Sql-Server

For the DayZero event at TechEd Australia last week, I presented a session on SQL Server 2014. Lots of people were keen to try SQL Server 2014 but said they don’t have much time, or they don’t have infrastructure to let them do it.

Either way, this is another example where Azure is really useful. You can spin up an Azure VM that has SQL Server 2014 CTP1 preinstalled on Windows Server. You can even choose a template that has Windows Server 2012 R2 if you want to also get exposure to that operating system. No doubt, an image with CTP2 will become available when that preview is ready.

2013-09-09

Most developers and DBAs that I come across have some level of access to an MSDN subscription, yet I am surprised about how many have not yet activated the Azure benefits that are associated with those subscriptions.

If you want to stay relevant within your organisations, it’s important to get your head around Azure and the best part is that you can do much of it at no additional cost.

2013-08-15

One of the topics that I’m covering in one of my sessions this year at TechEd Australia is around SQL Database and SQL Server in Azure VMs for DBAs. In that session, I’m planning to spend a while on hybrid on-premises / cloud scenarios.

Availability groups were introduced in SQL Server 2012 and while it’s unlikely that you’d use a synchronous replica in an Azure VM (unless the primary was also in an Azure VM), hosting an asynchronous replica in an Azure VM makes a lot of sense for disaster recovery scenarios where latency isn’t an issue.

2013-08-15

I had seen this issue before but found another cause for it today.

In this case, the client was using SCCM (System Center Configuration Manager) and couldn’t access reports from the reporting server. After resolving some other issues, I was left with “The underlying connection was closed: Could not establish trust relationship for the SSL/TLS secure channel” when I tried to go to http://servername/reports.

When I’ve seen this previously, it’s been to do with the trust relationship between a pair of servers. However, I hadn’t seen it come up before on a single server.

2013-08-05

The T-SQL scripting tools (such as SQL Server Management Studio) provide two options for scripting names: either to quote them or to omit quotes.

If you avoid things like spaces in object names, you can mostly get away without quoting i.e.

Sales.Customers is just fine and doesn’t need to be [Sales].[Customers].

Even then, one problem that can arise is that a name you had used in your code could become a SQL reserved word. In that case, you either need to change every reference to it (painful), or quote it wherever it’s used (also painful). So quoting by default is always a safe option. However, it makes the scripts much harder to read due to visual noise.

2013-08-03

More and more practical information around working with tabular data models is starting to appear as more and more sites get deployed.

At SQL Down Under, we’ve already helped quite a few customers move to tabular data models in Analysis Services and have started to collect quite a bit of information on what works well (and what doesn’t) in terms of performance of these models. We’ve also been running a lot of training on tabular data models.

2013-08-02

One of the questions that I’ve often been asked is about how you can backup databases in Windows Azure SQL Database.

What we have had access to was the ability to export a database to a BACPAC. A BACPAC is basically just a zip file that contains a bunch of metadata along with a set of bcp files for each of the tables in the database. Each table in the database is exported one after the other, so this does not produce a transactionally-consistent backup at a specific point in time. To get a transactionally-consistent copy, you need a database that isn’t in use.

2013-07-24

Why learn?

I was listening today to one of Scott Hanselman’s awesome podcasts with Miguel de Icaza and during the show they discussed things that you really should invest in. One list that came up was a good bed, a good chair, and to learn to type. Most of us spend 1/3 of the day in a bed and 1/3 of the day in a chair, so they seem like no-brainers. Typing is an interesting addition to that list.

2013-07-18

I have days where I can’t decide if I’m frustrated or sad about how I see SQL Server being used by applications, or if I’m happy that this keeps us in ongoing work.

Today I’ve been looking at a system that’s having performance issues. There are three key applications on the system. Each comes from a different vendor and when I look at how each one of them interacts with the server, it’s really frustrating. I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s mostly due to application frameworks that are being used. Here’s an example:

2013-07-11

At SQL Down Under, we’ve been working quite a lot over the past year with customers that are moving some of their applications to cloud-based systems, and mostly on Windows Azure. One message that I often hear about using Windows Azure SQL Database (WASD) is that all you need to do is point your application’s connection string to the cloud and all will be good. While there are occasional cases where that is true, that generally isn’t going to give you a great outcome. To really get a great outcome, you generally will need to check out how your application has been designed.

2013-07-09