Developer hearted / Relational minded

Want to know what happened on your database by reading the transaction log ?

2009-11-18T09:23:39Z

(Download the dbo.fndblog2 function here ) Update and word of caution: Be aware that the mentioned function is undocumented and subject to change in any release of SQL Server. You should only use that for investigational purposes and in case you are investigating any sever data issues on your server. The function will parse the logs and might cause (depending on the size of the log) a severe impact on performance while running. In various situations you will not be able to either use third...(read more)

An “secret” SSIS XML Destination Provider you might not found yet

2009-11-06T13:16:14Z

(Sample code included at the end of the post) The initiator for this post was Dan Atkins who wanted to create a feed from relational data to consume it directly from a created gadget. Where can I find that in the toolbox ? First of all, you won’t a XML destination adapter as of the shipped components in SQL Server 2005 and 2008. There are for sure third party components which can directly convert data from the data pipeline to defined XML but sometimes it is much easier than that and you just...(read more)

SSIS as a data source needed ? Watch out for configuration traps

2009-10-26T20:27:57Z

Someone pinged me according the article I wrote about SSIS as a data source in Reporting Services. In general this is easy to implement and configure. One problem though occurs if you already had SQL Server 2005 on the machine first and updated to SQL Server 2008. You will receive the following error: The data processing extension used for this report is not available. It has either been uninstalled, or it is not configured correctly. According to the configuration file RSReportServcer.config,...(read more)

SQLIOSIMParser 0.3.3.0 is available

2009-10-23T10:56:47Z

After skipping some internal version the 0.3.3.0 is available now , these are the new features: Version 0.3.1.0 <Internal Bugfixing> Version 0.3.3.0 -Moved settings to a separate settings page and save them for later use (Suggested by me) -Added additionally feedback options (Feedback by me) Feel free to provide feedback to either the new feedback functionality or the discussion list on the codeplex site: http://sqliosimparser.codeplex.com/Thread/List.aspx -Jens...(read more)

SQLIOSimParser 0.3.1.0 is available

2009-10-17T16:45:25Z

These are the new functionalities comparing the 0.2.3.1 version: -Added n-m mapping for different test iterations (Suggestion to Jimmy) -Included output to CSV (Suggestion to Jimmy) -Being able to specify a delimiter for the CSV output (Suggestion to Jens) -Added an additional text column for using as TestName (Suggestion by Jimmy) -Changed column headings to include the units in most attributes (Suggestion by Jimmy and checked by Franz) Feedback is warmly welcome, either through the codeplex...(read more)

SQL Server Reporting Services Logging & Caching project released on Codeplex

2009-10-12T11:36:52Z

The first version (0.3.0.0) of a small project I did was published to Codeplex ( http://rsparamlogcache.codeplex.com/ ). It enables you to log and cache user parameter values for further usage and statistics. Here is short extract from the project description: Project Description The solution tracks the selected parameters from a report execution and uses them later for the next execution to take them as default parameters. This enables users to log parameters and inspect the execution statistics...(read more)

Jump on the Express Trace if you can – SQL Server Express server side tracing

2009-10-03T19:25:00Z

Running SQL Server Traces on SQL Server Express SQL Server Express does not come with a SQL Server Profiler GUI. (Period) Though can still use SQL Server Profiler tools from other editions to connect to the SQL Server Express edition. (But make sure that you do have a valid license for that.) (I appreciate all the work done by many community members developing a SQL Server Profiler Trace tool for SQL Server Express which can be found here. But in some cases you cannot use any external tools due to...(read more)

New Cumulative Update for CU4 for SQL Server 2008 SP1

2009-10-03T19:08:18Z

Head up, the new CU is ready ! This one is CU (Cumulative Update) 4 for SQL Server 2008 SP1 (means that you will need to have SP1 installed in order to install the update) See the information of the release services team here: http://blogs.msdn.com/sqlreleaseservices/archive/2009/09/22/cumulative-update-4-for-sql-server-2008-sp1.aspx -Jens...(read more)

Project corruption after upgrade VSTSDB & Unit tests

2009-10-03T18:33:33Z

As it was hard to find the cause of this error and the answer, I wanted to share some searchable information on the internet for that. The following problem occurs while doing an upgrade of “older” VSDB project to the new GDR releases. As you have seen, the version of some assemblies within the GDR changed from 9.0.0.0 to 9.1.0.0. During a project upgrade you find yourself in one of the following errors: (For search sake the error reads “Cannot add a ConfigurationSection with the same...(read more)

Basta Herbst 2009 in Mainz

2009-09-30T23:49:07Z

Thank for all participants attending my sessions in Mainz. As promised, here are the slide decks and demos I used during my presentations. If you have any question to this are other SQL Server related topics, feel free to ping me. I am looking forward to hear from you ! Volltext voraus – Volltextindizierung in SQL Server Database lifecycle mit Visual Studio Team Database Edition -Jens...(read more)

SQLDays in Rosenheim Herbst 2009

2009-09-30T21:59:47Z

Thank for all participants attending my sessions in Mainz. As promised, here are the slide decks and demos I used during my presentations. If you have any question to this are other SQL Server related topics, feel free to ping me. I am looking forward to hear from you ! Volltext voraus – Volltextindizierung in SQL Server Implement now – performance later BTW, I didn’t forget the question I put in my backlog. If a table is partitioned and I have fulltext-indexed the table, will be switch off...(read more)

Need more spare time ? Use SQLIOSimParser to interpret your IO results !

2009-09-27T19:14:45Z

My colleague Marvelous Jimmy ( JimmyMay ) and myself did a small project to parse and interpret the results of the testing tool SQLIO. It produces ready-to-interpret reports and reusable results in Excel and will save you (as of Jimmy) much time doing your performance tracing and giving your more spare time to to fun stuff like… more Performance tracing sessions :-) Check out his blog post about the functionality and the walkthrough with a small sample. -Jens...(read more)

Problems opening your project files in Visual Studio ?

2009-09-25T11:59:20Z

if you encounter the problem as follows: <PathToyourDBFile> cannot be opened because its project type (.dbproj) is not supported by this version of the application. To open it, please use a version that supports this type of project. ..then you might have a problem with the registration of your dbproj extension (Team database edition projects). If a restart does not fix the problem, you can use the following command to start Visual Studio: Open the Visual Studio Command prompt Launch...(read more)

Cannot find the source of a SQL Server error ?

2009-09-25T11:33:24Z

Ever had an error in your application and you couldn't find the source of all evil and where the error is thrown at the end ? Well, SQL Server profiler does a great job about that, but you really need to understand which events to filter for and how to correlate the results in order to know where to dig into. (I was inspired for this blog entry by Dirk van Coeverden , a colleague within MS who threw up this question on our internal alias list) The sample I use using is straightforward and basically...(read more)

(Log) resistance is futile – how to drop log files

2009-09-19T00:22:00Z

At the beginning everyone is trying to tune the database by creating additional database files, spreading the data across file groups, adding additional log files for the database… But wait a minute, is there a performance benefit from having more than one log file in the database ? Not really. This is due to the fact that SQL Server writes synchronously and serially to the log(s) and only uses one log file at a time. So better than having more than log file is to have the one you have sized appropriately....(read more)