IT SPACE: SQL magazine www.sqlmag.com

SQL MAGAZINE - the September 2007 issue

Wed, 22 Aug 2007 21:56:36 GMT

There are so many interesting articles, as usual:

1) Kick a User Out of a Database in Just 2 Steps by Omri Bahat

Developers, quality assurance (QA) engineers, non-administrators, and other database users sometimes execute code that affects services and applications in production, not realizing the code's associated performance implications. Consequently, you must kick these users out of the database and terminate their SQL Server process activity

2) Get Connected with LINQ by Michael Otey

Language-Integrated Query (LINQ) is Microsoft's latest data-access technology and is scheduled to be included in the upcoming Visual Studio 2008 (code-named Orcas) release. Microsoft's goal with LINQ is to provide developers with a unified and tightly bound database development experience, which doesn't exist in today's development environments. LINQ is the long-awaited wave of the future, and its benefits definitely outweigh its drawbacks.

3) Keep Track of Your Backups by Readers

4) New Features in SQL Server 2008 by Michael Otey

The release of SQL Server 2008, code-named Katmai, is around the corner. Scheduled for 2008, it promises to add several important features to Microsoft's premier database server. Some of these features Microsoft didn't have time to put in the SQL Server 2005 release, while others are new.

5) Getting to Know Virtual File Stats by Andrew Kelly

Learn what to monitor, how to monitor, and how to interpret the results of DMV management

What's new in the April' 07

Tue, 10 Apr 2007 15:20:37 GMT

Don't Be Afraid of BLOBs and CLOBs by Joel Martinez.

Manipulating binary large objects (BLOBs) and character large objects (CLOBs) has always been difficult in SQL Server. Fortunately, SQL Server 2005 provides three new data types for large object (LOB) storage. With these new data types, you can easily manipulate BLOBs and CLOBs, especially when you use Common Language Runtime (CLR) procedures and functions. With the compression algorithms in Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0, you can create CLR functions that seamlessly compress and decompress LOBs with minimal performance impact. Before I show you how to do so, let me introduce you to the three new data types that make this compression and decompression possible.

Excel 2007's Powerful PivotTables by Tyler Chessman.

In the Microsoft business intelligence (BI) platform, the SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) 2005 OLAP engine is the component of choice for summarizing and presenting vast amounts of data. On the desktop, though, Microsoft Excel is typically the tool of choice for analyzing, organizing, and making sense of data. It's no surprise, then, that most OLAP tools offer some type of integration with Excel. The built in PivotTable (and PivotChart) reports in Excel have traditionally provided one way of browsing OLAP cubes—albeit with certain restrictions and missing functionality.

Moving Cubes from Analysis Services 2000 to 2005 by Erin Welker

SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services (SSAS) provides many compelling reasons for upgrading from SSAS 2000. Among the many enhancements, SSAS 2005 provides more flexible analysis than SSAS 2000 by exposing most dimension attributes as analytical objects. But executing on the decision to upgrade comes with some challenges. Should you use SQL Server 2005's built-in tools to migrate your SSAS 2000 cubes? Or, with all the architectural changes in SSAS 2005, should you rebuild the cubes from scratch? Both methods have pros and cons, and your decision will likely depend on your environment.

What's in the March'07 issue

Thu, 01 Mar 2007 23:07:53 GMT

March issue - very intersting - as allways!!!

SQLdiag - A monitoring and troubleshooting tool offers some great undocumented perks - an article by Kevin Kline.

Following Microsoft:

BENEFITS: Collects data that you can use to monitor your servers over time or troubleshoot specific problems.
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS: Using the console application, you can run SQLdiag from a client (with or without SQL Server) or from the SQL Server you want to monitor. SQLdiag can run as a service (when you install it with the /R switch).
COMMENTS: Microsoft offers the following comments and recommendations:

Install SQLdiag directly on the server you're monitoring to reduce network latency and simplify tracing.
SQL Server 2005 and 2000 versions of the tool are not interchangeable. They have different command-line switches that you can't directly migrate from one version to the other.
When running SQLdiag as a service, you can control the service with the PSSDiag.exe command (pssdiag.exe start, pssdiag.exe stop, pssdiag.exe stop_abort for immediate stop). You can also control the tool with the Windows Service Control Manager, but you won't have the stop_abort function.

HOW TO GET IT: SQLdiag is included in the SQL Server 2005 toolkit but not in the SQL Server 2000 toolkit. You can read full details about using it at http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms162833.aspx.

The 3 Principles of Database Tuning - posted by Brian Moran

- performance problems are always caused by the application

- you don't have time to fix everything; fix what hurts the most!

- fix core, root problems not symptoms

Automated dateTime conversions by Itzik Ben-Gan

Uncovering missing indexes by Kalen Delaney