Microsoft SQL Server Development Customer Advisory Team : Recommended Links

Remember to move DTS2000 packages when upgrading msdb from 2005 to 2008

tkejser — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 14:06:00 GMT

Some customers prefer to upgrade to SQL Server 2008 by detaching all databases from their SQL Server 2005 instance and then reattaching them to a completely new SQL Server 2008 instance.

If you choose this upgrade strategy, you should be aware that you cannot detach an msdb database from a SQL Server 2005 instance and reattach it to a SQL Server 2008 instance. If you try, you will get an error message. Backup/restore will not work for msdb in this upgrade scenario either.

The msdb database may contain objects that are relevant to your installation – for example agent jobs and DTS 2000 packages. When upgrading, you should make sure you move all relevant objects in msdb. You can use tasks in Integration Services to move most of these objects. However, DTS 2000 packages cannot be moved using the Integration Services tasks. Instead, you must manually move the contents sysdtspackage.

The CSS team has a great blog entry describing how to move DTS 2000 packages to a SQL Server 2008 instance: How to copy DTS 2000 packages between servers (and from SQL 2000 to SQL 2005 and SQL 2008)

Reintroducing sqlcat.com

denny.lee — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 20:24:00 GMT

Check out the new look and feel of the sqlcat.com! Now you have easy access and views of our Top 10 Lists, Technical Notes, Whitepapers, and Toolbox. As well, now our blogs our mirrored to sqlcat.com for easy access to all SQLCAT tips, best practices, and lessons learned.

Right now, you can see our graphic noting the "SQLCAT Track at PASS" where the SQLCAT team will have 15 sessions providing indepth technical learnings and best practices from some of the largest real-world SQL implementations.

So review our site to learn more ... and see you at PASS!

SQL Server Scale Out

kevincox — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 14:00:00 GMT

After a few recent conversations with CIO and CTO types, I was amazed that there is still the concept out there that SQL Server doesn’t scale well. So I sat down to write a lengthy blog to dispel that rumor. After doing some research, I found that there is so much already written and available on the web that I decided to gather all the links in one spot and make this blog a launching point for your own research and reading pleasure.

After reading these, I’m sure you will agree that the SQL Server relational engine will scale to the largest data requirements. In fact, I will go so far to state that SQL Server will take on the toughest database challenges in the world. If you don’t agree post a comment here and let me know your opinion.

If you are already using SQL Server and want to know more about the technical solutions on how to make your situation scale or perform better, go to http://sqlcat.com and read the variety of technical notes and white papers posted there. On this site, you will also find the links to the SQL Server Best Practices site in the upper right corner. Both these sites contain some of the best how-to guides around SQL Server.

If you only have a few minutes to read one or two articles and want to get an overview of most of the scalability options, read the one by Roger Wolter on Scaling out SQL Server 2005 or the one by Bob Beauchemin. These two overlap a little bit but each has a unique perspective on scale out. They will help give you a vision on which option would be right for your project.

Scalability Architecture choices (use for Envisioning and Architecture phases of project)

Scaling Out SQL Server 2005, Roger Wolter, http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa479364.aspx

Planning, Implementing, and Administering Scaleout Solutions with SQL Server 2005, http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/sql/2005/scaleout.mspx , Bob Beauchemin

Service-Oriented Data Architecture: App-Server:Lite?, David Campbell, http://research.microsoft.com/research/pubs/view.aspx?tr_id=983

Academic / Conceptual oriented papers

Data on the Outside vs. Data on the Inside. An Examination of the Impact of Service Oriented Architectures on Data, Pat Helland, http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms954587.aspx

Distributed Partitioned Views

SQL Server Megaservers: Scalability, Availability, Manageability, Jim Gray and Richard Waymire. (old article but still has relevant parts) http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/sql/2000/plan/ssmsam.mspx

Implementation and Internals (Use for Detail Design phases of project)

Scalability Internals http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/sql/2005/scaleout.mspx

Architecting Service Broker Applications, Roger Wolter, http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa964144.aspx

Achieving Scalability and Availability with Peer-to-Peer Transactional Replication, Michael Blythe, http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/sql/2005/p2ptranrepl.mspx

Scalable shared databases are supported by SQL Server 2005, http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;910378

Anything on this site: http://www.sqlskills.com/whitepapers.asp

Peer-to-Peer Replication

Inside Microsoft.com: Managing SQL Server 2005 Peer-to-Peer Replication, David Lindquist http://www.microsoft.com/technet/technetmag/issues/2006/07/InsideMSFT/default.as px

Service Broker

Inside MSDN: Building the MSDN Content Aggregation System, John Mollman, http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc163586.aspx

Data dependent routing

MSN: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/sql/2005/scddrtng.mspx

Comparison

SQL vs Oracle RAC http://www.microsoft.com/sql/techinfo/whitepapers/oraclerac.mspx Note: this is a 2-year old doc and some of the RAC problems mentioned in this article have been addressed by Oracle.

SQL Server is being used to build some of the largest database applications in the world. Evidence of some these large projects is documented on http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies. Mission critical systems in core banking, telecom, stock exchanges, retail and many other industries are using SQL Server to solve their tough business requirements.

Kevin

Introducing SQLCAT.com

denny.lee — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 20:05:00 GMT

The SQL Customer Advisory Team has put the final touches on the site http://sqlcat.com/ which is our new hub for all things that are part of the SQLCAT! Our new site is a portal to all SQLCAT resources including:

Top 10 Lists: Summary list of Best Practices and Recommendations
Technical Notes: Deep level technical short papers
Technical Spotlights: Technical end-to-end customer case studies
Searchable and Tagger friendly; post comments and provide feedback!
Search all of our SQLCAT Best Practices Whitepapers
Easily find our SQLCAT Blogs and other materials

The site is regularly updated with deep technical information on enterprise SQL implementations.

Performance Analysis Tool - DMVStats

lingzhuz — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 07:38:24 GMT

Tom Davidson wrote:

I've been working with database applications for the last 25 years. A particular area of interest for me is SQL Server performance. As part of the Microsoft SQL Server Development Customer Advisory Team (SQLCAT) for the last 7 years, I've had an opportunity to observe what works (and more importantly what doesn't !) in the enterprise space. One of the key enterprise needs prior to SQL Server 2005, was an effective mechanism for troubleshooting and performance tuning for many common user scenarios. SQL Server Development along with SQLCAT & PSS collaborated on defining these common scenarios as well as a mechanism for troubleshooting and performance tuning that ultimately resulted in the SQL Server 2005 feature called Dynamic Management Views (DMVs). DMVs provide a consistent and transparent interface to view changing server states.

SQL Server 2005 SP2 does include a helpful Performance Dashboard comprised of a series of Reporting Services reports to identify some performance issues using query statistics such as execution counts, IOs, worker time, and query plans - courtesy of Microsoft's stellar PSS SQL escalation team - Keith Elmore, Bob Ward, Bob Dorr et al. (see Performance Dashboard for more info). While SQL Server 2005 provides all this great new DMV plumbing, there are a whole series of common user scenarios that are difficult to analyze and pinpoint. Examples include:

what happened yesterday or last week? e.g. historical forensics,
trending,
source of obscure or transient waits (*not included in query stats),
comparisons before and after application changes

Over the last year, I've been working on such a tool called DMVstats with some of my CAT colleagues. DMVstats collects performance oriented DMVs into a data warehouse, and provides a methodology called 'Waits' and 'Queues' to identify and track down performance issues. Drill-through analysis is provided by reporting services reports.
DMVstats can be downloaded at http://www.codeplex.com/sqldmvstats. Please comment on the DMVstats tool - your comments & suggestions - good or bad, all are welcomed!

Four new best practices articles are available

denny.lee — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 09:39:00 GMT

Four new best practices articles are available at the SQL Server Best Practices site on Technet (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sqlserver/bb331794.aspx).

Two of the articles are on Analysis Services Processing and Querying best practices:

Analysis Services Processing Best Practices
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/sql/bestpractice/ssaspbpr.mspx
by Denny Lee, Nicholas Dritsas, Carl Rabeler

Analysis Services Query Performance Top 10 Best Practices
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/sql/bestpractice/ssasqptb.mspx
by Carl Rabeler

For those of you interested in Full-text Queries on large catalogs, a great paper is

SQL Server 2005 Full-Text Queries on Large Catalogs: Lessons Learned
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/sql/bestpractice/ftslesld.mspx
by Ron Talmage

As well, for guidance on building a Scale Out Querying for Analysis Services, please refer to:

Scale-Out Querying with Analysis Services
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/sql/bestpractice/scoqryas.mspx
Denny Lee, Nicholas Dritsas

New Best Practices Articles are available (May 2007)

denny.lee — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 10:02:00 GMT

You can check out the three new Best Practices Articles

Predeployment I/O Best Practices
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/sql/bestpractice/pdpliobp.mspx
by Mike Ruthruff

Partial Database Availability
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/sql/bestpractice/pdbavail.mspx
by Danny Tambs

Comparing Tables Organized with Clustered Indexes versus Heaps
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/sql/bestpractice/clusivsh.mspx
by Burzin Patel, Sanjay Mishra

SQL Server Best Practices Website

thomasda — Sat, 09 Dec 2006 02:28:00 GMT

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/sql/bestpractice/default.mspx