Grumpy Old DBA - All Comments

re: Information Overload ??

sql_noob — Tue, 27 May 2008 19:50:43 GMT

great info, but i have so many RSS feeds that i just got to this.

RSS is great but i'm up to 195 feeds. and now there are a lot of great SQL people on twitter and friendfeed and linkedin and it's hard to follow everything

re: Covering Clustered Indexes

sql_noob — Tue, 27 May 2008 19:45:05 GMT

i've never done real scientific testing, but i never really likes composite indexes. used them sometimes, but i prefer single column indexes.

i know there may be an IO penalty and the correct thing to do is to write efficient code, but hardware is so cheap and powerful these days that in a lot of cases I think it's OK to break this rule.

I don't like composites because a lot of times a query will change or a new query will be written and almost always it will not take the composite index and revert to a scan and there is no way to write it to take advantage of the composite index.

SQL in the Wild » Blog Archive » Memory and SQL 2005 SP2

SQL in the Wild » Blog Archive » Memory and SQL 2005 SP2 — Fri, 02 May 2008 14:47:42 GMT

Pingback from SQL in the Wild » Blog Archive » Memory and SQL 2005 SP2

re: Information Overload ??

Saggi Neumann — Thu, 01 May 2008 14:05:13 GMT

Hi Grumpy,

You'd probably want to OPML those blogs instead of bookmark them... (OPML is primarily used to list web feeds).

If you use a feed reader (I use Google's), you'd never have to check if anyone posted something new, and it's a great way to share your favorite posts and also share your reading list. Give it a try :)

Some SQL Server Tuning Tips

sKatterBrainZ — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 12:50:13 GMT

There are quite a few places to find information about improving the performance of your SQL Server machines

re: Come to the UK SSUG

simonsabin — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 17:32:45 GMT

There isn't a Reading meeting in May due to a lack of rooms being available in TVP.

The next london event is going to be a "SQL Server 2008 Launch" event www.sqlserverfaq.com

re: Disappointing Review.

BrentO — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 12:47:37 GMT

I read that exact same review and I came away with that exact same conclusion. I was so disappointed because DBAs rely on review results like this, and this is nowhere near enough information to make a good decision.

Forget who won or lost the race - they weren't even going around a track. If the test server doesn't have enough CPU or storage speed, then it's not really going to showcase any of the compression methods, and it's not going to pinpoint bottlenecks inside the backup software.

I immediately thought back to other product comparisons I've seen where the reviewer said, "This column is how each product performed out of the box, and this column is how it performed after I'd tried all of the parameters and picked the fastest one for my hardware." When I evaluated & purchased backup software a couple of years ago, that was exactly what I did: I grabbed demos of everything out there and slapped together a spreadsheet of metrics with the fastest hardware in the shop.

When I read a comparison review like that of products I know really, really well, then it makes me wonder about their reviews of products I don't know so well, and makes me think they're not credible either.

re: Disk Partition Alignment ( SANs and Diskpart )

BrentO — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 11:00:16 GMT

I should have mentioned - I even make a note about this in my SQL Server 2005 Setup checklist:

re: Disk Partition Alignment ( SANs and Diskpart )

BrentO — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 10:59:18 GMT

Yep, you're absolutely correct. This is an issue with Windows 2003 and prior versions for every SAN out there. 2008 handles it by automatically aligning the partitions during creation, thankfully, but for older versions, you're still stuck going into DISKPART.

This affects more than just SQL, too - it's a big part of Exchange 2003 storage setup, since Exchange 2003 hammers drives pretty hard too.

re: Bug in UK SSUG 2008

GrumpyOldDBA — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 15:28:47 GMT

and me.

Bank holidays are for taking the wife shopping for shoes!

re: Bug in UK SSUG 2008

Tony Rogerson — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 14:42:45 GMT

Lol - you forget I'm self-employed; bank holidays are just a day where I work undisturbed.

Tony

re: Things that may not be right on your SQL server.

ssqa.net — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 10:13:39 GMT

Also I would like to refer http://sqlserver-qa.net/blogs/perftune/archive/2008/02/05/3182.aspx post for the newbie to go about.

re: Only once every four years thank goodness!

Uri Dimant — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 13:59:23 GMT

Hello GrumpyOldDBA (sorry do not know what your name is)

This comment comes out from MS guy

A bug has been discovered in the CTPs of SQL Server 2008 related to leap

year. Although there is no known impact on SQL Server 2005 or prior

versions at this time, we are continuing research on all versions. The

result of this bug is that SQL Server 2008 services will not start during

the 24 hours of Feb 29 GMT.

Action: Do NOT stop or restart any SQL Server 2008 services during those 24

hours.

We are communicating this information to you early in our investigation, and

we will issue an update within 90 minutes.

These are the details we have at this time:

. We are currently testing workarounds and a longer term code fix.

. Modifying the system time is not a work-around, may cause side-effects,

and is strongly discouraged.

. At this time, there is no known customer impact on SQL Server 2005 or

prior versions

. There is no known danger of data corruption or security exposure

. This is on all editions of SQL Server 2008

. This is on all operating systems

re: Analysing Indexes Summary

GrumpyOldDBA — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 12:12:21 GMT

sorry it takes a bit longer to load the mhtml pages than std html.

re: Analysing Indexes Summary

JasonMassie — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 21:30:17 GMT

Nevermind. I got it. Looks like good stuff.