Archive for the ‘SQL Server’ Category

Wrapup: Columbus, GA SQL Server User Group, August 25, 2009

Tuesday, I drove to Columbus,GA to speak at the Columbus GA SQL Server User Group; I had first met Ken Simmons at the Birmingham SQL Saturday, and had promised him that I would drive down there to present.  Ken’s done a great job of organizing a PASS chapter in a small-town setting; Columbus doesn’t have [...]

August 29, 2009 · stuart · No Comments
Posted in: Conferences, SQL Server, SQLServerPedia Syndication, User Groups

Columbus, GA SQL Server Users Group – August 25th

Just confirmed today with Ken Simmons that I’ll be presenting at the Columbus GA SQL Server Users Group on August 25th at 6 pm at the Columbus Public library; if you’re in mid-west Georgia (and a data geek), come join us, and stop by and say “hi!” I’ll be re-hashing a talk I gave at [...]

August 2, 2009 · stuart · No Comments
Posted in: SQL Server, SQLServerPedia Syndication, User Groups

Fun with NEWSEQUENTIALID()

We’re thinking about converting the constrain on an existing column in a table with billions of rows of data.  The column is a uniqueidentifier serving as a nonclustered primary key; we’re planning on replacing the NEWID() constraint to a NEWSEQUENTIALID().  What is challenging me is my concern over primary key collisions; will the new default [...]

July 31, 2009 · stuart · One Comment
Posted in: SQL, SQL Server, SQLServerPedia Syndication

Partitioning computed columns

For a project at work, I’ve been asked to help optimize our ETL process.  Part of that involves taking an existing table, and partitioning it along two existing columns.  Since the partitioning process only supports partitioning on one column, the obvious choice is to use a computed column.  I ran into some issues along the [...]

July 22, 2009 · stuart · No Comments
Posted in: SQL, SQL Server, SQLServerPedia Syndication

Quick Tip: TempDB on a multi-core SQL Server box

Just learned this today from one of the Microsoft support reps reviewing our SQL Server 2008 box for performance optimizations: if you are running SQL Server on a multi-core box, you should set up tempdb to have as many data files as there are physical CPU’s (up to a reasonable limit).  These files should also [...]

July 9, 2009 · stuart · One Comment
Posted in: SQL Server, SQLServerPedia Syndication

SQL Server 2008 Upgrade block: SQL Server Service Health Check

I’m posting this because I hope it helps someone else avoid losing several hours of work like I did yesterday.  Even though I’m a developer, I’m also the only DBA in our development group, and I was tasked with upgrading one of our dev boxes from SQL 2005 to SQL 2008. Install started OK, but [...]

June 17, 2009 · stuart · No Comments
Posted in: SQL Server, SQLServerPedia Syndication

SCRUM, Source Control, and the SQL Server Developer (Part 2)

So my last post focused on the modifications my shop has made to our implementation of Scrum without a lot of details about how we manage our code changes.  This post is intended to explain how we set up source control to support the scrum process. Source control is one of those poorly-defined practices; it’s [...]

May 20, 2009 · stuart · No Comments
Posted in: SQL, SQL Server, SQLServerPedia Syndication, VSTS:DB

SQL Server & XML: links of interest

I’ve been working on a project recently that requires using XML in SQL Server, so I’ve been searching the web to find references. Books Online is unusually obtuse on this subject (the samples are sub-par for this complex subject), so I’ve been trying to find good examples of how it works. Here’s some of the [...]

May 14, 2009 · stuart · No Comments
Posted in: SQL Server, SQLServerPedia Syndication, XML

Rube Goldberg would be proud…

This post is a bit of a rant; I spent the whole day trying to resolve a curious chain of events.  Basically, I wasted a day of development troubleshooting something stupid; hopefully, others will learn from my mistakes, and avoid the pain and suffering I experienced. It all started with SQL Server 2008; we’re looking [...]

April 30, 2009 · stuart · 2 Comments
Posted in: SQL Server, SQLServerPedia Syndication, VSTS:DB