At #SQLbits, Jamie Thomson (Blog – Twitter) demoed the following SSIS add-ins:
Kimball SDC
Trace File Source
XMLify
File Watcher
Dynamic Data Flow
Rank Transform
Normaliser
Twitter
Compression
XMLify
Jamie find this useful when parsing error output from other SSIS steps, which often have several result sets with different columns. XMLify dumps all of the data into a single XML file for easier error [...]
At #SQLbits, Simon Sabin (Blog – Twitter) talked about car crash queries: queries that suddenly have bad performance out of nowhere, yet if you copy/paste them into SQL Server Management Studio, they run quickly. The culprit is often parameter sniffing: the engine looks at the query and builds a plan, but if the parameters in [...]
At #SQLBits, I was quite excited to attend this session because of the presenter. Christian Bolton of COEO (Blog – Twitter) was the head author on our upcoming book SQL Server 2008 Internals and Troubleshooting, and he’s one of the only 8 Microsoft Certified Masters on SQL Server that work outside of Microsoft.
Physical vs Virtual [...]
At SQLBits, MVP Jasper Smith of SQLDBATips.com held a session on what’s newin SQL Server 2008 R2 for database administrators.
Application and Multi-Server Management
To illustrate the problem with server sprawl, Jasper gave some quick stats about a big enterprise. Microsoft IT has around 5,000 SQL Server instances with 100,000 databases, averaging CPU utilization under 10%.
To help [...]
At SQLbits, Donald Farmer (@DonaldDotFarmer) talked about IT in terms of data, and did it with an interesting picture story from the early 20th century. Data today isn’t all that different from the messy desktops and clean library card catalogs of the last century.
IT professionals still break into the same 3 roles that existed a [...]
There’s two big SQL Server training events coming up in Europe, and I want to make sure we get the word out for the community.
I specifically call these training events because that’s what they are: you’re going to learn more about database servers and how they work. I believe that the fastest way to become [...]
Pop quiz: should you be worried if your SQL Server’s page life expectancy is averaging 214? There’s only one correct answer: it depends.
Performance tuning is all about finding the RIGHT bottleneck, focusing on it, and fixing it to the application owner’s satisfaction. Learn what happens if you don’t do it right.
Read More »Erika’s friends call her “Fancy Feast” because she only likes the best things in life. She’s got champagne tastes, but we can’t afford to buy the best of everything. I recently picked up a coffee table from Ikea, and it got me thinking about SQL Azure.
In a perfect world, I’d have on-premise SQL Server for every database. I’d use cutting-edge storage and cluster everything. But this isn’t a perfect world…
Read More »I get a lot of questions from people who want to get a better job. They want to know if certification, training, or branching out will help them get the job of their dreams. These things just aren’t the real answer.
The answer is simple: the Buddy System. Learn why.
Read More »In high school, I threw a huge party in Grandma’s house. It had long-lasting implications – among other things, I got disinherited.
Learn why SQL Server data compression has a lot in common with me after that Jungle Juice bash.
Read More »When my Grandpa Ozar wanted to find out if his 10 megabyte 5.25″ hard drive was responding fast enough to handle his database loads, he monitored the Perfmon counter Physical Disk: Disk Queue Length.
Things have changed since Grandpa’s time, though, and now it’s time to learn a new performance tuning trick – SQL Server waits.
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