The Bit Bucket

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

I posted another podcast over the weekend. Late last week, I managed to get a show recorded with Adam Machanic. Adam’s always fascinating. In this show, he’s talking about what he’s found regarding increasing query performance using parallelism. Late in the show, he gives his thoughts on a number of topics related to the upcoming SQL Server 2014.

Enjoy!

The show is online now: SQL Down Under Podcast

2013-06-30

I have to say that I continue to be frustrated with finding out how to do things in Windows 8. Here’s another one and it’s recorded so it might help someone else. I’ve also documented what I tried so that if anyone from the product group ever reads this, they’ll understand how I searched for it and might try to make it easier.

I wanted to add a network loopback adapter, to have a fixed IP address to work with when using an “internal” network with Hyper-V. (The fact that I even need to do this is also painful. I don’t know why Hyper-V can’t make it easy to work with host system folders, etc. as easily as I can with VirtualPC, VirtualBox, etc. but that’s a topic for another day).

2013-06-13

One of the things that I’ve been busy with lately is reviewing a series of upcoming whitepapers from Microsoft.

The SQLCAT team today launched one of those whitepapers. It’s a performance guide for SQL Server when working with Azure VMs (Virtual Machines).

It’s great to see that it’s been released. There’s more to working with SQL Server in Azure than just putting it onto a VM. It’s great to see much of this now documented.

2013-06-03

I’m really pleased to see the number of courses that we’re offering is increasing.

By popular demand, we’ve extended our Query Performance Tuning and Advanced T-SQL class to Sydney. Previously, we’ve only been running this course in Melbourne but demand in Sydney for it has continued to grow. For those that might like a Sydney-based offering, you’ll find details here now: https://training.sqldownunder.com (Also, as usual, we have several ways to attend the class. The first two days on query performance tuning, and the last three days on Advanced T-SQL are also available as standalone courses).

2013-06-03