SQL Server Archives - Page 40 of 41 - Brent Ozar Unlimited®

The Chicago-Mac Sailboat Race

July 1, 2009

Since 1898, sailors have gathered at the Chicago Yacht Club each summer to race their sailboats up Lake Michigan to the Mackinac (pronounced mackinaw) Island. The 333 mile course from Navy Pier to the lighthouse makes it the longest annual freshwater sailing race in the world.

The sailboats race around the clock for days as the crew work in shifts, sailing for a few hours and then sleeping for a few. Night sailing, storms, and quiet windless calms make this a memorable experience.

How to Import the StackOverflow XML into SQL Server

June 8, 2009

UPDATE 2013: This code is no longer available. The size of the StackOverflow export has grown beyond what you can import with this method.

Want to play around with the StackOverflow database export? Here's how to import the XML files into SQL Server, and some notes about the tables and data schema.
Script to Import StackOverflow XML to SQL Server
This T-SQL script will create six stored procedures:

SAN Multipathing Part 2: What Multipathing Does

May 18, 2009

Storage Area Networks (SANs) can do multipathing, but what does that really mean? I explain the differences between failover and performance load balancing, and talk about why active/active multipathing isn't what it seems.

SAN Multipathing Part 1: What are Paths?

May 17, 2009

In the beginning, God made drives directly attached to our computers. Over time, man decided to get jiggy with it and use Storage Area Networks. Learn why pathing is so important to these two systems.

Getting the most recent record

April 14, 2009

Sounds simple, right? Just grab the max. But what if you want to use a single T-SQL operation to fetch the most recent record and some of its attributes? StorminSpank asked: @BrentO SQL Question. 4 columns, ID, Date, Info1, Info2. ID has multiple entries. Want Latest Date for Distinct ID, but also info1 and 2.…

How to Pick Blog & Presentation Topics

April 3, 2009

Stumped about what to write about? Not sure what to talk about to your local user group?

I bet you're focusing on the presentations you would ATTEND, instead of the presentations you would GIVE.

Index Fragmentation Findings: Part 2, Size Matters

February 10, 2009

Last week, I blogged about the basics of SQL Server index fragmentation: why it happens, how to fix it, and how often people are fixing it. I left you with a cliffhanger: it seemed that the frequency of defrag jobs didn't appear to affect fragmentation levels:

Databases with no index defragmentation were an average of 5% fragmented
Monthly - 17% fragmented
Weekly - 3% fragmented
Daily - 6% fragmented

Index Fragmentation Findings: Part 1, The Basics

February 6, 2009

We asked the community for index fragmentation information for data mining purposes, and the results are in - and interesting. Over the next couple of weeks, I'll talk about some of the results we found in the field.

What Is SQL Server Fragmentation?

Amazon Web Services Explained

January 16, 2009

When I talk to database administrators, I hear a lot of questions like: What is Amazon S3? What is Mechanical Turk? How do these things matter to a real business? I've got a story I like to tell around how to use these services, but for a couple of years I've held back from posting…

GTD for my coworkers

October 6, 2008

Dear Coworker,

Hi. I work differently than other people you may have worked with. I wanna take a minute to bring you up to speed on how I do it, and what this might mean for you.

SQLIO Tutorial: How to Test Disk Performance

September 23, 2008

Storage is a black box, right? The SAN admins ask how much storage space you need, you tell them, and then they give it to you. They don't tell you how fast (or slow) it is, they don't know whether it meets your needs, and they probably don't know where the bottlenecks are. It's time…

Steel Cage Blogmatch: How to Configure a SAN

September 8, 2008

Jason Massie and Brent Ozar work with SQL Server for a living and write blogs for fun, but that’s where the similarities end. Jason’s a fan of shared storage SANs: putting SQL Server data and logs on the same set of physical hard drives. Brent’s a cheerleader for dedicated configurations where the arrays are separated…

SQL Server 2008’s new Central Management Server

August 22, 2008

Got more than one DBA? Want to make your life easier? You might want to configure a Central Management Server.

This is useful for fast-changing shops where there's a lot of servers added and removed. At my last company, we had a hard enough time telling everybody when we'd finished adding a new server, or what the new server's name was, or when we didn't need to look at a server anymore.

SQL Server on a SAN: Dedicated or Shared Drives?

August 19, 2008

A reader wrote in and asked: We're running SQL Server with blades and a NetApp SAN. We have a few hundred databases from 100mb to 200gb. All data, logs, tempdb, etc. are located in the same 30-disk pool. Apparently this was setup using NetApp's guidelines. NetApp recommendations are to put everything in one aggregate, or…

Recommended Books for SQL Server DBAs and Developers

August 14, 2008

Here's my favorite SQL Server books for 2016-2014:

T-SQL Fundamentals - (updated for SQL 2016) - don't be fooled by this "fundamentals" title, because everybody who writes T-SQL queries needs this book. It's the manual we should have been given when we started, and everyone's going to learn something about concurrency, performance, and updates here.

SQL Server Partitioning: Not the Best Practices for Everything

June 12, 2008

When SQL 2005 was in beta, I clapped my hands and jumped for joy the first time I played with partitioning. I've done a lot of data warehouse work, and partitioning lets the DBA break down massive tables into smaller, easy-to-manage chunks. We can put heavily accessed parts of the table onto fast storage, and…

SQL Server 2005 Setup Checklist Part 2: After The Install

March 23, 2008

I've covered what needs to happen before you install SQL Server - now, let's talk about what to do immediately after the setup finishes.
Install not just the service packs, but also the cumulative updates.
Starting with SQL Server 2005's Service Pack 2, Microsoft releases hotfixes in cumulative packs. These updates do more than just fix bugs: they improve how SQL Server performs. These updates are free performance benefits - and who doesn't like that?

SQL Server 2005/2008/2012/2014 Setup Checklist

March 19, 2008

Ever wonder if you’re missing a step when you set up your SQL Server? Get a checklist to install and configure your SQL Server the right way! We've built an easy-to-follow SQL Server Setup Guide for systems administrators, DBAs, and developers that helps you prevent the most common issues we see out in the field. The guide…

What’s the Largest Database You’ve Worked With?

February 6, 2008

When hiring a production DBA, I start by asking them, "In terms of file size, what's the largest database you've worked with?" In a perfect world, we'd only hire very experienced candidates, people who've worked with larger databases than we're dealing with. In reality, though, we can't always afford those candidates - if they're even…

Production DBA

SQL Server Backup Best Practices

October 17, 2007

I've been backing up SQL Servers for almost a decade now, and it's time to share the lessons I've learned. All of this is my own opinion - your mileage may vary - but I'll try to explain the reasoning behind the choices I make. I won't address log shipping or snapshots this time around.…