SQL Server Engine Tips : Announcements

SQL Server 2005 SP2 Re-release and post fixes

SQL Server Engine Team — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 00:21:16 GMT

Bob Ward from PSS has a wonderful blog article that explains the details about the re-release of SQL Server 2005 SP2 and fixes posted later. This is a must read for anyone deploying SQL Server 2005 SP2 to understand the various hotfixes, GDRs and procedures. Please visit his link for more details.

SQL Server 2005 SP2 Re-release and post fixes

-- Umachandar

New MSDN Books Online search functionality

SQL Server Engine Team — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 21:53:12 GMT

Check out the new Books Online search functionality online. The link below provides a scoped search of Books Online that returns a more precise and targeted result set. You can use it to search Books Online content quickly.

http://search.live.com/macros/sql_server_user_education/booksonline

Please direct your feedback to SQLServerUE@hotmail.com.

-- Umachandar

SQL Server 2005 Performance Dashboard Reports

SQL Server Engine Team — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 22:22:43 GMT

The SQL Server 2005 Performance Dashboard Reports are Reporting Services report files designed to be used with the Custom Reports feature introduced in the SQL Server 2005 SP2 release of SQL Server Management Studio. The reports allow a database administrator to quickly identify whether there is a current bottleneck on their system, and if a bottleneck is present, capture additional diagnostic data that may be necessary to resolve the problem. For example, if the system is experiencing waits for disk IO the dashboard allows the user to quickly see which sessions are performing the most IO, what query is running on each session and the query plan for each statement.

Common performance problems that the dashboard reports may help to resolve include:
- CPU bottlenecks (and what queries are consuming the most CPU)
- IO bottlenecks (and what queries are performing the most IO).
- Index recommendations generated by the query optimizer (missing indexes)
- Blocking
- Latch contention

The information captured in the reports is retrieved from SQL Server's dynamic management views. There is no additional tracing or data capture required, which means the information is always available and this is a very inexpensive means of monitoring your server.

Reporting Services is not required to be installed to use the Performance Dashboard Reports.

Check out these reports and experiment with them to troubleshoot your performance problems. You can find the reports at:

SQL Server 2005 Performance Dashboard Reports

Umachandar

SQL Server Performance Engineering Team Blog

SQL Server Engine Team — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 03:16:15 GMT

I would like to announce the blog from my team - SQL Server Performance Engineering. Feel free to visit our blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/sqlperf for your performance related questions and needs. Use the email link in the home page to share your feedback on performance and topics of interest.

Umachandar Jayachandran

SQL Server 2005 SP2 has been released...

SQL Server Engine Team — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 01:24:28 GMT

SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 2 has been released. You can find more information from the service pack 2 page.

This service pack extends the functionality of SQL Server in many ways. The What's New document highlights the major changes in the Database Engine, Analysis Services, Integration Services and others. The service pack also has performance and manageability enhancements that will be of interest to lot of developers and database administrators.

Please download the latest service pack and test your database applications with it to see the benefits.

Umachandar Jayachandran

Database Applications Profile Survey in http://connect.microsoft.com/sqlserver

SQL Server Engine Team — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 22:16:00 GMT

My team (Data & SQL Storage Performance Team) is conducting a survey on http://connect.microsoft.com/sqlserver to better understand SQL Server workloads. The connect link below will take you directly to the survey:

https://connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer/Survey/Survey.aspx?SurveyID=2226

Please consider providing your workload characteristics and hardware configuration to help us better understand the workloads that run on SQL Server. This is a detailed survey so we are hoping to determine more than what SQM or SQLH2 or other mechanisms offer today. Thanks for participating.

--
Umachandar Jayachandran

SQL Server 2005 SP2 December CTP is available for download

SQL Server Engine Team — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 04:37:25 GMT

SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 2 December CTP is available now for download. You can download it from:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=d2da6579-d49c-4b25-8f8a-79d14145500d&DisplayLang=en

Note that the December CTP has been published to the same location as the November CTP so if you come from the SQL Server 2005 CTP Home Page and get to December CTP don't be confused.

Please take this opportunity to test your applications with the new service pack and provide feedback on the new features or bugs that you encounter.

Next week, I will be posting series of articles that highlight some of the new features in SQL Server 2005 SP2 release.

Thanks

Umachandar

Download SQL Server 2005 SP2 CTP

SQL Server Engine Team — Thu, 09 Nov 2006 00:04:00 GMT

SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 2 (SP2) CTP has been released. You can provide feedback on the CTP release via http://connect.microsoft.com/sqlserver. The link for the various downloads is:

http://www.microsoft.com/sql/ctp.mspx

SQL Server 2005 SP2 CTP contains some new features in the database engine (vardecimal data types, object_name function enhancement, logon triggers, Common Criteria Compliance, sys.dm_exec_text_query_plan DMV, plan cache improvements among others). The list of bugs fixed in the release can be found at:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb%3ben-us%3b921896

Please let me know if you have questions regarding the new features. For any issues with setup or bugs in the CTP release please use the connect feedback mechanism or post in the SQL Server MSDN forums.

Top 5 relational data warehouse performance improvements you would like to see in next version of SQL Server

SQL Server Engine Team — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 02:35:00 GMT

Hello Everyone,

We are currently looking at top performance issues for various workloads and how we can improve those in next version of SQL Server. We are collecting feedback from various customer sources. I would like to extend an invitation to readers here for feedback on top 5 relational data warehouse performance improvements you would like to see in SQL Server.

Please bear the following in mind:

1. Briefly describe the relational data warehouse workload or scenario or application. More details you can provide for us the better.

2. Prioritize the list of performance improvements in order of importance or impact to your workload. You can also just highlight the top 5 performance problems with running your relational data warehouse workload in SQL Server

3. Feel free to suggest any feature(s) that will help in improving the performance of the particular data warehouse workload or scenario

I will consolidate the feedback and post summary version of it as a link in this post.

Thanks
Umachandar

Top 5 OLTP performance improvements you would like to see in the next version of SQL Server

SQL Server Engine Team — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 02:28:00 GMT

Hello Everyone,

We are currently looking at top performance issues for various workloads and how we can improve those in next version of SQL Server. We are collecting feedback from various customer sources. I would like to extend an invitation to readers here for feedback on top 5 OLTP performance improvements you would like to see in SQL Server.

Please bear the following in mind:

1. Briefly describe the OLTP workload or scenario or application. More details you can provide for us the better

3. Feel free to suggest any feature(s) that will help in improving the performance of the particular OLTP workload or scenario or application

I will consolidate the feedback and post summary version of it as a link in this post.

Thanks
Umachandar

Using catalog views in SQL Server 2005

SQL Server Engine Team — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 21:31:00 GMT

Did you know that the catalog views in SQL Server 2005 exposes metadata for various objects in a database and at the server-level? This is the preferred method of accessing metadata. It is a much richer mechanism that doesn't require access to system tables or undocumented columns or status bits. If you want standard and portable access to metadata then you can still use the INFORMATION_SCHEMA views but it is limited to standard specific features, data types and views.

I have posted several topics in the past that shows how to use the information in various catalog views. And the Books Online Documentation has a topic that has answers to several frequently asked questions. It shows you how to use the catalog views to get answers to following questions for example:

How do I find the LOB data types of a specified table?
How do I find the CHECK constraints that depend on a specified CLR user-defined type?

How do I find the dependencies on a specified function?

How do I find all the owners of entities contained in a specified schema?

You can find the topic using the links below:

Books Online in MSDN: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms345522.aspx

Books Online Client: ms-help://MS.SQLCC.v9/MS.SQLSVR.v9.en/udb9/html/ca202580-c37e-4ccd-9275-77ce79481f64.htm

Please check it out and send your feedback using the Books Online feedback mechanism if you want to see additional questions. You can also post such questions here and I will write the queries using the catalog views.

Umachandar

New whitepapers on physical database storage and tempdb...

SQL Server Engine Team — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 00:35:00 GMT

Below are links to two new whitepapers from the storage engine team. Please check it out to get better understanding of the new features in SQL Server 2005 and enhancements.

Working with TempDB
http://download.microsoft.com/download/4/f/8/4f8f2dc9-a9a7-4b68-98cb-163482c95e0b/WorkingWithTempDB.doc

Physical Database Storage
http://download.microsoft.com/download/4/f/8/4f8f2dc9-a9a7-4b68-98cb-163482c95e0b/PhysDBStor.doc

Performance tips...

SQL Server Engine Team — Wed, 15 Feb 2006 02:31:00 GMT

I recently moved to the Central Performance Team in the SQL Server product group. My group is responsible for box-wide performance, benchmark and scalability. Given my new role I will be posting more of performance tips and techniques. I will be covering the following topics:

Query performance tips
Engine features that improve performance
Troubleshooting performance problems using new SQL Server 2005 features
Differences between SQL Server 2000 and SQL Server 2005 with respect to certain features or behavior changes that might affect performance

Please comment to this post if you would like some specific topics to be covered.

Thanks

Umachandar

Top 5 features you would like to see in the next version of SQL Server

SQL Server Engine Team — Sat, 08 Oct 2005 01:45:00 GMT

Here is an opportunity to discuss about the top 5 features that you would like to see in the next version of SQL Server. It would be nice if you can include a sentence for each feature explaining why it is required. Please use features of SQL Server 2005 as starting point meaning do not ask for those which are already in SQL Server 2005. And the features should be restricted to the query language (SQL) and the programming language (TSQL) only. Examples include enhancements to DDLs, new relational features, new programming capabilities or data types.

Lastly, note that this is just an informal request from me. This doesn't mean that these features will get into the next version of SQL Server. But I will take these requests and file them along with existing suggestions/sqlwish emails that many in our team maintain. And it can help prioritize the list for the product eventually.

Thanks
Umachandar

Summary of the responses received so far can be found at http://umachandar.members.winisp.net/files/top_5_features_summary.htm

Request for topics...

SQL Server Engine Team — Fri, 23 Sep 2005 05:07:00 GMT

Please post requests for topics or features that you would like to know about. This can be any of the SQL/TSQL language features or programmability in general. There are so many things to discuss about wrt SQL Server 2005 so it will be good to gauge interest of database developers/DBAs out there. Thanks.

Umachandar