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Tuesday, January 06, 2009

SQL Server News & Information

tsql, performance tuning, industry trends, & bad jokes

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This site is maintained by Jason Massie. He has 10 years experience as a DBA and has specialized in performance tuning for the last five. He was recognized by Microsoft as a SQL Server MVP. Jason has spoken at the Professional Association of SQL Server Conference, the North Texas SQL Server Users Group, SQL Connections and TechED. He has worked at Terremark (formerly Data Return) for nearly a decade.

You can contact him at jason@statisticsio.com or 469.569.5965

Jason has the following certifications:
  • Microsoft Certified IT Professional Database Administrator (early adopter)
  • Microsoft Certified IT Professional Database Developer
  • MCDBA (7.0 and 2000)
  • MCSE
  • MCSD
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Abstracts addition Affinity Aggregation allocation Always Analysis Announced another API Appending article Authentication backup be Behavior between Bootstrapper Breaking Build Cache Caching Check checksums Codeplex collection Connecting contest Controller Creating CTEs CTP CUBE cursors Data Database DATALENGTH Debugging Design Diagnosing Diagnostic Differences Documentation DTS Emergency enhancement Entity ETW Exchange execution Express Extensions Fall February Filestream Filtered group GROUPING have Hosting Idle impact Improvement Increase Index Indexes Inserts Instances Interoperability Introduction IO large Late LOB local Localized Magazine Maintaining Maintenance Management maps March Microsoft minutes missing Mix Never November Offline OLE Online operations operators optimizations Optimized Overlapping Package Page Paging Panacea parallel part Partial Partition partitioned Partitioning PASS Performance PFS plan Plans Practices problem Problems Procedure Program programmatically Programming Protection Queries query read recent Recursive Related released Reports Restore return ROLLUP ROWCOUNT Runtime Security Select Sequence sequential Server Services set SETS Shooting shorts sizes Solutions Sortable SPARSE Spool SQL SQLIOSim SSIS Stalled Star Statement Statements stats Stored strategy Stuck Studio Submission Subreports Suggested Summarizing system Table Tables Tampa Task Than there through Timeouts Total Traces Transaction transfer Tricks Trouble TSQL turning understand Understanding undocumented Unique unused upgrade Upgrading Useful Value variables VDI Vista Will Windows Wireless

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Entries for the 'Captain Varchar(MAX)' Category

Capt. Varchar(MAX) and the Pagelatch Posse Vol. 16

Posted by Jason Massie Click to IM Jason Massie on Monday, December 15, 2008 at 10:19 PM to Humor, Captain Varchar(MAX), The Cloud, SQL Data Services
263 Views | 5 Comments | Article Rating

I got a nice little surprise in my inbox today: The first reader submitted Captain Varchar comic from Rod Colledge of SQLCrunch.

Cloud-II

I have written about this twice. I pushed it here and I toned it down after the facts came in from PDC. TJay Belt also had some commentary on it here today.

The comic does raise another off topic but interesting point. Apple’s desktop market share has been gaining ground. What happens when SaaS makes the browser the OS? Yes, another stretch but that is where some “experts” think we are heading.

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Capt. Varchar(MAX) and the PageLatch Posse VOL. 15

Posted by Jason Massie Click to IM Jason Massie on Friday, December 05, 2008 at 2:18 PM to Humor, Captain Varchar(MAX)
232 Views | 1 Comments | Article Rating

 Guess who the victim of this deadlock is?

On the technical tip, the "end all be all" of deadlock troubleshooting can be found here.

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Capt. Varchar(MAX) and the Pagelatch Posse Vol. 14

Posted by Jason Massie Click to IM Jason Massie on Friday, November 07, 2008 at 11:21 AM to Humor, Captain Varchar(MAX)
319 Views | 2 Comments | Article Rating

This post was inspired by the SQL Quiz going around that that Chris started, while humorous, can help us learn from each others mistakes.

Over the years, I have gone from a mental project plan to notepad to excel to MS project. My success % has increased and fire fights have decreased for major changes. I recommend it.

A Mental(ly Disturbed) Note

mental

The comic template was adapted from OfficeOFFline.

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Capt. Varchar(MAX) and the Pagelatch Posse Vol. 13

Posted by Jason Massie Click to IM Jason Massie on Friday, October 31, 2008 at 1:08 PM to Humor, Captain Varchar(MAX)
465 Views | 8 Comments | Article Rating

Once again, I was struggling for a Varchar(MAX) topic and twitter came through. This comic is based on these two tweets.

Update: Anarchy has erupted on twitter. Brent blogged it here.

 

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BrentO If yo momma was a table, she'd be a heap. #SQLputdowns
Fri, Oct 31 12:31:24 from mobile web

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jeffrush @BrentO If she was a datatype, she'd be a BLOB
Fri, Oct 31 12:37:41 from OutTwit

 

Yo Mamma is a SQL Server

yomamma

This template is based on Office OFFline.

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Capt. Varchar(MAX) and the Pagelatch Posse Vol. 12

Posted by Jason Massie Click to IM Jason Massie on Friday, October 17, 2008 at 2:03 PM to Humor, Captain Varchar(MAX)
322 Views | 1 Comments | Article Rating

This post was inspired by a twitter conversation between @SQLCraftman and @Joewebb.

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joewebb @SQLCraftsman TVF's don't kill servers, developers with TVFs kill servers. :)
Fri, Oct 17 13:42:42 from twhirl

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SQLCraftsman Still recoding bad T-SQL. Table-Valued Functions are evil.
Fri, Oct 17 13:16:43 from web

For further information, I suggest reading my favorite whitepaper especially the best practices section.

 

TVF

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Capt. Varchar(MAX) and the Faillatch Posse

Posted by Jason Massie Click to IM Jason Massie on Friday, October 10, 2008 at 10:41 PM to Humor, Captain Varchar(MAX)
236 Views | 0 Comments | Article Rating

I am out of town. Look for it Monday or before. Until then I give you:

fail owned pwned pictures

 

But hey if it works, then Darwinism is kinky… Maybe this is how cowboy hats evolved.

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Capt. Varchar(MAX) and the Pagelatch Posse Vol. 11

Posted by Jason Massie Click to IM Jason Massie on Friday, October 03, 2008 at 3:18 PM to Humor, Captain Varchar(MAX)
405 Views | 0 Comments | Article Rating

Was struggling for some comic fodder today. Like for at least 7 minutes. Then I remembered a blog post that BrentO wrote yesterday and blam. Humor(or lack of) aside, test your fracking backups.

wanda

This template was adapted from Office OFFline.

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Capt. Varchar(MAX) and the Pagelatch Posse Vol. 10

Posted by Jason Massie Click to IM Jason Massie on Friday, September 26, 2008 at 4:05 PM to Humor, Captain Varchar(MAX)
270 Views | 0 Comments | Article Rating

SQLOS uses a cooperative scheduler. They actually wrote it from the ground up because it performs better than the Windows preemptive scheduler. KenH(R.I.P.) describes it way better than I can here. It was written for SQL 2000 but is still pretty applicable.

Less Signal Wait. More CPU lovin’

UMS

Maybe I will come up with something funny next week. Happy Friday!

This comic was adapted from Office OFFline.

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Capt. Varchar(MAX) and the Pagelatch Posse Vol. 9

Posted by Jason Massie Click to IM Jason Massie on Friday, September 19, 2008 at 11:27 AM to Humor, Captain Varchar(MAX)
399 Views | 3 Comments | Article Rating

How many times have you heard “Cursors are evil”? Well, +1.

A cursor vs. set based solution

Set Based

Happy Friday.

This comic was adapted from Office OFFline.

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Capt. Varcahr(MAX) and the Pagelatch Posse Vol. 8

Posted by Jason Massie Click to IM Jason Massie on Friday, September 12, 2008 at 11:10 AM to Humor, Captain Varchar(MAX)
356 Views | 1 Comments | Article Rating

I have be running into this problem more often. The exact error message is "A significant part of sql server process memory has been paged out. This may result in performance degradation". It is  usually easy to work around if you are on Enterprise Edition but on standard edition, you have to actually fix the problem. :) I have actually had to to do a couple of edition upgrades because the customer could not fix the root cause.

Random Access Memories

RANDOM_ACCESS_MEMORY

Template courtesy of Office OFFline.

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Captain Varchar(MAX) and