The Bit Bucket

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

If you have followed any of the Azure website forums, you’d realize that having SSL available was one of the highest rated requests. That’s hardly surprising given the number of clients that want to use these sites for eCommerce work.

So it’s really good to see that Scott Guthrie and the team have been listening and that SSL is now available. To see the details, click on the “SSL” button in the “Learn More” area of the Azure pricing page. An FAQ is also provided.

2013-06-03

Yesterday I was at a site where they decided to change the service account for the SQL Server services on a set of systems. After changing the service accounts, SQL Server restarted just fine on all machines except one.

I had used the SQL Server Configuration Manager to make the changes (important to not just use the Services applet in Administrative Tools) but I got the typical error telling me that the service wouldn’t start in a timely fashion. The server was running SQL Server 2008 R2 SP2.

2013-05-30

I was so glad to hear today that Azure is expanding to Australia. This helps with two remaining areas of concern that I’ve heard from a variety of customers: