from a linked server that is created by using an index OLE DB provider in SQL Server 2005 or in SQL Server 2008
• [970507] FIX: Error message in SQL Server 2008 when you run an INSERT SELECT statement on a table: “Violation of PRIMARY KEY constraint ‘<PrimaryKey>’. Cannot insert duplicate key in object ‘<TableName>’”
• [971064] FIX: Quotation marks are rendered incorrectly when you export a SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services report to a .csv file

Obviously you need to really read to understand if you have seen any of the problems the fixes address to be fully aware – and definitely don’t apply unless you need a fix!

Gareth

Microsoft is updating the branding for SQL Services and SQL Data Services. Effective immediately, SQL Services will be called Microsoft SQL Azure, and SQL Data Services will be Microsoft SQL Azure Database.

There will be more news and updates related to our Software + Services strategy next week at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans. For those of you not attending in person, all the news and information can be found at: http://www.digitalwpc.com/ . Check back often starting next Monday, July 13, for daily updates.

More about TSQL Support in SQL Data Services can be found here. Another announcement of this can be found at “SQL Azure – Same great platform, just a better aligned name”

Apparently its a ‘Cloudy’ week

Gareth

UPDATE 2009-06-29: It seems there are similar issues with SQL2005 as well, have a look SQL Server version has a known compatibility issues with Windows 7 RC. This warning is genuine and applies to all SQL Server editions, including all Express editions.

Gareth

The full list of problems resolved in this CU can be found http://support.microsoft.com/kb/970279/en-us

Also for those running of SQL 2005 SP2 CU#14 has been released here

Gareth