WesleyB's Blog : SQL Server 2005

Lock Pages In Memory in SQL Server Standard Edition

wesback — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 12:30:00 GMT

Until now "Lock Pages In Memory" was an option only available to SQL Server Enterprise Edition customers. Very simply put it prevents SQL Server from paging out the memory it has allocated (a deep explanation can be found in the references below). We got a lot of feedback from customers who wanted to have support for this in SQL Server Standard Edition too. So we are very pleased to announce that it will be available in SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server 2008 Standard Edition too (as of SQL Server 2005 SP3 CU4 and SQL Server 2008 SP1 CU2). As with everything do not just enable this option by default but carefully plan and test.

More information on this can be found on http://blogs.msdn.com/psssql/archive/2009/04/24/sql-server-locked-pages-and-standard-sku.aspx

Slava Oks did a great job in explaining the Lock Pages In Memory (and AWE) mechanism on http://blogs.msdn.com/slavao/archive/2005/04/29/413425.aspx and http://blogs.msdn.com/slavao/archive/2005/08/31/458545.aspx.

Cumulative update package 2 for SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 3

wesback — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 10:42:00 GMT

Time to take SQL Server 2005 SP3 to build 9.00.4211 with this new CU2 for SP3.
More information here.

For those of you who are still on SP2 there is a cumulative update package which takes you to build 9.00.3315.
More information here.

Cumulative update package 1 for SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 3

wesback — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 12:21:00 GMT

We know this is a bit unusual but we have released the first cumulative update package for SQL Server 2005 SP3 too, this time it will take you to build 9.00.4207. This CU contains the fixes that are in CU10 & CU11 for Service Pack 2.

More information can be found here.

Happy holidays!

SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 3

wesback — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 13:21:00 GMT

The service pack many people have been waiting for has been released. Now I need to remember another build number (9.00.4035) ;-)
Get it here.

For those of you who are still on SP2, we also released CU11 for SQL Server 2005 SP2 which will take you to build 9.00.3301.
More info here.

Of course all this comes with an update to the Books Online which can be found here and an updated Feature Pack here.

SQL Server 2005 SP3 - Beta

wesback — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 23:27:00 GMT

The first public beta of Service Pack 3 for SQL Server 2005 is now available for download.
This is obviously for testing purposes only! If you have feedback please feel free to let us know on Connect.

What happens when I update my partitioning key?

wesback — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 12:00:00 GMT

This is a question someone asked me yesterday and if you think about it, this is really a good question.

The partitioning function defines on which partition the row will be mapped based on the partitioning column value. Imagine that you have a table on which you have defined partitioning to make all rows with RecordType 1 to go to the PRIMARY filegroup and those with RecordType 2 to the ACTIVEDATA filegroup. How do we handle updates that change the RecordType from 1 to 2? The record obviously physically needs to move to the ACTIVEDATA filegroup but we are not inserting new data, we are just updating an existing row which has already been placed on PRIMARY.

Internally we are actually doing this by using a DELETE-INSERT operation. The 'old' row is deleted and the row with updated values is inserted and thus using the partitioning function to decide the physical placement of the row.

This is actually the same as with clustered indexes, when the value of your clustering key changes it might well be possible that its location in the table needs to change too and this is done in exactly the same manner.

--Clustered key update
SET NOCOUNT ON
GO

IF EXISTS (SELECT * FROM sys.objects WHERE object_id = OBJECT_ID(N'[dbo].[myClusteredTable]') AND type in (N'U'))
DROP TABLE [dbo].[myClusteredTable]
GO

SET ANSI_NULLS ON
GO

SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON
GO

SET ANSI_PADDING ON
GO

CREATE TABLE [dbo].[myClusteredTable](
[myClusteringKey] [int] NOT NULL,
[myFiller] [char](100) NOT NULL,
CONSTRAINT [PK_myClusteredTable] PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED
(
[myClusteringKey] ASC
)WITH (PAD_INDEX = OFF, STATISTICS_NORECOMPUTE = OFF, IGNORE_DUP_KEY = OFF, ALLOW_ROW_LOCKS = ON, ALLOW_PAGE_LOCKS = ON) ON [PRIMARY]
) ON [PRIMARY]
GO

SET ANSI_PADDING OFF
GO

INSERT INTO myClusteredTable VALUES (1, 'F')
GO

INSERT INTO myClusteredTable
SELECT TOP (1) myClusteringKey + 1, myFiller FROM myClusteredTable ORDER BY myClusteringKey DESC
GO 100

CHECKPOINT --If database is in SIMPLE recovery this will clear the transaction log
GO

UPDATE myClusteredTable
SET myClusteringKey = 102
WHERE myClusteringKey = 1

SELECT * FROM ::fn_dblog(null, null) --Look for LOP_DELETE_ROWS and LOP_INSERT_ROWS on the object
GO

--Partitioning key update
SET NOCOUNT ON
GO

IF EXISTS (SELECT * FROM sys.objects WHERE object_id = OBJECT_ID(N'[dbo].[myPartitionedTable]') AND type in (N'U'))
DROP TABLE [dbo].[myPartitionedTable]
GO

IF EXISTS (SELECT * FROM sys.partition_schemes WHERE name = N'RecordType_PS')
DROP PARTITION SCHEME [RecordType_PS]
GO

IF EXISTS (SELECT * FROM sys.partition_functions WHERE name = N'RecordType_PF')
DROP PARTITION FUNCTION [RecordType_PF]
GO

SET ANSI_NULLS ON
GO

SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON
GO

CREATE PARTITION FUNCTION [RecordType_PF](tinyint) AS RANGE LEFT FOR VALUES (N'1', N'2')
GO

CREATE PARTITION SCHEME [RecordType_PS] AS PARTITION [RecordType_PF] TO ([PRIMARY], [ACTIVEDATA], [PRIMARY])
GO

CREATE TABLE [dbo].[myPartitionedTable](
[ID] [int] IDENTITY(1,1) NOT NULL,
[RecordType] [tinyint] NOT NULL,
CONSTRAINT [PK_myPartitionedTable] PRIMARY KEY NONCLUSTERED
(
[ID] ASC
)WITH (PAD_INDEX = OFF, STATISTICS_NORECOMPUTE = OFF, IGNORE_DUP_KEY = OFF, ALLOW_ROW_LOCKS = ON, ALLOW_PAGE_LOCKS = ON, FILLFACTOR = 90) ON [PRIMARY]
) ON RecordType_PS([RecordType])
GO

INSERT INTO myPartitionedTable VALUES(1)
INSERT INTO myPartitionedTable VALUES(2)
GO

CHECKPOINT --If database is in SIMPLE recovery this will clear the transaction log
GO

UPDATE myPartitionedTable
SET RecordType = 2
WHERE RecordType = 1
GO

SELECT * FROM ::fn_dblog(null, null) --Look for LOP_DELETE_ROWS and LOP_INSERT_ROWS on the object
WHERE AllocUnitName LIKE 'dbo.myPartitionedTable%'
GO

Cumulative update package 8 for SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 2

wesback — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 23:28:00 GMT

As already announced here, the CU8 package for SQL Server 2005 SP2 has been released.
Do not forget about the self service hotfixes - more information here.