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November 2009 - Posts

Friday, November 20, 2009 7:03 AM

Quote of the Day – On Having a Purpose

I try to live by this every day: “No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of another.” – Charles Dickens
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Thursday, November 19, 2009 7:17 AM

Using Perfmon with SQL Server – Part Two

Yesterday I posted a header from a script that shows you some links for how to use “Logman”, a Windows command-line utility that can automate your collection of Windows Performance Monitor counters. Towards the bottom, you can see the logman command I
Posted by Buck Woody | 1 Comments
Wednesday, November 18, 2009 8:34 AM

Using Perfmon with SQL Server – Part One

I held a workshop on performance tuning in Portland, Oregon yesterday, and as part of that I mentioned a process I follow for automatically collecting Performance Monitor Counters for a system. I use this data to store a baseline and then subsequently
Posted by Buck Woody | 0 Comments
Tuesday, November 17, 2009 7:03 AM

Channeling Bruce Lee: Tuning without Tuning

I’m leading a Performance Tuning workshop here in Portland, Oregon today, and I normally start this kind of workshop with a segment on “pre-tuning” – or, the steps you take so that you don’t have to tune as much later. When we set up a system is the greatest
Posted by Buck Woody | 0 Comments
Monday, November 16, 2009 7:19 AM

Color Me Corrected – Will the REAL sysobjects please stand up?

A few days ago I posted a way to look at the Dynamic Management Views (DMV’s) using a query, which I then copy and paste into the Help viewer’s Index tab to learn more. Well, my good friend and Colleague, Cliff, pointed out that I was using the older
Posted by Buck Woody | 1 Comments
Friday, November 13, 2009 7:24 AM

Quote of the Day: Who Is Normal?

No, this isn’t about third normal form or anything like that: “Everyone seems normal until you get to know them.” - Unknown
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Thursday, November 12, 2009 7:12 AM

Store XML Document as Binary, Read as XML

I had an interesting question the other day, so I thought I would share both the question and the answer. We had an older application that had stored an XML document in a table as a binary data type column. I know, I know – we’ve had an XML data type
Posted by Buck Woody | 2 Comments
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Wednesday, November 11, 2009 7:49 AM

How Microsoft Does IT - Updated

I’ve pointed out this link before, and I’ll definitely bring it up again. Microsoft is one of the few companies I know, especially the big ones, that explains how they run their IT. We have a fantastic, I mean really fantastic site that you should definitely
Posted by Buck Woody | 0 Comments
Tuesday, November 10, 2009 7:18 AM

Visio Video (killed the radio star)

I teach a class at the University of Washington, and in that class I have the students create a few Entity Relationship Diagrams (ERDs). I’m still looking for a decent tool to do that, since the only ones I know that do a good job are WAY too expensive.
Posted by Buck Woody | 0 Comments
Monday, November 09, 2009 6:54 AM

Create an Excel Graph of your Big Tables – with PowerShell!

I showed a demo of how to find the top ten tables in the database at the PASS Conference. Here’s that script – you’ll need to fix the server name, instance name, and database name. You can use this to display any numbers – and even more. The mind reels
Posted by Buck Woody | 0 Comments
Friday, November 06, 2009 6:50 AM

Quote of the Day – The Definition of an Expert

I’ve been at the PASS conference this week, and I’ve been around a lot of really smart Experts – and this definition definitely fits: An expert is someone who knows some of the worst mistakes that can be made in their subject, and how to avoid them. -
Posted by Buck Woody | 1 Comments
Thursday, November 05, 2009 9:58 AM

Learning New Tech on SQL Server Virtualization – From Vendors

I’m at PASS this year, and one of the things I’ve learned this time is that I can learn from – the vendors!  Most of the “big” names are here, like Idera, Redgate, Quest, and more, but I ran into some folks yesterday I hadn’t spoken with before –
Posted by Buck Woody | 1 Comments
Wednesday, November 04, 2009 8:04 AM

Find and learn DMVs

This morning I showed how I find DMVs, and find out how to use them. First, I just run this query:   USE MASTER; GO SELECT ‘sys.’ + name FROM sys.sysobjects WHERE name LIKE ‘dm%’   Then I copy and paste a result into the “Index” panel of Books
Posted by Buck Woody | 0 Comments
Tuesday, November 03, 2009 8:24 AM

DBA? No – Data Professionals

I’m here at the Professional Association for SQL Server (PASS) this week, and I’m here in the keynote. A few days ago I ranted about the fact that DBA should be a Data Professional – not an administrator. I’ve heard a lot of response about that blog –
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Monday, November 02, 2009 6:28 AM

Win7 – Install SQL Server Native or go Virtual PC?

I have Windows 7 on my laptop, and I also teach, demo and use SQL Server 2005 and SQL server 2008. Should I install this “native” on my outside operating system or use the Virtual PC (VPC) software that comes with Windows 7? Well, there are arguments
Posted by Buck Woody | 0 Comments
 
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