SQL-Articles

August 2010 UG Scheduled

admin@sql-articles.com (Administrator) — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 03:25:44 GMT

After a big wonderful event conducted last month we are back on our normal UG sessions. Please go-ahead and register for the event, hope to see all the faces again.

Does Extension matter for Creating a database?

kvs1983@gmail.com (Vidhya Sagar) — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 17:48:31 GMT

We have 3 types of file extensions in SQL Server. MDF, NDF and LDF each one representing Primary, Secondary and Log file respectively. Do you think these extensions are need to be given to the respective files? If your answer is yes then you are wrong. You can give any extension as you like or else you can even interchange these 3 extensions to primary, secondary and log file. Extension plays a important role for us to understand which file is what where as when you attach the db, SQL (by pointing the primary file) knows where the log file and the additional files for the db, it will attach the database without any errors. This is because SQL will check the primary file (which you have pointed) and if it’s in right format then it will start reading the header page to fetch additional details about other files and attach the database.

SQL Server 2008 R2 New Features

kvs1983@gmail.com (Vidhya Sagar) — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 12:41:24 GMT

On April 22nd 2010 SQL Server 2008 R2 is released to production. I tried to get the list of new features added to R2 however I couldn’t find all the new features in a single thread so I’m writing this article to populate the list of new features added to SQL Server 2008 R2. There are many new features added to DBA and BI however I feel we have more features for BI.

Performance Data Collector – Part 2

kvs1983@gmail.com (Vidhya Sagar) — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 12:04:54 GMT

Last month I’ve wrote an article on Performance Data Collector part one, I thought of writing part 2 soon however I was stuck with Organizing SQL Code Camp with my fellow MVP Deepak & Sugesh. Now it’s almost a month so thought of writing the second part. In this part we are going to see how to customize the data collection, retrieval of reports from PDW (Performance Data Warehouse) etc.

May 2010 UG Presentation Material

admin@sql-articles.com (Administrator) — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 17:05:31 GMT

We have conducted UG on 29th of May 2010 and it's nice to see peoples around the room. You can download the presentation materials and scripts used during the presentation to play with it. Incase if you need any clarification you are welcome to contact the presenter.We know this is too late since we are busy with SQL Code Camp we are not able to upload it at the earliest.

Performance Data Collector – Part 1

kvs1983@gmail.com (Vidhya Sagar) — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 16:31:57 GMT

Performance Data Collector is one of the new features that’s accompanied from SQL Server 2008. If you are a DBA , you know it’s very hard to get performance data from necessary inputs. We will get the data from Perfmon (system monitor), profiler, DMV etc and correlating this data is very hard, implementing the same process or scripts across your environment is also time consuming one. To Overcome this MS has added Performance data collector feature in SQL 2008. In a Nutshell performance data collector will collect performance data (integrating all your data from your server), upload it in centralized management data warehouse (MDW) in relational format and finally allows you to see reports in graphical format.

Installing SQL Server 2008 R2

kvs1983@gmail.com (Vidhya Sagar) — Mon, 24 May 2010 16:41:39 GMT

In this article we are going to discuss about installing SQL Server 2008 R2, I know I’m little late as R2 is released last month. Before we stepping into installation make sure you have necessary hardware and software requirements, check http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms143506(SQL.105).aspx this KB article for the same.

May 2010 UG Scheduled

admin@sql-articles.com (Administrator) — Mon, 17 May 2010 09:42:21 GMT

We are ready for May month session. Please go-ahead and register for the same.

Venue: Microsoft Training centre, Radhakrishnan Salai, Chennai
Landmark: Opposite to President hotel
Timings: 10:00 AM to 01:00 PM
Date: 29th May 2010

Recent Objects - Without Triggers

deepak.rangarajan@gmail.com (Deepak) — Tue, 04 May 2010 18:47:57 GMT

I was thinking about writing a script to capture the objects that were either CREATED/DELETED or MODIFIED in the last 24hrs. Instead of directly querying the sys.objects I from where I can only get minimal information I decided to get a whole bunch of useful information using the SQL Server default trace.

By default the default trace will be running in all the SQL Servers since SQL 2005 onwards. It will capture minimal information without overloading the database. It will be placed in the same location as that of the SQL Server errorlog. The maximum file size is 20MB after which the trace will roll over into a new file. However, SQL Server can maintain only the 5 most recently created trace files. In addition a new trace file is generated whenever SQL Server is restarted.

Attach all user databases

deepak.rangarajan@gmail.com (Deepak) — Mon, 03 May 2010 18:42:44 GMT

I was doing an upgrade of one of our development servers to SQL Server 2008. To minimize the downtime I decided to attach all the user databases using script. Basically, I am attaching the db from the same location there were present earlier to being detached.
Consider the following example, If I have a database named "Test" in SQL 2005 that is currently residing in the following locations, C:\database\Test.mdf & C:\database\Test_log.ldf and another database named "Test_2008" in C:\temp\test_2k8.mdf & C:\temp\test2k8_log.ldf then the script I wrote would prepare the script to attach the database test from the same location.