IT SPACE: SQL

New articles on the TechNet sites - Marcin Guzowski

Wed, 21 Nov 2007 14:28:24 GMT

A firend of mine - Marcin Guzowski - has just published a veri interested article on TechNet site.

On this article he explains the log file in details.IMO every DBA should know what is going on with the file, how important it is, why having more than one file gives you nothing...

You can find the article there:

http://www.microsoft.com/poland/technet/article/art0091_01.mspx

http://www.microsoft.com/poland/technet/article/art0091_02.mspx

New, great technical blog

Sun, 28 Oct 2007 22:08:14 GMT

Hello folks!

Pawel Potasinski has moved his T-SQL & SQL Server knowledge to http://zine.net.pl/blogs/sqlgeek/. This will be pure technical as I think. Great :) move.

Also, his old blog will be in the place where it is now, but the content will be more private.

I stay here...

Polish SQL Server User Group

Mon, 24 Sep 2007 21:42:47 GMT

I would like to introduce Polish SQL Server Users Group (PLSSUG) - a place where anybody who likes a SQL Server topics & news can find something really exciting!!!!

Follow that link

www.plssug.org.pl

Many greats to Pawel Potasinski for creating that place!!!

Lost and found - query text

Thu, 19 Jul 2007 15:03:32 GMT

Today I have accidentally lost a stored procedure. I have created it today, run several times and.. dropped.

Then I realized I can find the procedure's text using data management views and functions:

SELECT creation_time

,last_execution_time

,text

FROM sys.dm_exec_query_stats QS

CROSS APPLY sys.dm_exec_sql_text (QS. sql_handle)

WHERE creation_time >'20070719'

ORDER BY creation_time desc

Isn't it easy?

Blackbox - SQL trace

Fri, 06 Jul 2007 22:17:49 GMT

SQL Server has a 'black-box' trace, similar to an aircraft flight-recorder.

It's an internal trace that has the last 5MB of various trace events and it's dumped to a file when SQL Server crashes. This can be really useful if you're troubleshooting an issue that causing SQL Server to crash.

Here is how it works. First declare a trace handle:

DECLARE @traceid INT;

Now, let's create a trace:

EXEC sp_trace_create @traceid OUTPUT, @options = 8;

SELECT @traceid AS [Trace Id];

On my system the trace ID returned is 2.

The magic number here is the 8 - it specifies that the trace is a black-box (see BOL for refrence).

Now, let's see what is the output:

SELECT * FROM fn_trace_getinfo (2);

traceid property value

2 1 8

2 2 \\?\C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.1\MSSQL\DATA\blackbox.trc

2 3 5

2 4 NULL

2 5 0

The various properties are:

1: the trace options. 8 means its a black-box trace.
2: the filename of the trace file. This isn't configurable for a black-box trace.
3: the maximum size of the file in MB. This also isn't configurable for a black-box trace.
4: the stop time for the trace. NULL means the trace won't stop until its manually turned off.
5: the current trace status. 0 is off, 1 is on.
Notice that the trace status is 0, which means that the trace hasn't been started - so we need to start it manually using:

EXEC sp_trace_setstatus @traceid = 2, @status = 1;

Now, let's see how to check trace data:

SELECT * FROM fn_trace_gettable ('C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.1\MSSQL\DATA\blackbox_1.trc',DEFAULT);

OK, looks good, but you have to remember that when you restart you SQL Server the trace will not start automatically, you have to put this proceddure to the server start-up procedures.

Performance dashboard

Thu, 05 Jul 2007 10:27:14 GMT

The SQL Server 2005 Performance Dashboard Reports are Reporting Services report files designed to be used with the Custom Reports feature introduced in the SQL Server 2005 SP2 release of SQL Server Management Studio. The reports allow a database administrator to quickly identify whether there is a current bottleneck on their system, and if a bottleneck is present, capture additional diagnostic data that may be necessary to resolve the problem. For example, if the system is experiencing waits for disk IO the dashboard allows the user to quickly see which sessions are performing the most IO, what query is running on each session and the query plan for each statement.

Common performance problems that the dashboard reports may help to resolve include:
- CPU bottlenecks (and what queries are consuming the most CPU)
- IO bottlenecks (and what queries are performing the most IO).
- Index recommendations generated by the query optimizer (missing indexes)
- Blocking
- Latch contention

The information captured in the reports is retrieved from SQL Server's dynamic management views. There is no additional tracing or data capture required, which means the information is always available and this is a very inexpensive means of monitoring your server.

Reporting Services is not required to be installed to use the Performance Dashboard Reports.

Check out these reports and experiment with them to troubleshoot your performance problems. You can find the reports at:

SQL Server 2005 Performance Dashboard Reports

New BOL - May 2007

Fri, 29 Jun 2007 11:14:35 GMT

The May 2007 release of Books Online is available on MSDN and on the
download site. This is a very targeted update to BOL and is limited to
correcting technical inaccuracies in a handful of topics that describe the
protection provided when using the WITH ENCRYPTION option. That is, these
topics now clearly state you're only getting obfuscation, not encryption
when using this clause. The updated topics are listed in the topic New and
Updated Books Online Topics.

Also released on MSDN today is the Feb 2007 version of BOL in all 9 localized languages.

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/de-de/library/ms130214.aspx German

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/fr-fr/library/ms130214.aspx French

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/es-es/library/ms130214.aspx Spanish

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/it-it/library/ms1301214.aspx Italian

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/ja-jap/library/ms1301214.aspx Japanese

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/ko-kr/library/ms1301214.aspx Korean

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/ru-ru/library/ms1301214.aspx Russian

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/zh-cn/library/ms1301214.aspx Chinese Simplified

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/zh-tw/library/ms1301214.aspx Chinese Traditional

New article on Technet

Wed, 11 Apr 2007 11:39:45 GMT

You can find another great article on Polish Technet site - about SQLWB - http://www.microsoft.com/poland/technet/article/art0057_01.mspx.

This knowledge is crucial for all DBA's.! It's authored by Pawel Potasinski.

If you start your journey with T-SQL ...

Tue, 27 Feb 2007 22:35:08 GMT

Follow that link to begin - http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb264565.aspx

Nice article about undocumented DBCC commands

Mon, 26 Feb 2007 12:44:49 GMT

I have found a very nice article about undocumented DBCC commands. This has been written by the supervisor of the www.wss.pl website - SQL Server department - Pawel Potasinski.

http://www.microsoft.com/poland/technet/article/art0043_01.mspx

IMO, it could be extremelly helpful for Polish DBA's