Reed Me : database

Log Shipping + Database Snapshots == Bummer, dude!!

reedme — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 18:29:47 GMT

So, like most funny stories (involving me), this one starts with “Yesterday, I had this bright idea...” and goes downhill from there.

Database mirroring is great. Full stop. But there’s this one little catch: it can only have a single mirror copy of the principal. Awesome for HA, but not so good for scale out.

Because database mirroring with SQL Server 2005 and 2008 makes available this great way to leverage your failover partner database for reporting purposes (to get some value out of your high availability solution besides insurance and a good night’s sleep) using database snapshots... well, you just had the same idea that I did, right?

It only seemed logical that log shipping would allow for the same AND allow for multiple target servers/databases, right?

Not so much.

With 2005, the log shipping target in a warm standby mode is in a perpetually restoring state (sort of like a mirror copy, eh? *grumble*), but you can’t take a snap of a database in restoring mode. Of course, I tried it. Wouldn’t you?

And even though Katmai exposes the feature in the UI now that allows for a log shipping target database to be online and query-able in read-only mode (if memory serves, you could do it the “hard way” in Yukon), it’s not possible to take a database snap shot of it... because it’s read-only. Did you know that creating a database snapshot actually modifies the database being snapped? I’d never thought about it. And now I know the answer!

The error message when creating the snap of a read-only database isn’t intuitive, either (if you read from the bottom up – the first one’s pretty clear – don’t ask): “A database snapshot cannot be created because it failed to start.” Huh?

Read-only standby mode shows some promised BUT you’ve got to close all open connections to the database and put it in a restoring mode in order to restore future tran log backups to it as part of your log shipping. Doh!

Needless to say, it would be pretty handy [if this worked] for a scale out scenario where I need to keep, oh, say, 44 copies of the same database continuously in sync AND available 100% of the time for customers to query, but nooo... It couldn’t possibly be that simple.

But you know, I probably wouldn’t be happy (or have a fun job) if it was that simple. Heh. Besides, not I get to go Visio up a more complicated solution, right?

Thanks, Brian! A couple minor nits to pick, though.

reedme — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 19:12:01 GMT

Brian, I'm glad y'all are doing videos like this for SQL School!! I realize that you probably recorded this last year; however, the details (specifically of download file selection on CodePlex) in that video about AdventureWorks for SQL Server 2008 have been out of date since October 2008. ;-) We shipped Samples Refresh 1 on Halloween which greatly simplified the entire experience.

Samples Refresh 2 will ship in the second quarter of this calendar, and will consist primarily of bug fixes.

Also, a minor clarification, most of the Books Online examples for SQL Server 2008 still use the original AdventureWorks databases (which is why we ship both versions together for Katmai). For the most part, only the BOL topics which need new features like FILESTREAM, geography, HierarchyID, etc, were updated to use the AdventureWorks2008 family of databases.

Installing Sample 2008 Databases - SQL School Videos - SQL Server Central

We're definitely working to streamline the AdventureWorksKilimanjaro experience, and we're planning to only ship one year-model family of databases for SQL Server Kilimanjaro.

Sybase loves AdventureWorks2008?

reedme — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 19:24:38 GMT

A SQL Ranger friend of mine in the UK gave me the heads up to this yesterday. (Thanks, Ben!!) Apparently, back in December 2008, Sybase ported some of our samples to SQL Anywhere. Needless to say, I’ve got mixed feelings about Sybase porting AdventureWorks to their platform. Sort of like a cherry-cheese Danish: it’s a pastry and pastries are supposed to taste good, right? But cherries and cheese? Ick. (I’m on a severely calorically restricted diet; sorry for the digression.)

As SQL Server 2008 and SQL Anywhere 11 are two very different database solutions, the ‘AdventureWorks2008’ database will appear slightly different, and offer a few functional differences. These incongruities are the result of different feature sets, which are intrinsic to each database’s design. AdventureWorks2008 Sample Database for SQL Anywhere Download: Mobile Enterprise, Database Management iAnywhere - Sybase Inc

We license AdventureWorks under the Ms-PL, so anybody’s welcome to do whatever they want with our code. It’s out there for learning purposes. Sybase seems to have learned that SQL Anywhere 11 doesn’t do a lot of the really cool things that SQL Server 2008 does! They only ported the OLTP database – I wonder why they ignored DW and LT??

The Sybase port of AdventureWorks2008 drops the following features:

They dropped all the spatial columns because SQL Anywhere doesn’t have a geography type.
They dropped Try/Catch error handling in all stored procedures, since they can’t do that.
They dropped DDL triggers, because SQL Anywhere doesn’t have them.
They dropped all stored procedures with recursive queries, because they don’t support them.
They dropped all Full Text indexes and queries, since SQL Anywhere doesn’t do that, either, I guess.
They dropped or modified all tables with HierarchyID columns, because they don’t have that data type.
They dropped all the tables with XML data, or omitted the XML columns, because they don’t support the same XML query lingo and have no XML index support.
They dropped all the indexed views, because SQL Anywhere doesn’t do that,either.
They dropped all the views that use PIVOT, because (guess what?) they don’t have that keyword.
They had to modify a bunch of stored procedures because they don’t support EXECUTE AS CALLER. (Did I mention that they had to drop all the Try/Catch support, too?)
They had to emasculate most of the trigger functionality (not counting the DDL triggers they had to drop outright), because they don’t support those features. Such as dropping Try/Catch support to throw exceptions instead of logging and always updating certain columns (even when not appropriate for the business rules):

HumanResources.dEmployee
Person.iuPerson
Production.iWorker
Production.uWorkOrder
Purchasing.iPurchaseOrderDetail
Purchasing.uPurchaseOrderHeader
Purchasing.uPurchaseOrderDetail
Purchasing.uPurchaseOrderHeader
Purchasing.dVendor
Sales.iduSalesOrderDetail
Sales.uSalesOrderHeader

They had to truncate all the binary image columns to 32,767 bytes (which will break all the ones bigger than that) because SQL Anywhere doesn’t have a large binary type apparently. Whoops!

Anyway, I don’t have a SQL Anywhere installation to try it out on, but that list from their own website reads (to me) like a list of reasons to use SQL Server 2008 instead. It looks like they ported our .NET samples for AdventureWorks2008, too, so I have to wonder if they’re equally limited as the AdventureWorks2008 port?

I do hope that SQL Anywhere customers do get some benefit out of using the port of our sample OLTP database (or switch to SQL Server 2008 where they can get the full functionality of AdventureWorks2008). I’d also like to invite Oracle and DB2 to port AdventureWorks2008 to their platforms so that the world can see how much of our feature set they don’t support, either. Heh.

Tweeting AdventureWorks?

reedme — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 03:34:09 GMT

Earlier this week, the gravitational pull of Twitter got the better of me. Jimmy May emailed me that Paul Nielsen was trying to sort out the gender of the fictitious IT Manager of AdventureWorks (Jean Trenary) for the next edition of the SQL Server Bible and was tweeting on the subject. One thing led to another. (Doesn’t it always?)

I vaguely recall signing up for Twitter as “reedme” but twitter doesn’t seem interested in sending me a forgotten password for that user name... so I reverted to an older, darker user name for tweeting: DarthReed. Just so you know. More useless information is now available on the web with even greater frequency.

Anyway, here are the queries for anybody else who cares. First for the old school AdventureWorks OLTP database (with thanks to Gail in UE for writing the first one):

USE AdventureWorks
GO
SELECT c.FirstName , c.LastName, e.Title, e.Gender
FROM HumanResources.Employee as e
JOIN Person.Contact AS c ON e.ContactID = c.ContactID
WHERE LastName = 'Trenary'
GO

And then my “port” for the AdventureWorks2008 OLTP database (will like be the same for AdventureWorksKilimanjaro):

USE AdventureWorks2008
GO
SELECT c.FirstName , c.LastName, e.JobTitle, e.Gender
FROM HumanResources.Employee as e
JOIN Person.Person AS c ON e.BusinessEntityID = c.BusinessEntityID
WHERE LastName = 'Trenary'
GO

If my adventures in Twitter last beyond the end of my “trial month”, I’ll have to break down and figure out how to feed them into the sidebar of the blog.

Who are you and what do you want with my data?

reedme — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 20:04:51 GMT

If you’ve got data, there are probably people who want to use it, analyze it, do things with it... that you never imagined and possibly don’t want them to. “Those people” might even be government agents. Who can put you in jail. If you’re not careful with your data.

Do you have a plan for data governance and regulatory compliance?

We’d like to help.

Brent says: As somebody who’s gone through the whitepaper start to finish (with a lot of guidance from JC’s team) I can tell you that this is really good stuff. If you work for a public company subject to regulations, if you work with sensitive financial data, or if you work with health care data, you need to read this doc. New SQL Server 2008 Compliance Guide

Are you the Gate Keeper? Are you the Key Master? Or is there only Zhoul?

p.s. SCAN and SQL PASS have been a great week so far. It’s good to meet a lot of you in person. Come by the product pavilion and the Ask-the-Experts table and say howdy. I’ll be one of the 300 people wearing a brown shirt. Heh.

We don‘t need yet another database security czar.

reedme — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 19:29:42 GMT

I was reading this article about recent data breaches that was recommending Yet Another Government Agency® and (no surprise) I started getting mad:

A program to share best practices among agencies at all levels of government and create cybersecurity templates, even if they are not mandated, would be a big step forward in data security, Kleinfeld said. Data Breaches at State, Local Agencies Expose Data about Millions (redmondmag.com)

We already have one! It’s part of DHS!! Just because the appointee hired to run it lacks experience that most security professionals would consider requisite… Why not? We might be electing a president without any meaningful executive experience in a couple weeks. Government is never the answer to a domestic problem. The fact that we have government agencies collecting and storing so much sensitive data IS the problem!

In the meantime, we’ve already got more public resources on data security than the average DBA will ever read. Here are just a few:

http://www.schneier.com/

http://www.cert.org/

http://iase.disa.mil/stigs/checklist/index.html (The 182-page database security checklist is interesting. It was updated in January 2008.)

I know that there are strict DOD guidelines which ought to serve as a template, and I’m pretty sure that I have bookmarks somewhere for NSA security resources, too. The information is out there! The problem is that the people being hired to be responsible for the data aren’t reading it and implementing it. That’s what happens when you (the taxpayer) are only willing to pay half of the market rate for government database management positions… and hiring your cousin’s nephew to be the county DBA is probably not a wise idea, either.

There are “industry standard” practices which were violated in nearly all of the data breaches cited above or publicly acknowledged in recent years. Another government agency won’t help the situation. Part of the problem is that everybody wants to “solve” the data security problem, but it’s not a "problem” which can be “solved”. It’s a risk that has to be managed. Constantly and continuously.

Here’s an example hypothetical situation to demonstrate the continuous problem (we’ll leave simple software security patching for later):

Steve the DBA has been conscientious and has encrypted his database backups made in 2008 and following with a strong a algorithm (AES-256).
Steve works in a moderately regulated industry (not to mention at a company that gets sued from time to time), hence the corporate data governance strategy requires that he has to maintain backups for a minimum of three years.
Because he has to maintain a disaster recovery strategy, too, his backups are taken offsite on a regular schedule by a 3rd-party vendor.
In 2010 (that’s in our hypothetical future), an advance in mathematics related to encryption demonstrates a heretofore unknown but readily exploitable flaw in AES-256.
If Steve isn’t constantly learning and monitoring trade magazines, especially in the realm of information security, he won’t even know that he now has TWO YEARS OF BACKUPS @ RISK!
What’s the solution to this problem?
Will Cousin Bob’s nephew known how to solve it?

Another part of the problem is employers which hire inexperienced people to manage their data. Companies and government agencies should be held liable for breaches, but ultimately the only thing which will “solve” this problem is individual data professionals insisting upon best practices for data handling and application security.

That means you.

Simplifying AdventureWorks setup

reedme — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 00:28:11 GMT

FYI, we’re actively working on improving the setup experience for the SQL Server 2008 sample databases (aka AdventureWorks). We’ve heard your feedback and we’re acting on it. Here are some of the salient points you’ll see for the Halloween update (Samples Refresh 1):

Fewer selections to make to choose the appropriate download.
All the AdventureWorks databases (both versions) in one small package.
Streamlined automatic deployment of databases to your local instance.

Here’s a visual comparison of what the release page may look like the next time you download AdventureWorks:

Some potential future improvements that we’re considering for the next refresh of SQL Server 2008 samples:

Individual selection of the databases to install.
Automated deployment of Analysis Services cubes.
A ClickOnce SQL Server Community Samples browser application.

As always, we value your feedback and want to hear it, good and bad. After all, we’re building these things for you! If they’re not what you want/need, tell us what you do want/need!! That’s why we’re in the process of moving all of our community and samples work items out into the open on CodePlex. Create one and tell us what you want to see us working on!

INSERT your.own.data INTO election.spreadsheet

reedme — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 21:48:11 GMT

No, this isn’t a Schneier-induced rant about electronic voting machinas… Kevin just dropped a template into Office Online for those of you who would like to model your own election results.

Simple Electoral College Election Predictor - Templates - Microsoft Office Online

You can play “Let’s pretend” to your hearts content for your favorite US presidential candidate.

Yeah, it’s just data in Excel, but it’s data, so I’m counting this as on-topic. Heh.

Thank you, Captain Obvious.

reedme — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 02:12:52 GMT

Actually, my oldest son is the original Captain Obvious in my life, but Michael Campbell does a good impression of him in Performance Secrets for SQL Server Developers (sqlmag.com). Heh. Not that it's a bad thing. Being reminded of the obvious every once in a while is important.

For the record, the only part of the article that I disagree with is that those are Secrets™. :-P

Cool (Free, Open) Tools: SQL RSS

reedme — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 23:15:40 GMT

Even if nobody has asked you for an RSS feed of data in one or more of your databases, it won't be long before they do! When they do, you can grab this configurable, easy to use data-driven RSS feed widget.

A couple ideas for using this application:

Business intelligence updates delivered to Microsoft Outlook 2007 for management.
Proactive application event logs to your Vista Sidebar news gadget FTW!

I'm sure you can think of more... Check it out!

SQL RSS on CodePlex.com (Microsoft SQL Server Community & Samples)

It's also a great way to get a solid introduction to these technologies:

Change Data Tracking (CDT) feature of SQL Server 2008
SQL Server Reporting Services
The syndication feed feature of WCF
LINQ to XML
ADO.NET

Join us!
This project is a bit different than other SQL Server-sponsored projects. We want YOU to contribute to it. We are actively seeking other people (i.e. not on my team) to enhance and grow this project. Whether you work for Microsoft or not, let us know if you'd like to help!

Contrary to the FUD, The Relational Database™ is far from dead...

reedme — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 19:29:14 GMT

I've gotten questions over the past month or two from folks (mostly DBAs and trainers) who have attended FUD dissemination events where various "experts" have declared The Relational Database™ to be dead. Ha! I've had a good laugh at most of the points that the so-called "experts" were spewing... They were all selling vaporware that was allegedly in development to produce a True Relational Database™ or a niche column-based cache widget or their own special brand of Snake Oil™.

Smarter people than I am are happily, eagerly investing MORE in database technology, rather than less, so I feel pretty comfortable continuing to base my career on the growth of The Relational Database™. In the spirit of w00t!, I'd like to welcome aboard the newest David in the database realm @ Microsoft:

DeWitt said Microsoft has generally given him carte blanche to focus his research and development wherever he wants. He's interested in a number of technologies and use cases, such as analytics to target online ads, query optimization at mega-scale, building database systems that can better exploit multi-core computers, and expanding the types of data databases can handle at scale. Microsoft Hires Database Pioneer, Opens Database Development Lab (InformationWeek.com)

I love The Relational Database™ (a.k.a. Microsoft™ SQL Server™), and I'm glad to see that we're adding more technical fellows in this realm. At the risk of seeming cliché, I'm happy to report that rumors of the demise of The Relational Database™ are greatly exaggerated. Heh.

Breaking News! AdventureWorks abandoned for Katmai in favor of Northwind, pubs and...

reedme — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 01:01:45 GMT

In a striking change of direction, I'm happy to announce that AdventureWorks is being deprecated and abandoned for SQL Server 2008 samples in favor of long-time favorite databases of simple-minded data modelers: Northwind and pubs.

Also, I can gleefully announce, in the spirit of oversimplification, that work is underway on ports of the Oracle sample schemas named:

The creatively-named Oracle sample schema IX "might" present a challenge for SQL Server; however, we're going to give it a college try... for April Fools' Day.

Heh.

Seriously, though, one person out of billions of (conscious or unconscious) SQL Server users has formally asked us to [re]include Northwind and pubs in our Official Family of Sample Databases™:

Feedback: Include option for Northwind Database install with SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server 2008 (connect.microsoft.com)

Since nobody has voted for it (not even the original requestor), we can only assume that it was filed on Connect as an early April Fools' joke.

[For the record, I hate April Fools' Day, but I am trying to get into the spirit of the faux holiday.]

Tracking Politicians Like Bugs?

reedme — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 03:17:13 GMT

The suggestion is to track politicians positions like software products and file bugs against them to determine their suitability for installation in office. Nope, not April 1st yet! Whaddya think?

If a candidate takes a position I disagree with, such as calling for corporate windfall profit taxes, amnesty for illegal aliens or an artificial timetable for surrender, a bug is created and assigned a priority. If a candidate has too many unresolved, high-priority defects, I wouldn’t vote to deploy that product into the Oval Office.
Tracking Politicians Like Bugs (SD Times)

Synchronicity being what it is, that little article over @ SD Times actually tracks with a conversation that my wife and I were having last night about how she thinks we might get better candidates to run for office. Having been deeply involved with party politics (as my campaign manager and treasurer), she's starting to have more and more of a Darth Vader mindset about what ails the system: "They should be made to [agree]!" (For those of you who hated Star Wars Episodes 1, 2 & 3, I'm sorry for bringing up painful Jar-Jar-esque memories.)

Seriously, though, I think she's still a little disappointed that I dropped out of my run for Congress this year to move to Redmond and work for the SQL Server product team instead. No, really, I'm in the FEC database! See, this post is database-related after all. Heh.

How do I use Feature X in SQL Server?

reedme — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 00:20:18 GMT

Buck's got a great point about how SQL Server's development themes are managed from the top down:

It isn't a matter of thinking up single features or changes to the product, it's a cohesive direction we all want to go.
Carpe Datum : Why on earth are you working on that?

Reading his blog always make me wish that I could translate the pun in the title of my blog into Latin, too. Heh.

However, when it comes down to actually using SQL Server's new features du jour (see how I get my exotic language points in, too?), it's all about the individual features and changes to the product. Which is where the product samples and community projects come in... We (collectively) have got to take the roadmap and figure out the simplest way to show people how to use individual features and changes to the product in 2008.

Here are of the new features that we're fixin' to show off in the AdventureWorks 2008 family of databases. (Yes, I just moved from Tejas to Redmond, so we're fixin' to. Deal wit' it.)

Support for Entity Framework
Integrated full text indexing support
New data types

New date/time types
ORDPATH
FILESTREAM
GEOGRAPHY

Backup compression

At least that's the current plan. We're working through some changes that we tentatively plan to ship in the CTP6/joint launch timeframe. Among other things, I'd like to figure out how to get transparent data encryption and some others in there, too. BUT some of the self-imposed constraints for the AdventureWorks family of databases are that they have to be easy to deploy... and easy to understand. I've got half a mission statement for the AdventureWorks databases drafted, but those are two of the core principles.

Easy to understand is the driver that prompted Bonnie last year to create the newest member of the AdventureWorks family of databases: AdventureWorks LT. We (before I was part of we) had received feedback from customers that there are some folks who are new to the database universe who struggle with a higher level of normalization that the AdventureWorks OLTP database demonstrates, so AdventureWorks LT was born. It's a subset of the AdventureWorks data in a greatly denormalized format that is easier for instructors to demonstrate simple T-SQL concepts with and easier for new students of database technology to grasp. But I digress... If you yearn for the simplicity of Northwind or pubs, check out AdventureWorks LT and let me know what you think.

If you've got a favorite Feature X that you'd like to see in the AdventureWorks 2008 schemas, now is the time to voice your opinion. Let's hear it!

[Obligatory Disclaimer: Like the Any Key of legend, the name Feature X is a convenient placeholder or wildcard term. There is not now, nor has there ever been, a part of SQL Server called Feature X. As far as you know.]

Hi, Mom! (And everybody else.)

reedme — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 23:06:55 GMT

"So, what do you do?" It's a common enough question, right? Usually immediately subsequent to "Where do you work?" People ask it to break the ice. They ask it because they're interested. They ask it because they can't believe somebody actually pays me to work @ Microsoft. Heh. Even my eight year-old son asks me the same question. Over and over. Again this morning, before breakfast!

Imagine trying to explain what a Program Manager does to an eight year-old. (Apparently all of my previous attempts at explanation have been lost in the mists of prepubescent time.) Well, actually, I'm still struggling to figure it out myself and I are one (for almost a whole month now!).

So, here goes... For my mother, my oldest son (and everybody else who cares), I've circled below the little corner of Microsoft SQL Server 2008 that is more (or less) my fault in some small fashion. The rest of the team has been doing it for a lot longer than I and they deserve all the real credit! I'm just showing up at the last minute to take the blame. Heh.

With the November 2007 Community Technology Preview (aka CTP5), we added a link from the SQL Server Installation Center to our little home in CodePlex where all of the "official" samples live. You'll also find a shortcut to it after installation under Microsoft SQL Server 2008\Documentation and Tutorials\Microsoft SQL Server Samples Overview. At least it was there with the CTP5 bits... (Let's hope it stays there, eh?)

We've got a lot of cool new stuff coming "real soon now" from the SQL Server Community & Samples team, so stay tuned here, on Bonnie's blog and on CodePlex.com\SQLServerSamples.