What is Business Intelligence

Business intelligence (BI) is a broad category of application programs and technologies for gathering, storing, analyzing, and providing access to data from various data sources, thus providing enterprise users with reliable and timely information and analysis for improved decision making. To put it simply, BI is an umbrella term that refers to an assortment of software applications for analyzing an organization’s raw data for intelligent decision making for business success. BI as a discipline includes a number of related activities, including decision support, data mining, online analytical processing (OLAP), querying and reporting, statistical analysis and forecasting.

Business Intelligence for Success

Business intelligence equips enterprises to gain business advantage from data. Once an organization is powered with BI it can anticipate enhanced turnaround time on data collection, come up with fresh ideas for novel business initiatives, foresee accurate picture of customer needs and demands, and perform more targeted marketing campaigns. In addition, it will gain enhanced knowledge that will help it advance its brand into the top slot in terms of market share, cut down its client churn, reduce its overheads and also diminish delays in supply chain, among other advantages. Decisions purely based on the gut feeling cannot assure success; but in BI’s fact-based decision-making framework, confident decisions can be made for assured business success. Further, BI makes an organization agile thereby giving it a competitive edge in today’s evolving market condition.

Business Intelligence Scenario

Every day, a dairy company collects from 2,000 stores information which is uploaded to servers at its headquarters at the end of the day. This information is used by the chain’s main office to instantly analyze key operational measures such as the number of dairy products sold, profits, trends, and so forth.

Next day, by early morning the company’s managers receive performance data. Next, they verify current revenue, time required to perform each job, and other performance measures. With BI, franchisees with multiple locations can have consolidated views, as can the company’s regional managers.

This scenario clearly explains how implementation of Business intelligence can be very fruitful for an organization. BI can catalyze a business’s success in terms of

Revenues

• Distinguish the products and services that drive revenues.
• Rank customers and locations based on profitability.

Customer relationship management

• Categorize low-value customers and work toward improving their value.
• Find customer relationship issues early and take timely action to resolve them.

Sales and marketing

• Aim at high-value customers to minimize marketing risk.
• Rank the success of product promotions based on product and market segment.
• Find what is in the sales pipeline

Business Intelligence Terms

Ad Hoc Query – Ability to create an immediate ‘request for information’ using an analytical reporting tool to answer a specific business-related query.

Aggregation – Predefined summaries based on comprehensive data in the data warehouse.

Atomic data – Topmost level of detail in the data warehouse.

Attribute – Field represented by a column in reports, tables and charts.

Cube – A powerful analysis tool that is used for viewing and analyzing data in a multi-dimensional format, from any angle, in any combination, through a ‘slice and dice’ and drilldown approach.

Data – Factual information for analysis.

Data Mart – A logical subset of related information, typically around one or a few business processes, or a particular subject area.

Data Warehouse – A repository of well-organized corporate data for Business Analysis and Reporting. It is also a collection of data marts.

Database – A collection of data arranged for convenient and quick search and retrieval.

OLAP – Online Analytical Processing is a category of database software that provides an interface to help users quickly and interactively scrutinize the results in a variety of dimensions of the data.

Balanced Scorecard – A Performance management tool that recapitulates an organization’s performance from several standpoints on a single page.

Dashboard – A reporting tool that presents key indicators on a single screen, which includes measurements, metrics, and scorecards.

Data Cube – A multidimensional structure (typically over three dimensions) that forms the basis for analysis applications, allowing various types of calculations and aggregations.

Data Mapping – Process of spotting a source data element for all data elements in the target data warehouse environment.

Data Quality – It is related to facets such as accessibility, comprehensiveness, exactness, steadiness, significance and timeliness of data.

Data staging – A system where operations like data extraction, transformation and loading operations are executed.

Dimension Table – It contains attributes that describe fact records in the fact table. For instance, pupil enrollment is a central fact table with several dimensions linked to it such as Faculty, Term, and Degree.

Drill Down – A feature that allows users to click on an item to navigate through hierarchy and move to a level of better detail.

EIS – Enterprise Information System – A category of applications and technologies for presenting and analyzing corporate and external data for various management purposes.

ETL – Extract, Transform and Load -It is a three-step process at the center of data warehousing. In the first step, operational data is extracted from multiple sources. In the next step, it is transformed into the required type. In the final step, data is loaded into the data warehouse.

Forecasting – It is the formulation of trends, predictive models, and scenarios to prepare for the future for improved decision making.

Gap analysis – Study of whether the available business data supports business requirements, thus answering questions related to data accessibility, amount of data, missing data, and legacy systems. It examines information and decides on the resources and efforts required to satisfy requirements.

Granularity – Level of detail or summarization of data in the data warehouse. The more the detail, the higher the level of granularity.

Institutional performance management – The process of basing an organization’s actions and decisions on actual measured results of performance. It incorporates performance measures, benchmarks, and goals to attain best results.

Measures – A quantifiable, specific piece of information.

Metrics – Measures of performance that observe progress and evaluate trends within an organization.

Normalization – Standard database design technique for relational databases.

Slice and Dice – Multidimensional tools allow users to view data from any angle. The ability to select various angles to view data from is called slice and dice capability.

Snapshot – View of data at a particular moment.

Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com), DNS

I have wonderful experience at my recent Business Intelligence tour. I will write down in detail about my experience at different location. However, today I would like to talk about one particular question which was asked at all the locations. It was about SQL Server Accelerator for Business Intelligence (BI). Many attendee asked me how to use this tool.

SQL Server Accelerator for Business Intelligence (BI) is no more supported by Microsoft. Microsoft does not provide any support for this solution accelerator and has no plans to release future versions. Microsoft SQL Server 2005 and later versions include most of the functionality of the accelerator and are supported according to the Microsoft Product Lifecycle.

For the same reason, this tool is not included in the course as well new developer should not focus learning the same.

Reference : Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)

According to MacLennan et al. (2009), data mining is defined as “the process of analyzing data to find hidden patterns using automatic methodologies.” Consider the following simple example that explains this concept. By analyzing the data on the items purchased from a supermarket or a chain of such stores, information on the products that are sold most can be obtained and accordingly supply of that particular products are increased and vice versa. Data mining, in short, is an analytical activity that studies the hidden patterns in a huge pile of data after appropriately classifying and sorting it.

Who all are involved in Data Mining?

Data mining is an activity, which can be programmed, that involves the analysis of data and finally revealing the hidden patterns. Architects, Developers and Analysts are involved in the data mining process.

Data mining is usually carried out by an Analyst. However, it is not necessary that every time, he/she will be able to identify all the hidden patterns of a particular data set, irrespective of its size. Finally these identified patterns are converted into useful information for business purpose. A Developer combines data mining with application solutions, and an Architect understands the needs of the developer and the analyst and meets them accordingly.

Microsoft and Data Mining

Microsoft provides a wide range of data mining options, which includes collaborative solutions and ad hoc analysis (in MS Office Excel). A free plug-in is available in MS Office Excel 2007, which helps the analyst to analyze the data patterns. In addition to this plug-in, the Business Intelligence Development Studio (BIDS) that is free with the SQL Server can also be used for data mining purpose.

It should be noted that data mining is not done on the basis of any known data patterns or any other additional information. The results obtained of data mining are generated from the data presented and not from any other resources. Microsoft data mining applies mathematical techniques on the available data set to obtain models. In addition to BDIS, the .NET framework and Data Mining extensions (DMX) language is also provided by Microsoft for custom solutions. At times, data mining is also known as machine learning.

Results of Data Mining – Data Mining Models

Microsoft data mining results in data mining models, which are statistical information – either predictive or descriptive. A Microsoft Mining Model consists of the following three components: metadata, which is information about the data; patterns, which are mathematical formulas or rules; and bindings, where the data is defined. The statistical results may not be understandable in relation to a business perspective. Hence, these results or models must be translated to useful business information. One who engages in data mining is responsible for creating a link or relation between the resultant data model and the respective business problem.

Role of Data Miner (or Analyst)

A data miner should undergo adequate training with regard to all the tools and technologies used in mining and should not limit himself/herself to only those tools that are required for that particular organization/business. In fact, it is the responsibility of the organization to provide training to the data mining professional on a broader perspective. Data mining is never complete without the analyst. The application of the results of data mining to a specific business significantly depends on how far the analyst has understood the industry-specific objectives.

Applications of Data Mining

Data mining is used in various applications such as forecasting business and customer trends, detecting fraud (especially in the banking sector), generating customized advertisements, grouping customers on the basis of their purchasing trends, and risk analysis.

Benefits of Microsoft Data Mining

Microsoft data mining is extensible. It can be licensed through SQL Server 2008 (or SQL Server 2005) and it is compatible with other technologies, thereby allowing access to data in different formats. Microsoft data mining can also be used for business intelligence solutions and it is scalable unlike other data mining products.

Reference : Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)

SQL Server 2008 R2 introduces new management tools to help improve IT efficiency and productivity. Investments in application and multi-server management will help organizations proactively manage database environments efficiently at scale through centralized visibility into resource utilization. Such investments can help streamline consolidation and upgrade initiatives across the application lifecycle—all with tools that make it fast and easy.

This paper introduces the new extensions in SQL Server Management Studio and the Control Point Explorer, and it walks through the simple process of setting up a SQL Server managed server group, including SQL Server Control Point installation, enrolling an instance into central management, extracting Data-tier Applications from existing deployments, and deploying Data-tier Applications to the new managed server group.

Read whitepaper Application and Multi-Server Management

Reference : Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)

Posted in Business Intelligence, Data Warehousing, SQL, SQL Add-On, SQL Authority, SQL Documentation, SQL Download, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL White Papers, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology ]]> http://blog.sqlauthority.com/2009/08/30/sqlauthority-news-application-and-multi-server-management/feed/ 0 pinaldave http://blog.sqlauthority.com/2009/05/08/sqlauthority-news-future-of-business-intelligence-and-databases-article-by-nupur-dave/ http://blog.sqlauthority.com/2009/05/08/sqlauthority-news-future-of-business-intelligence-and-databases-article-by-nupur-dave/#comments Fri, 08 May 2009 01:30:57 +0000 pinaldave http://blog.sqlauthority.com/?p=5013 ]]>

This article is submitted by Nupur Dave

Future of Business Intelligence and Databases

The term business intelligence (BI) was coined by Howard Dresner in the early 1990s. He defined Business Intelligence as “a set of concepts and methodologies to improve decision making in business through use of facts and fact-based systems.” In a time when data warehousing was considered leading-edge he created the vision that led to the development of business intelligence, as it is known today.  The once visionary BI is now commonplace and in near future a momentous transformation is about to take place.

BI is all set to bring information democracy where end users across an organization will be able to view information related to their segment. Further, with the rising consumer expectations there will be demand for capability requirements of BI as well.

Information Democracy with Business Intelligence

BI plays a crucial role in providing cost-effective, comprehensive insights into business processes that help organizations make informed, strategic decisions that assure enhanced business results. Not long ago, BI was the domain of statisticians and corporate analysts. Only the selected few could access BI. Today, BI is spreading to nearly every strata of organization, as companies attempt to provide critical data to business users who need it to perform their jobs. It is quite evident that BI is instrumental in bringing information democracy and it provides everyone the insights they require – delivering information to the right people at the right time across the enterprise. More and more organizations are expected to empower their employees with BI for productivity and operational gains.

Business Intelligence and Performance Management for competitive advantage

Today, when economic downturn is adversely affecting the world market, making insightful decisions about major changes in their business and markets has become crucial for organizations. They need to reconsider their strategies and operating plans. Only companies that can anticipate emerging trends and opportunities, refocus business strategy and vision, and align resources to maximize performance can effectively deal with the adversities of economic downturn and gain competitive advantage. BI and Performance Management brings business sensibility with enhanced visibility and insights, by delivering accurate and latest information to the right people for faster, improved, strategic and tactical decision making. Companies have increasingly starting realizing the importance of timely performance information to improve results, which will further make way for the rising demand for BI and Corporate Performance Management Solutions.

Business Intelligence via Software As A Service (SaaS)

It is being anticipated that in the coming years a number of organizations will have an industry-specific analytic application delivered via software as a service (SaaS) as a standard component of their BI portfolio. Information aggregators will bank on SaaS to deliver domain-specific analytic applications, which are made from industry data they assemble, and bring the balance of power in the BI platform market in their favor. Organizations will share their data with only those aggregators that can assure security as well as confidentiality. Thus, countless information aggregators offering SaaS analytic applications might appear; however, a virtual monopoly is expected to remain within each vertical niche owing to the high barricade that blocks the entry for others.

Business Intelligence and Social Software

Collaborative decision making will soon become the norm, which amalgamates social software with BI Platform capabilities. With social software users can tag assumptions made in the decision-making process to the BI framework, which significantly enhances the business value of BI as it ties all the good. Take for instance, in order to decide how much to invest in marketing a new product, users can tag their assumptions about the future sales of that product to a key performance indicator (KPI) that measures product sales. Whenever the KPI surpasses a threshold the BI platform would send alerts to the user to inform the decision makers about assumptions that no longer hold true.

With the advent of social software it has become easier to utilize the upsurge of interest in informal collaboration. As an alternative to the advancing of the usual top-down decision-making initiative, social software will be employed to collaborate and make decisions.

Business Intelligence Across All Sectors

BI is on its way to become an integral component of every type and size of organization across all sectors, including Real estate, IT, mobile devices, governmental agencies, scientific and engineering communities and R&D labs, banking and insurance, to name a few. BI can effectively deal with industry-specific constraints, operations and objectives thereby helping organizations better understand their customers, optimize their operations, minimize risk, manage revenue, and ultimately improve their results. More importantly, it is expected that in a couple of years BI will soon replace the gut-feel management with real data-based decision-making.

Business Intelligence For Real-Time Data

Today, consumers are demanding faster and improved services from businesses. As it has become imperative for companies to pay attention to consumer satisfaction in order to stay competitive they are depending even more on BI. They now demand near real-time analysis for intelligent decisions for business success. The rising demand for near-real-time data analysis is making way for a new framework for business intelligence. BI 2.0 is the recently-coined term to describe the acquisition, provision and analysis of real- time data, which was earlier lacking in BI. BI 2.0 is a part of the constantly developing business intelligence industry and indicates the next step for BI.

In near future, companies will switch from the traditional model of making business adjustments on a quarterly basis to business intelligence and performance management tools to make real-time shifts in strategy to respond to changes in the marketplace.

Over the coming years, business intelligence will undergo transformation that will have a broad and lasting impact. It will revolutionize the way that we think about business and the way business decisions are made. It’s only when thoughtful analysis supersedes gut feeling and conventional perception, we will enter the next level of business intelligence that will empower businesses with the capacity to reason, prepare, forecast, resolve issues and innovate.

Reference : Nupur Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)

Ahmedabad SQL Server User Group Meeting was organized on November 29, 2008 at famous C.G. Road in Ahmedabad. We had great response and wonderful back to back technical sessions. The highlight of whole meeting was participation of UG President Jacob Sebastian - SQL MVP from New York.

Meeting started with introduction and welcome to all the members from SQL Server MVP – Pinal Dave and followed by technical session of “SQL Server 2008 – Backup and Compression” by Pinal Dave. This session was very special because not every database user is aware of the special feature of SQL Server 2008 and how it can improve the life of SQL Administrator.

Download the PDF of the SQL Server Presentation

[Please leave a comment in this thread if you are interested in SQL script which I had used in this demo presentation.]

I am very much encouraged as a User Group Leader because one of the member of UG Tejas Shah presented his very first technical session today. Tejas Shah delivered excellent session of “Introduction to Service Broker”. It is very new subject and UG members liked it.

The most awaited session was presented by SQL Server MVP – Pinal Dave where he discussed “How to become MVP?”. Pinal explained the advantages and responsibility of becoming MVP. There were many questions regarding this subject. I think UG members and SQL enthusiastic were really into learning how to become MVP. I did my best to answer all the questions which I had received. Community Service is the short answer of this subject.

Pinal Dave shared his experience of attending MVP Open Day 2008, Goa. There were nearly 15 brand new photographs of the Open Day. To know more about MVP Open Day 2008 please visit following article.

SQLAuthority News – Author Visit – South Asia MVP Open Day 2008 – Goa – Group Photo

UG president Jacob who is New York participated in this meeting using GoToMeeting and discussed his experience of attending PASS conference. This was very special as this was first time when we had live presentation using Audio Video community tools.

Well last but not least, we had our ice creams. Ice Cream was from Havmore and flavor was ‘lonavali’. Let me know if you have any suggestions. Again, if you are interested in participating in UG meetings, please let me know. It is free and good networking with other tech developers.

Pinal Dave UG Introduction

Pinal Dave Technical Session

Tejas Shah on Service Broker

UG Group Photos

Reference : Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com)

SQL SERVER – Guidelines and Coding Standards complete List Download

Coding standards and guidelines are very important for any developer on the path of successful career. A coding standard is a set of guidelines, rules and regulations on how to write code. Coding standards should be flexible enough or should take care of the situation where they should not prevent best practices for coding. They are basically the guidelines that one should follow for better understanding.

The concept behind implementing coding standards and guidelines, is that the consistency and uniformity in programming so that if multiple people are working on the same code, it becomes easier to communicate, share with or understand each other’s work.

With the goal of promoting good coding standards and guidelines I have created document which can guide developers.

SQL SERVER – Guidelines and Coding Standards Part – 1

SQL SERVER – Guidelines and Coding Standards Part – 2

SQL SERVER – Guidelines and Coding Standards complete List Download

Reference : Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com)

SQL SERVER – 2008 – Interview Questions and Answers Complete List Download

What is Data Compression?

In SQL SERVE 2008 Data Compression comes in two flavors:

• Row Compression
• Page Compression

Row Compression

Row compression changes the format of physical storage of data. It minimize the metadata (column information, length, offsets etc) associated with each record. Numeric data types and fixed length strings are stored in variable-length storage format, just like Varchar.  (Read More Here)

Page Compression

Page compression allows common data to be shared between rows for a given page. Its uses the following techniques to compress data:

• Row compression.
• Prefix Compression. For every column in a page duplicate prefixes are identified. These prefixes are saved in compression information headers (CI) which resides after page header. A reference number is assigned to these prefixes and that reference number is replaced where ever those prefixes are being used.

Dictionary Compression.

Dictionary compression searches for duplicate values throughout the page and stores them in CI. The main difference between prefix and dictionary compression is that prefix is only restricted to one column while dictionary is applicable to the complete page.

What is use of DBCC Commands?

The Transact-SQL programming language provides DBCC statements that act as Database Console Commands for SQL Server.  DBCC commands are used to perform following tasks.

• Maintenance tasks on database, index, or filegroup.
• Tasks that gather and display various types of information.
• Validation operations on a database, table, index, catalog, filegroup, or allocation of database pages.
• Miscellaneous tasks such as enabling trace flags or removing a DLL from memory.

(Read More Here)

How to find tables without Indexes?

Run following query in Query Editor.

USE <database_name>;
GO
SELECT SCHEMA_NAME(schema_id) AS schema_name
,name AS table_name
FROM sys.tables
WHERE OBJECTPROPERTY(OBJECT_ID,'IsIndexed') = 0
ORDER BY schema_name, table_name;
GO

How to copy the tables, schema and views from one SQL Server to another?

There are multiple ways to do this.

1. “Detach Database” from one server and “Attach Database” to another server.
2. Manually script all the objects using SSMS and run the script on new server.
3. Use Wizard of SSMS. (Read More Here)

How to copy data from one table to another table?

There are multiple ways to do this.

1) INSERT INTO SELECT

This method is used when table is already created in the database earlier and data is to be inserted into this table from another table. If columns listed in insert clause and select clause are same, they are not required to list them.

2) SELECT INTO

This method is used when table is not created earlier and needs to be created when data from one table is to be inserted into newly created table from another table. New table is created with same data types as selected columns.

(Read More Here)

What is Catalog Views?

Catalog views return information that is used by the SQL Server Database Engine. Catalog Views are the most general interface to the catalog metadata and provide the most efficient way to obtain, transform, and present customized forms of this information. All user-available catalog metadata is exposed through catalog views.

What is PIVOT and UNPIVOT?

A Pivot Table can automatically sort, count, and total the data stored in one table or spreadsheet and create a second table displaying the summarized data. The PIVOT operator turns the values of a specified column into column names, effectively rotating a table.

UNPIVOT table is reverse of PIVOT Table. (Read More Here)

What is Filestream?

Filestream allows you to store large objects in the file system and have these files integrated within the database. It enables SQL Server based applications to store unstructured data such as documents, images, audios, videos etc. in the file system. FILESTREAM basically integrates the SQL Server Database Engine with New Technology File System (NTFS); it basically stores the data in varbinary (max) data type. Using this data type, the unstructured data is stored in the NTFS file system and the SQL Server Database Engine manages the link between the Filestream column and the actual file located in the NTFS. Using Transact SQL statements users can insert, update, delete and select the data stored in FILESTREAM enabled tables.

What is Dirty Read ?

A dirty read occurs when two operations say, read and write occurs together giving the incorrect or unedited data. Suppose, A has changed a row, but has not committed the changes. B reads the uncommitted data but his view of the data may be wrong so that is Dirty Read.

What is SQLCMD?

sqlcmd is enhanced version of the isql and osql and it provides way more functionality than other two options. In other words sqlcmd is better replacement of isql (which will be deprecated eventually) and osql (not included in SQL Server 2005 RTM). sqlcmd can work two modes – i) BATCH and ii) interactive modes. (Read More)

What is Aggregate Functions?

Aggregate functions perform a calculation on a set of values and return a single value. Aggregate functions ignore NULL values except COUNT function. HAVING clause is used, along with GROUP BY, for filtering query using aggregate values.

Following functions are aggregate functions.

AVG, MIN, CHECKSUM_AGG, SUM, COUNT, STDEV, COUNT_BIG, STDEVP, GROUPING, VAR, MAX, VARP (Read More Here )

What do you mean by Table Sample?
TABLESAMPLE allows you to extract a sampling of rows from a table in the FROM clause. The rows retrieved are random and they are not in any order. This sampling can be based on a percentage of number of rows. You can use TABLESAMPLE when only a sampling of rows is necessary for the application instead of a full result set. (Read More Here)

What is Row_Number()?
ROW_NUMBER() returns a column as an expression that contains the row’s number within the result set. This is only a number used in the context of the result set, if the result changes, the ROW_NUMBER() will change.

What are Ranking Functions?

Ranking functions return a ranking value for each row in a partition. All the ranking functions are non-deterministic. Different Ranking functions are:

ROW_NUMBER () OVER ([<partition_by_clause>] <order_by_clause>)
Returns the sequential number of a row within a partition of a result set, starting at 1 for the first row in each partition.

RANK () OVER ([<partition_by_clause>] <order_by_clause>)
Returns the rank of each row within the partition of a result set.

DENSE_RANK () OVER ([<partition_by_clause>] <order_by_clause>)
Returns the rank of rows within the partition of a result set, without any gaps in the ranking. (Read More Here )

What is the difference between UNION and UNION ALL?

UNION
The UNION command is used to select related information from two tables, much like the JOIN command. However, when using the UNION command all selected columns need to be of the same data type. With UNION, only distinct values are selected.

UNION ALL
The UNION ALL command is equal to the UNION command, except that UNION ALL selects all values.

The difference between Union and Union all is that Union all will not eliminate duplicate rows, instead it just pulls all rows from all tables fitting your query specifics and combines them into a table. (Read More Here)

What is B-Tree?

The database server uses a B-tree structure to organize index information. B-Tree generally has following types of index pages or nodes:

• root node: A root node contains node pointers to branch nodes which can be only one.
• branch nodes: A branch node contains pointers to leaf nodes or other branch nodes which can be two or more.
• leaf nodes: A leaf node contains index items and horizontal pointers to other leaf nodes which can be many.

© Copyright 2000-2009 Pinal Dave. All Rights Reserved. SQLAuthority.com

Reference : Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com)

SQL SERVER – 2008 – Interview Questions and Answers Complete List Download

1) General Questions of SQL SERVER

What is Cursor?

Cursor is a database object used by applications to manipulate data in a set on a row-by-row basis, instead of the typical SQL commands that operate on all the rows in the set at one time.

In order to work with a cursor we need to perform some steps in the following order:

• Declare cursor
• Open cursor
• Fetch row from the cursor
• Process fetched row
• Close cursor
• Deallocate cursor (Read More Here)

What is Collation?

Collation refers to a set of rules that determine how data is sorted and compared. Character data is sorted using rules that define the correct character sequence, with options for specifying case sensitivity, accent marks, kana character types and character width. (Read More Here)

What is Difference between Function and Stored Procedure?

UDF can be used in the SQL statements anywhere in the WHERE/HAVING/SELECT section where as Stored procedures cannot be. UDFs that return tables can be treated as another rowset. This can be used in JOINs with other tables. Inline UDF’s can be thought of as views that take parameters and can be used in JOINs and other Rowset operations.

What is sub-query? Explain properties of sub-query?

Sub-queries are often referred to as sub-selects, as they allow a SELECT statement to be executed arbitrarily within the body of another SQL statement. A sub-query is executed by enclosing it in a set of parentheses. Sub-queries are generally used to return a single row as an atomic value, though they may be used to compare values against multiple rows with the IN keyword.

A subquery is a SELECT statement that is nested within another T-SQL statement. A subquery SELECT statement if executed independently of the T-SQL statement, in which it is nested, will return a resultset. Meaning a subquery SELECT statement can standalone and is not depended on the statement in which it is nested. A subquery SELECT statement can return any number of values, and can be found in, the column list of a SELECT statement, a FROM, GROUP BY, HAVING, and/or ORDER BY clauses of a T-SQL statement. A Subquery can also be used as a parameter to a function call. Basically a subquery can be used anywhere an expression can be used. (Read More Here)

What are different Types of Join?

Cross Join

A cross join that does not have a WHERE clause produces the Cartesian product of the tables involved in the join. The size of a Cartesian product result set is the number of rows in the first table multiplied by the number of rows in the second table. The common example is when company wants to combine each product with a pricing table to analyze each product at each price.

Inner Join

A join that displays only the rows that have a match in both joined tables is known as inner Join.  This is the default type of join in the Query and View Designer.

Outer Join

A join that includes rows even if they do not have related rows in the joined table is an Outer Join.  You can create three different outer join to specify the unmatched rows to be included:

• Left Outer Join: In Left Outer Join all rows in the first-named table i.e. “left” table, which appears leftmost in the JOIN clause are included. Unmatched rows in the right table do not appear.

• Right Outer Join: In Right Outer Join all rows in the second-named table i.e. “right” table, which appears rightmost in the JOIN clause are included. Unmatched rows in the left table are not included.

• Full Outer Join: In Full Outer Join all rows in all joined tables are included, whether they are matched or not.

Self Join

This is a particular case when one table joins to itself, with one or two aliases to avoid confusion. A self join can be of any type, as long as the joined tables are the same. A self join is rather unique in that it involves a relationship with only one table. The common example is when company has a hierarchal reporting structure whereby one member of staff reports to another. Self Join can be Outer Join or Inner Join. (Read More Here)

What are primary keys and foreign keys?

Primary keys are the unique identifiers for each row. They must contain unique values and cannot be null. Due to their importance in relational databases, Primary keys are the most fundamental of all keys and constraints. A table can have only one Primary key.

Foreign keys are both a method of ensuring data integrity and a manifestation of the relationship between tables.

What is User Defined Functions? What kind of User-Defined Functions can be created?

User-Defined Functions allow defining its own T-SQL functions that can accept 0 or more parameters and return a single scalar data value or a table data type.

Different Kinds of User-Defined Functions created are:

Scalar User-Defined Function

A Scalar user-defined function returns one of the scalar data types. Text, ntext, image and timestamp data types are not supported. These are the type of user-defined functions that most developers are used to in other programming languages. You pass in 0 to many parameters and you get a return value.

Inline Table-Value User-Defined Function

An Inline Table-Value user-defined function returns a table data type and is an exceptional alternative to a view as the user-defined function can pass parameters into a T-SQL select command and in essence provide us with a parameterized, non-updateable view of the underlying tables.

Multi-statement Table-Value User-Defined Function

A Multi-Statement Table-Value user-defined function returns a table and is also an exceptional alternative to a view as the function can support multiple T-SQL statements to build the final result where the view is limited to a single SELECT statement. Also, the ability to pass parameters into a TSQL select command or a group of them gives us the capability to in essence create a parameterized, non-updateable view of the data in the underlying tables. Within the create function command you must define the table structure that is being returned. After creating this type of user-defined function, It can be used in the FROM clause of a T-SQL command unlike the behavior found when using a stored procedure which can also return record sets. (Read Here For Example)

What is Identity?

Identity (or AutoNumber) is a column that automatically generates numeric values. A start and increment value can be set, but most DBA leave these at 1. A GUID column also generates numbers; the value of this cannot be controlled. Identity/GUID columns do not need to be indexed.

What is DataWarehousing?

• Subject-oriented, meaning that the data in the database is organized so that all the data elements relating to the same real-world event or object are linked together;
• Time-variant, meaning that the changes to the data in the database are tracked and recorded so that reports can be produced showing changes over time;
• Non-volatile, meaning that data in the database is never over-written or deleted, once committed, the data is static, read-only, but retained for future reporting.
• Integrated, meaning that the database contains data from most or all of an organization’s operational applications, and that this data is made consistent.

© Copyright 2000-2009 Pinal Dave. All Rights Reserved. SQLAuthority.com

Reference : Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com)

Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services Report Builder 2.0 supports the full capabilities of SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services including flexible report layout, data visualizations and richly formatted text. The download includes the following functionality above the RC0 release of Report Builder:

• Easy to use wizards for creating table, matrix and chart data regions.
• Support for directly opening and editing reports stored on the report server.
• Support for using server resources such as shared data sources.
• A query designer for Microsoft SQL Server data sources.
• Enhancements to the Report Builder 2.0 ribbon.

Download SQL Server 2008 Report Builder 2.0 RC1

Reference : Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com)

What is difference between DBMS and RDBMS?

DBMS – Data Base Management System

RDBMS – Relational Data Base Management System or Relational DBMS

A DBMS has to be persistent, that is it should be accessible when the program created the data ceases to exist or even the application that created the data restarted. A DBMS also has to provide some uniform methods independent of a specific application for accessing the information that is stored.

RDBMS adds the additional condition that the system supports a tabular structure for the data, with enforced relationships between the tables. This excludes the databases that don’t support a tabular structure or don’t enforce relationships between tables.

DBMS does not impose any constraints or security with regard to data manipulation it is user or the programmer responsibility to ensure the ACID PROPERTY of the database whereas the RDBMS is more with this regards because RDBMS defines the integrity constraint for the purpose of holding ACID PROPERTY. RDBMS may be or may not be Client Server Database System.

Examples :

DBMS – File System, XML

RDBMS – SQL Server, Oracle

Reference : Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com)

Providing Security for Web Applications and Infrastructure: Best Practices for Managing Security Risks

The Windows Live Security team shares best practices – from platform and network security to incident management – in providing security for web applications and infrastructure.

Organizations across the globe face unique challenges in enhancing security for Web applications and their IT infrastructures. Issues such as improper Web server configuration, weak authentication policies, and invalidated Web requests can lead to unauthorized user access and potential attacks. The Microsoft Windows Live team provides services to millions of customers each month for e-mail, mobile devices, personalized Web spaces, and search queries. The Windows Live security team shares their best practices – from platform and network security to incident management, including prescriptive guidance to help organizations secure confidential information assets, sensitive customer information, and network data.

Download PPT

Reference : Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com)

Questions I often get asked :

• How big is market for SQL Server?
• Is SQL Server industry leader?
• Does learning SQL Server technology will help future career?
• Why did you pick SQL Server as your expertise?

I just love SQL Server.

Let us read following article taken directly from Microsoft, which explains why SQL Server is Data Platform Leader.

Microsoft is positioned in Leaders Quadrant for Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence Platforms, 2008

Microsoft is positioned in Leaders Quadrant for Magic Quadrant for Data Warehouse Database Management Systems, 2007

SQL Server is the fastest growing Database and Business Intelligence vendor

SQL Server ships more units than Oracle and IBM combined

SQL Server is the #1 OLAP Server on the market

SQL Server is more secure than Oracle. Since July 2003 more than 100 critical Oracle database security vulnerabilities have been identified, compared to ZERO for SQL Server for that period.

SQL Server is best in price/performance for TPC-H 1TB & 3TB (non-clustered).

Microsoft SQL Server and Unisys are the first to publish TPC-E benchmark results.

Gartner 2006 worldwide RDBMS market share reports highest growth rate in market share for Microsoft SQL Server. With 28% growth in market share, growth is almost twice the nearest competitor at 14.8% growth.

SQL Server still number 1 in databases. 74.7 percent of enterprises are using SQL Server, while 54.5 percent are using Oracle databases.

SQL Server Manages the World’s Largest Databases.

Microsoft SQL Server recognized as Best Seller and Top Growth Best Seller by CRN Magazine.

Reference : Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) , SQL Server Product Overview

Yesterday on this blog I wrote about SQL SERVER – 2005 – Understanding Licensing Model. I have received many questions about pricing and comparing SQL Server with other RDBMS. One of the reason I like SQL Server because I am strong believer of licensed software usage and SQL Server is feature rich and dirt cheap compared to other comparable products.

Let us review following chart and table which explains the difference.

If you are interested to read about more about this you can review original article from where I have taken above information.

Reference : Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) , SQL Server Pricing and Licensing, Understanding Database Pricing

SQL Server 2008 Brochure is available to download. It contains many information like available Server Editions, Top New Features, New Available Technologies and additional resources.

Click on above image to open large image.

Top New Features

• Use Resource Governor to manage concurrent workloads
• Enforce policy compliance consistently across the enterprise with the Policy-Based Management
• Reduce storage requirements and increase query performance with data compression and Sparse Columns
• Protect sensitive data with Transparent Data Encryption and advanced auditing
• Troubleshoot, tune, and monitor SQL Server 2008 instances across the enterprise with Performance System Analysis
• Build high performance analysis solutions with scalability, performance, data mining, and user interface enhancements in SQL Server Analysis Services
• Take advantage of improved performance,usability, visualization, and integration with the 2007 Microsoft Office system in SQL Server Reporting Services
• Integrate location-enabled applications through support for spatial data

Download SQL Server 2008 Brochure

Reference : Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com), Microsoft Download

Top 10 Best Practices for SQL Server Maintenance for SAP
By Takayuki Hoshino

SQL Server provides an excellent database platform for SAP applications. The following recommendations provide an outline of best practices for maintaining SQL Server database for an SAP implementation.

1) Perform a full database backup daily

2) Perform transaction log backup Every 10 to 30 minutes

3) Back up system partition in case of configuration changes

4) Back up system databases in case of configuration changes

5) Run DBCC CHECKDB periodically (ideally before the full database backup)

6) Evaluate security patches monthly (and install them if they are necessary)

7) Evaluate update modules of hardware drivers and firmwares and install if necessary

8) Update statistics on the largest tables weekly or monthly

9) Rebuild or defrag the most important indexes

10) Use a health check monitoring tool for performance, availability, and so forth

Reference : Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com), TechNet

Just a day ago, while I was surfing wikipedia about SQL Server, I came across this generic architecture image. I found it interesting. Click on image to view it in large size.

Reference : Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com), Wikipedia – SQL Server

If you are subscribed to my blog you will know that I receive request to send Database or SQL Server very frequently. Following is list of articles of my questions and answers series.

Download SQL Server Interview Questions and Answers Complete List

Complete Series of SQL Server Interview Questions and Answers
SQL Server Interview Questions and Answers – Introduction
SQL Server Interview Questions and Answers – Part 1
SQL Server Interview Questions and Answers – Part 2
SQL Server Interview Questions and Answers – Part 3
SQL Server Interview Questions and Answers – Part 4
SQL Server Interview Questions and Answers – Part 5
SQL Server Interview Questions and Answers – Part 6
SQL Server Interview Questions and Answers Complete List Download

Other popular Series
SQL SERVER Database Coding Standards and Guidelines Complete List Download
SQL SERVER – Data Warehousing Interview Questions and Answers Complete List Download
DBA Database SQL Job List Search

Reference : Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com)

I always ask question about Third Normal Form in interviews I take.

Q. What is Third Normal Form and what is its advantage?
A. Third Normal Form (3NF) is most preferable normal form in RDBMS. Normalization is the process of designing a data model to efficiently store data in a database. The rules of 3NF are mentioned here

• Make a separate table for each set of related attributes, and give each table a primary key.
• If an attribute depends on only part of a multi-valued key, remove it to a separate table
• If attributes do not contribute to a description of the key, remove them to a separate table.

Normalization is very close to concept of object oriented schema’s and it stores one data at only one place by removing all the redundant data. It also helps to draw the schema easier. Normalization comes at the cost of performance.

Reference : Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) , DataModel.org.

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If you have one or more years of experience in any web based programming language (.NET, ColdFusion, PHP) and interested in SQL Server as well willing to locate Ahmadabad, India. Please send me your resume, if selected you may get chance to work with one of the most progressing industry in world as well some smartest technology leaders worldwide. Salary depends on Experience.

If selected for interview I suggest you go over SQL Server Interview Questions and Answers Complete List Download, as there is great chance I may be participating in interview.

Please send your resume at pinaldave “at” yahoo.com and pinal “at” sqlauthority.com with subject line as Job Opportunity with SQLAuthority.

Reference : Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com)