2 months gone..no posting

I had been kind of busy with several things running together, so couldn’t talk anything all these days. I am not sure on what will happen in next few months. Anyways, I thought this will be a good start once again to share my readings, knowledge with you all. What is it?

I happen to read this entry, and a good one written by SQL Server Engine Team few years ago. This question keeps coming to my mind quite often whenever I see or I am asked about ISNULL and COALESCE. I hope this link helps you all too.

http://blogs.msdn.com/sqltips/archive/2008/06/26/differences-between-isnull-and-coalesce.aspx

*Please note the information shared is only with the intention to share with the community on what I find.

Cheers!

GDR – What is it?

Well in this world, not all time you will know everything. So here is what I learnt today “GDR”.Why on the earth have I realized that I should know about this, that too early in the morning at work (we are working today )?

A while ago, I was guiding few of .NET developers to customize the T-SQL Static Code Analysis tool available in VSTS 2008 so that we could make it compulsory for the projects that write T-SQL code, follow the best practices (of course customized for my organization). When I was talking to the team who were chosen bunch by me, I happen to mention the word GDR, and bang I got a question “What is a GDR?”. For little time I searched my thoughts, but couldn’t find a reply and in fact I bounced it off the discussion saying that I would get back later.

After 8 months I realized I didn’t tell the guy who wanted to know what is GDR and today I did a little search in Google and found these informative links. BTW, GDR is known for “General Distribution Release”, and you could find more details from these links (Support & Blog).

Enjoy!

Vote for the connect item

Adam Machanic has opened an item in connect to have “missing join predicate” graphical representation to stand-out. Please vote for this, and this definitely makes sense, because even I get lost (as Adam did) while finding “What the heck is happening with the join?”. I voted, so how about you?

Here is where you want to vote.

Thanks!

Tip-Updating Intellisense Cache

I was reading my blog rolls and noticed an interesting tip given by Steve. Its nice to learn new things and that too as tips and nothing could start better for the day as it is with this.

If you want to refresh your intellisense cache in SSMS, use this command – Ctrl + Shift + R. This is especially for the new objects to appear in the intellisense list.

Cheers!

OLTP database for reporting?

There is a interesting tug-of-war going between the DBA’s and Architects on how to use OLTP database for reporting without impacting performance issue. Although the client has a set solution recommended by us earlier, but due to costs there is a consolidation of databases (not as databases data per se), instead having OLTP database and reporting database (copy or closest copy of OLTP) on the same system or different system.

Well, to justify on what I would think of I was searching in the web on what other DB guys think about all this. A very interesting article, which you will want to read is here. However, I shall definitely share what I would recommend.

Enjoy and Cheers!

ODBC Survey by MSFT

Why don’t you take survey on ODBC support on non-msft platforms over here?

Ask the core team?

I was doing morning rituals (reading blogs of my blog roll) and got a reference from Grumpy Old DBA to this interesting blogging site. If you want to know how Windows work SQL Server and much more beyond that, then why not visit this.

Cheers!

Name That Caption Contest

Tom LaRock is conducting an interesting contest over here. My captions would be

“I am done with my work today,  here is what I want to do for tomorrow?”.

“How do I achieve 99.99% SLA with all these jokers around?”.

“What is that I should budget for this year?”.

“How do I fly between these tall buildings?”

SSAS named instance

Here is what I have learnt today while configuring a static port for a named instance of AS for one of my clients.

As per best practices for Security guidelines given by MSFT, SQL Server Browser could be disabled and to connect to named instance of Analysis Services we would need a static port. It was fun doing this although there are good steps around in BOL, and few other links.

However for benefit of having this stored in a knowledge repository I decided to list down steps clearly in here.

1) Goto SQL Server configuration manager and over the named instance in the SQL Protocols, click on the TCP/IP.

2) Under protocol table make the “Listen All” to “No”.

3) Under IP Addresses tab, make “TCP Dynamic Ports” to blank from “o” for IP1, “Enabled” value to “Yes”. Also don’t forget to put in a value “TCP Port”.

4) Under IP 2, set “Enabled” to “No”, and in IP All set TCP Dynamic Ports to blank from “o”, and the TCP Port to the port number you want listen.

5) And before restarting the service ensure that you put the port number you want to listen in the server property page of analysis services.

At the end restart the service, and you will have the analysis services named instance up and running, and connecting on your defined port without SQL Server Browser service running.

Some of the links that gave me leads are

http://dinesql.blogspot.com/2009/08/connecting-to-analysis-services-with.html

http://blogs.msdn.com/sqlserverfaq/archive/2009/09/08/sql-server-analysis-services-port-sql-2005-2008.aspx

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/823938

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc966526.aspx

I hope this quick post helps. Enjoy!

MSFT SQL Server blog’s

Glenn Berry has posted an entry on MSFT SQL Server blogs on BI & Relational Database. Please ensure that you have these blogs on your blog roll and of course don’t forget to include Glenn Berry’s in the list.

Enjoy!