Viking’s Weblog

February 3, 2010

Name That Caption Contest

Filed under: DB Administration — msrviking @ 12:20 AM

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?”

February 2, 2010

SSAS named instance

Filed under: Security — msrviking @ 3:22 AM

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!

February 1, 2010

MSFT SQL Server blog’s

Filed under: Technical Documentation — msrviking @ 10:40 PM

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!

SQL Bits (Nov’09) videos

Filed under: Technical Documentation — msrviking @ 10:35 PM

I work out of India and unfortunately I don’t have opportunity to attend sessions like SQL Pass, SQL Bits. But I keep track of the happenings, and also wait for any freebies like recorded sessions, slide decks, documentation, conversations and so on. Recently SQL Bits has posted the recorded sessions of SQL Bits conducted during Nov’09. Some of my favorite speakers and the topics have been top picked by me from here. So go ahead, download or hear the sessions online and learn!

SQL Pass 2009

Filed under: Training — msrviking @ 5:24 AM

Although I couldn’t manage going to SQL Pass 2009 held in Seattle, WA, USA but I kept track of all the live blogging that happened by several MVP’s and others who had attended. One of the key things I was waiting for was this, and this is not the full list instead is the best picks. If you want a whole version of the technical gathering “Mela! of SQL Server Professionals” you could get it here.

Enjoy!

January 29, 2010

Check out Save Our Tigers | Join the Roar

Filed under: Uncategorized — msrviking @ 11:17 PM

Title: Save Our Tigers | Join the Roar
Link: http://gotaf.socialtwist.com/redirect?l=-807276413581280649911

November 18, 2009

Performance counters for performance

Filed under: Performance tuning — msrviking @ 10:32 PM

I was reading through my blog roll today and saw an interesting blog by Buck Woody on how to use performance counters to monitor and assess performance of SQL Server system.

Here is the link and happy learning.

Cheers.

A quick update – Buck is writing a series of posts on his blog on the topic. I would suggest please visit the other parts of the series.

SQL Server connectivity issues

Filed under: Security — msrviking @ 2:16 AM

Strangely for past few days people from different projects are approaching me to find solution for the SQL Server connectivity and login failure issues. To my surprise I see this happening all of a sudden,uh, may be the teams realized suddenly that I exist to help :) . I don’t mind helping and I indeed got the issues fixed. How did I do this, well I know few of the blogs that are part of my blog rolls which gives insight information on all these kind of issues.

I thought I should share all the links which I referred as part of my finding solution. Although the links are about troubleshooting SQL Server 2005, it definitely applies to SQL Server 2008 also.

SQL Server 2005 Connectivity Issue Troubleshoot – Part I
SQL Server 2005 Connectivity Issue Troubleshoot – Part II
SQL Server 2005 Connectivity Issue Troubleshoot – Part III
Understanding “login failed” (Error 18456) error messages in SQL Server 2005

I hope these links gives you guys enough information too!

Cheers.

November 17, 2009

DB code reviews

Filed under: DBA Rant — msrviking @ 10:46 PM

Sorry guys, I hadn’t been blogging for past 2 weeks. I was little tied with my work at home and office.

Well, here is what I wanted to share with you all. Yesterday one of the project managers had approached me and narrated this.

” I have bunch of developers who are not good at DB coding. Could you review the code and let us know how it looks and before we go into UAT /Production?. This will help us to perceive the probable problems we will face, and we don’t want to correct /rewrite logic in code instead we want to troubleshoot unexpected performance issues, rather”.

This kind of talk always appeases me and I gave my two cents on how we could go about this. Here is what I could tell the manager.

1. I shall review the code, share my comments on the quality of the code so that the team starts working on fixing the wrong sides right away.

2. I also want to sit with the developer and the module lead so that I share the knowledge of how the code has to be written. If we share review comments it will be only as part of statistics, or facts that code was reviewed but the knowledge of writing better code is left out. It is very essential that we “mend” the minds of the developers to write a code which looks optimal as set-based operation and try avoiding row-based operations.

To my surprise I seem to be impressing the project manager and I could sell my thoughts. I wasn’t looking for selling my thoughts, but I was interested in letting the manager know that how important is DB coding, and how we could correct in this project and in any project wherever these developers go.

Coincidentally, on similar lines if not same, Buck Woody has written blog post here which talks about “Jnan! – Knowledge” on how we could avoid post-deployment performance issues.

Enjoy reading!

Cheers.

 

November 3, 2009

A jackpot today (few intersting links)

Filed under: Technical Documentation — msrviking @ 8:55 AM

Hello folks,

I was going through my blog roll today and noticed some bunch of links thats woth to look at and well I say its a jackpot on what I was doing for some time.

1. Logical Query processing – this has been great area of interest for me for quite a long time, and Itzik has done a great job consolidating all this in a flow chart. It makes life easy for people who want to understand the logical flow of the operators for a query to be processed. Thanks to Itzik and Solidq for sharing this!

2.  SQL Server Error Logs – Although I am familiar of this topic, and know the in’s and out’s of how it works but never blogged. So thought of sharing this with you guys and thanks to Jeremiah putting it so clear and simple.

I hope you guys will enjoy reading the links.

Cheers!

http://facility9.com/2009/10/15/sql-server-error-logs
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