SQL Server is an ocean of information. I believe if one starts learning today, after 60 years he/she may still be learning the subject (there are always a few exceptions)! Recently, I published the SQL Server Questions and Answers video tutorial, and since the course came out, I have been receiving lots of request to share SQL Tips which are small and easy to digest.

While writing the SQL books with my co-authors Vinod Kumar and Rick Morelan, we often came across very interesting and useful tips which we believe would be helpful to readers. Sometimes the tips are so small that we could not find an appropriate place for them in the book. We call them Sixty Seconds Tips. The tips are so small that sometimes sixty seconds are too long for them. Keeping the notion of quick and easy tips – we have decided to come up with new series called “SQL in Sixty Seconds.” Every week we will post one small but useful video tip. We believe that Sixty Seconds is metaphor for quick and easy tip.

I have seen many developers staying away from CTE (Common Table Expression), their excuse is that they do not know how to convert subqueries to CTE or they think it is very complicated to do so. In the very first episode of SQL in Sixty Seconds we will see how easily one can convert Subqueries to CTE and CTE to Subqueries.

More on CTE:
Simple Example of Recursive CTE
Multiple CTE in One SELECT Statement Query
Common Table Expression (CTE) and Few Observation
Delete Duplicate Rows
Simple Example of Recursive CTE – Part 2 – MAXRECURSION – Prevent CTE Infinite Loop
T-SQL Paging Query Technique Comparison (OVER and ROW_NUMBER()) – CTE vs. Derived Table

I encourage you to submit your ideas for SQL in Sixty Seconds. We will try to accommodate as many as we can.

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

I suggest you mark your calender right now and present at the hall before time to secure your seat.

Session Details

SQL Server Performance Tips and Tricks

In this session we will go over various SQL Server Performance Tuning Tricks and Tips. Learn about top tips and best SQL Server performance practices related to:

• Unused Indexes
• Clustered Indexes
• Importance of Statistics
• Index Maintenance Scripts
• ColumnStore Index
• A Surprise Secret Tip

January 7, 2012 1:30 PM

I will ask 5 questions during my session and needless to say 5 winners will get copy of my book.

The session will be 100% demo oriented and I will share lots of tips and tricks during this session. Just like every other session of mine, this session will have lots of trivia for you as well it will be extremely interactive. If you prefer to stay quite during the session, this session will a perfect technology opener for you. Once you are in the session – you will be talking and discussion various aspect of performance along with your co-attendees and me.

Additionally, I am personally waiting for the sessions of Rick Morelan who is founder of Joes 2 Pros series. Do not miss any of the sessions of SQL Saturday – here is the complete schedule.

My friend Vinod Kumar has written blog on his sessions, read it here.

Note: Session will be not recorded. There will be no live cast of the session.

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

Schedule and Venue

Event Date: January 7, 2012
Event Time: 10 AM to 6 PM
Event Venue: Microsoft Singature Building, Domlur, Bangalore , Bangalore, India

Important Links:

Register for the event – We are 100% over capacity. Please put your name on waiting list, we are working on various options.

Submit your session title and abstract by December 10, 2011. Today is last day!

Call to Action – Spread the words

Blog, tweet, facebook it – spread the word. Use the #SQLSat116 as your hashtag on tweeter. Use the SQL Saturday Logo in your postings.

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

There are two common queries related to offline database:

1)      My hard drive is getting full and I deleted my ‘offline’ databases. After deleting my offline databases, my hard drive is still full and there is no empty space.

2)      I recently deleted the ‘offline’ database, and now, when I am attempting to create database with the same name, it is giving me error that the database file already exists.

I can see why these questions are coming up frequently. The common understanding that seems to prevail is that when any database is deleted, files associated with the database (.mdf, .ndf and .ldf) are deleted automatically. This is true for any database that is an ‘online’ database. However, the behavior is bit different in the case of the ‘offline’ database. When any ‘offline’ database is deleted, files associated with the database are not deleted automatically. All the files related to the ‘offline’ database need to be deleted manually after deleting the offline database.

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

SQL Saturday is FREE event all the attendees and 100% SQL community driven.

Schedule and Venue

Event Date: January 7, 2012
Event Time: 10 AM to 6 PM
Event Venue: Microsoft Singature Building, Domlur, Bangalore , Bangalore, India

Click here for link.

Who can participate

Everyone.

Cost to attend the event

FREE for all.

Call to Action – Register for the event

Experience suggests that all the SQL Saturday event always gets over capacity. There are always more attendees than the event venue can accommodate. Register for the event. SQLPASS website maintains waiting list after the capacity is full.

Call to Action – Submit SQL Session

Speaking at this SQL only event which happens world-wide is prestigious itself. You are welcome to submit your session title and abstract by December 10, 2011. We will have volunteers and speaker dinner either on event day or the day before.

Call to Action – Nominate yourself as Volunteer

Every successful event needs dedicated volunteers, this events needs your help. Send email to sqlsaturday116 “at” sqlsaturday.com your details. You can also opt yourself as volunteer when you register for the event.

Call to Action – Spread the words

Blog, tweet, facebook it – spread the word. Use the #SQLSat116 as your hashtag on tweeter. Use the SQL Saturday Logo in your postings.

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

Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Express RC
Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Express RC0 is a powerful and reliable free data management system that delivers a rich set of features, data protection, and performance for embedded applications, lightweight Web Sites, applications, and local data stores.

Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Semantic Language Statistics RC0
The Semantic Language Statistics Database is a required component for the Statistical Semantic Search feature in Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Semantic Language Statistics RC0.

Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Release Candidate 0 (RC0) Manageability Tool Kit
The Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Release Candidate 0 (RC0) Manageability Tool Kit is a collection of stand-alone packages which provide additional value for Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Release Candidate 0 (RC0).

Microsoft SQL Server 2012 PowerPivot for Microsoft Excel 2010 Release Candidate 0 (RC0)
Microsoft PowerPivot for Microsoft Excel 2010 provides ground-breaking technology; fast manipulation of large data sets, streamlined integration of data, and the ability to effortlessly share your analysis through Microsoft SharePoint

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

To begin with, we want to thank all those interviewers who reject interviewees by saying they need to know ‘the key things’ regardless of having high grades in class. The whole concept of interview questions and answers revolves around knowing those ‘key things’.

The core concept of this book will continue to evolve over time. I am sure many of you will come along with us on this journey and submit your suggestions to us to make this book a key reference for anybody who wants to start with SQL Server. Today we want to acknowledge the fact that you will help us keep this book alive forever with the latest updates. We want to thank everyone who participates in this journey with us.

Though each of these chapters are geared towards convenience we highly recommend reading each of the sections irrespective of the roles you might be doing since each of the sections have some interesting trivia about working with SQL Server. In the industry the role of accidental DBA’s (especially with SQL Server) is very common. Hence if you have performed the role of DBA for a short stint and want to brush-up your fundamentals then the upcoming sections will be a great review.

Table Of Contents

• Database Concepts With Sql Server
• Common Generic Questions & Answers
• Common Developer Questions
• Common Tricky Questions
• Miscellaneous Questions On Sql Server 2008
• Dba Skills Related Questions
• Data Warehousing Interview Questions & Answers
• General Best Practices

[Amazon] | [Flipkart]

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

I have received lots of interesting comments on the blog about what is in it. Many of you got it absolutely incorrect and many got it close to the right answer but no one got it 100% correct. Well, no issue at all, I am going to give away the price to whoever has the closest answer first in personal email.

Here is the answer to the question about what is in the box? Here it is – the box has my new book. In fact, I should say our new book as I co-authored this book with my very good friend Vinod Kumar. We had real blast writing this book together and had lots of interesting conversation when we were writing this book. This book has one simple goal – “master the basics.”

This book is not only for people who are preparing for interview. This book is for every one who wants to revisit the basics and wants to prepare themselves to the technology. One always needs to have practical knowledge to do their duty efficiently. This book talks about more than basics. There are multiple ways to present learning – either we can create simple book or make it interesting. We have decided the learning should be interactive and have opted for Interview Questions and Answer format.

Here is quick interview which we have done together.

Details of the books are here

The core concept of this book will continue to evolve over time. I am sure many of you will come along with us on this journey and submit your suggestions to us to make this book a key reference for anybody who wants to start with SQL server. Today we want to acknowledge the fact that you will help us keep this book alive forever with the latest updates. We want to thank everyone who participates in this journey with us.

You can get the books from [Amazon] | [Flipkart].

Read Vinod‘s blog post. Do not forget to wish him happy birthday as today is his birthday and also book release day – two reason to wish him congratulations.

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

Today is this blog’s birthday, and I want to do a fun, informative blog post. Five years ago this day I started this blog. Intention – my personal web blog. I wrote this blog for me and still today whatever I learn I share here. I don’t want to wander too far off topic, though, so I will write about two of my favorite things – history and databases.  And what better way to cover these two topics than to talk about the history of databases.

If you want to be technical, databases as we know them today only date back to the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, when computers began to keep records and store memories.  But the idea of memory storage didn’t just appear 40 years ago – there was a history behind wanting to keep these records.

In fact, the written word originated as a way to keep records – ancient man didn’t decide they suddenly wanted to read novels, they needed a way to keep track of the harvest, of their flocks, and of the tributes paid to the local lord.  And that is how writing and the database began.  You could consider the cave paintings from 17,0000 years ago at Lascaux, France, or the clay token from the ancient Sumerians in 8,000 BC to be the first instances of record keeping – and thus databases.

If you prefer, you can consider the advent of written language to be the first database.  Many historians believe the first written language appeared in the 37^th century BC, with Egyptian hieroglyphics. The ancient Sumerians, not to be outdone, also created their own written language within a few hundred years.

Databases could be more closely described as collections of information, in which case the Sumerians win the prize for the first archive.  A collection of 20,000 stone tablets was unearthed in 1964 near the modern day city Tell Mardikh, in Syria.  This ancient database is from 2,500 BC, and appears to be a sort of law library where apprentice-scribes copied important documents.  Further archaeological digs hope to uncover the palace library, and thus an even larger database.

Of course, the most famous ancient database would have to be the Royal Library of Alexandria, the great collection of records and wisdom in ancient Egypt.  It was created by Ptolemy I, and existed from 300 BC through 30 AD, when Julius Caesar effectively erased the hard drives when he accidentally set fire to it.  As any programmer knows who has forgotten to hit “save” or has experienced a sudden power outage, thousands of hours of work was lost in a single instant.

Databases existed in very similar conditions up until recently.  Cuneiform tablets gave way to papyrus, which led to vellum, and eventually modern paper and the printing press.  Someday the databases we rely on so much today will become another chapter in the history of record keeping.  Who knows what the databases of tomorrow will look like!

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

Following are the top 2 requests that I keep on receiving in emails, on blogs, Twitter, and Facebook.

“Please send us FREE PDF of your book so we do not have to purchase it.”

“If you can share with us the eBook (free and downloadable) format of your book, we will share it with everybody we know and you will get additional exposure.”

Here is my response for the abovementioned requests:

If you really need my book and cannot purchase it due to financial trouble, then feel free to let me know and I will purchase it myself and ship it to you.

If you are in a country where the print book not available, then you can buy the Kindle book, which is available online in any country, and you can just read it on your computer and mobile devices. You DO NOT have to own a Kindle to read a Kindle format book. You can freely download Kindle software on your desired format and purchase the book online. For next 5 days, the kindle book is available at 3.99 in USA, and in other countries, the price is anywhere between 3.99 and 5.99. The price will go up by USD 2 everywhere across the world after 1st November, 2011.

Here is the link to download Kindle Software for free PC, WP7, and in marketplace for various other mobile devices. I thank you for giving warm response to SQL Server Wait Stats book. I am motivated to write the next expanded version of this book.

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

Filed under: About Me, Database, Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology ]]> http://blog.sqlauthority.com/2011/10/27/sqlauthority-news-sql-server-wait-stats-ebook-to-download-on-kindle-answer-to-free-pdf-download-request/feed/ 10 pinaldave http://blog.sqlauthority.com/2011/10/13/sqlauthority-news-sqlpass-today-free-100-sql-wait-stats-book-print-copy/ http://blog.sqlauthority.com/2011/10/13/sqlauthority-news-sqlpass-today-free-100-sql-wait-stats-book-print-copy/#comments Thu, 13 Oct 2011 01:30:27 +0000 pinaldave http://blog.sqlauthority.com/?p=14869 ]]> “If there’s a book you really want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” ~Toni Morrison

I wrote book on SQL Wait Stats. [Amazon] | [Flipkart] | [Kindle]

I really wanted to learn about SQL Wait Stats. There was no real book available so I wrote the book myself. Since I wrote this book, I feel I can now more 100 pages to what I had contributed. I am very fortunate that my SQL Wait Stats book is very well accepted in community. Every author who authors book has dream that his book is well received and well read. In the recent internet era eBooks and PDF copies are everywhere and the job of reading print book and using bookmark is getting faded. Just like the same every author wants to have their books book signing event. I am so fortunate that during this SQLPASS the similar opportunity has presented to me.

I will be also doing book signing but here is interesting twist – you do not have to purchase the books (USD 11.99) – this book will be FREE for you.

Here are further details:

Event: SQL Server Wait Stats Book Signing
Date: October 13, 2011 Thursday
Time: 1 PM to 2 PM
Location: SQLPASS Exhibitors Booth #300

Thanks to kind people at expressor Studio for kindly helping me to with this arrangement.

Read the review of the book on SQLConcepts and on flipkart.

See you tomorrow!

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

“The greatest of all gifts is the power to estimate things at their true worth” – Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Please Note: The date and time are Thursday 13 at 1 PM (not Wednesday) – there are few emails asking for the same.

Quotes listed above are really relevant to the news of the day. Regular readers of my blog knows that I have published SQL Server Wait Stats [Amazon] | [Flipkart] book. I am glad to say that this book has become extremely popular since it has been published. It has ran out of stock in India two times thus far. In USA, we could manage the inventory efficiently. This book is now available on Kindle (at a price less than that of a coffee).

Recently, the kind people at expressor Studio have previously gave away few copies of my book. The same folks have sent me email that they got excellent feedback for the book from the readers who received the book. They have decided to give away 100 copies of my Wait Stats Print Book on Thursday October 13, 2011 between 1.00 and 2.00 PM at SQLPASS exhibition at Booth #300. I am just speechless at their efforts and good will for my book.

Tomorrow, I will be available between 1.00 and 2.00 PM at booth #300 and signing the books personally. Just stop by the booth and pick up the book. We intend to give away 1 book every minute of that hour. Honestly, it will be more than 1 book as there will be 100 books to give away during the short period of 60 minutes (on First come first serve basis!)

See you tomorrow!

and thanks one more time expressor Studio.

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

System Center Monitoring Pack for Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Parallel Data Warehouse Appliance

This Monitoring Pack for Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Parallel Data Warehouse (PDW) Appliance provides capabilities to discover, monitor, and manage your SQL Server PDW appliances. The management pack simplifies the monitoring process for PDW.

In addition to health monitoring capabilities, this monitoring pack includes a custom diagram view to visualize appliance health. The custom view has detailed knowledge about the health states for the hardware and software components. The custom view enables near real-time diagnosis and resolution of detected issues.

Note: Description is taken from Microsoft page.

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

You can read more about this sessions over here.

This presentation is based on the famous book ‘The Art of War’ written in sixth century BC by Sun Tzu. Index is usually a favorite tool of many when it is about performance tuning. However, Index is not everything. Performance tuning is much very deep subject and one needs to understand various aspect of the performance tuning. In today’s session I will cover performance tuning beyond indexes. I have created some real interesting demos.

Sessions Details

Title: Ancient Trade of Performance Tuning – Index, Beyond Index and No Index
Timing: September 29, 2011 11:45am-12:45pm IST
SQL Server Indexes are double edge sword. If used properly it gives tremendous performance improvement of the server. However, there is a dark side of the Index as well, which one needs to learn before using them to improve performance of the query. In this session we will go over various concepts of the Indexes which are not common but extremely important.
Location: Register for Virtual Tech Days

Giveaways

During my session I will ask a simple question. I will give away 5 copies of my SQL Server Wait Stats books to five random person who will answer it correctly. If you have already have this book, I strongly suggest you attend this session as this session will take the performance tuning concepts to next level. I will make sure that I autograph and send this copies to your way.

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

Session Inspiration

Driven with coming up something different around indexes, I created this presentation. This presentation is based on the famous book ‘The Art of War’ written in sixth century BC by Sun Tzu. This book is composed of 13 chapters, each of which is devoted to one aspect of warfare, and it is said to be the definitive work on military strategies and tactics of its time, and it is still read for its military insights. I am heavily inspired by this book, and I have always treated performance tuning as a war.

Here are the three subjects which I will be covering in my online presentation.

How to defeat an opponent

• Using Weapon

• Carry a convenient weapon
• Use anything as weapon

• Use Counter Intelligence

• Use spy network
• Use statistical data points

• The Lords of War

• Extra-ordinary intellect
• Supreme heroic ability

I have created three demos to support the above three sections. I am very sure that this is one of the most interesting and inspiring sessions for performance tuning. Here are the details for the session.

Sessions Details

Title: Ancient Trade of Performance Tuning – Index, Beyond Index and No Index
Timing: September 29, 2011 11:45am-12:45pm IST
SQL Server Indexes are like a double-sided sword. If used properly it gives tremendous performance improvement of the server. However, there is a dark side of the Index as well, which one needs to learn before using them to improve the performance of the query. In this session, we will go over various concepts of the Indexes, which are not common but extremely important.
Location: Register for Virtual Tech Days

Giveaways

During my session, I will ask a simple question. I will give away 5 copies of my SQL Server Wait Stats books to five random people who will answer it correctly. If you already have this book, I strongly suggest you attend this session as this session will take the performance tuning concepts to next level. I will make sure that I personally autograph and send these copies to your way.

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

In India you can get it from Flipkart - http://bit.ly/pinalbook

In USA you can get it from Amazon – http://amzn.to/pb49jq

This book is just like this blog and contains all the complex subject in very simple manner. I am confident that you will for sure like this book if you like this blog.

Here is quick video shot by my wife when I was reading my own book. See the original post to see the video.

Here is quick secret for you – there is big surprise in September for all those who own this book.

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

Suppose you want to execute a one-to-many application in which each incoming record needs to be parsed into multiple output records.  For example, a record containing monthly data over a year period needs to be reworked so that each emitted record contains data from a single month.  The following fragment shows two representative data records, where the first field is the year and the following fields are the monthly data, January through December.

Year,Jan,Feb,Mar,Apr,May,Jun,Jul,Aug,Sep,Oct,Nov,Dec
2010,1001,1002,1003,1004,1005,1006,1007,1008,1009,1010,1011,1012
2009,901,902,903,904,905,906,907,908,909,910,911,912

You want each output record to contain only three fields: Year, Month, and Value.

Year,Month,Value
2010,Jan,1001
2010,Feb,1002
2010,Mar,1003
2010,Apr,1004
...

To illustrate how you can reuse the coding within a Datascript Module, think of the incoming record as a sequence of fields each with a specific attribute name and value.

GroupAttribute,Atr1,Atr2,Atr3,Atr4,Atr5,Atr6,Atr7,Atr8,Atr9,Atr10,Atr11,Atr12

And think of each emitted record as comprised of three fields.

GroupAttribute,Atr,Val

Now you can write generic code within the Datascript Module that can handle any incoming record in a one-to-many application.

• Since you want to use the Datascript Module in multiple applications, create this artifact within an expressor library.
  • In this example, the library is named modules_library.0 and the Datascript Module is named OneToMany.
• Within the OneToMany module, include the following scripting.
  • Note that line 4, which defines the fully qualified name of the module, is entered by Studio when you first create the module.  It is a concatenation of the library name and module file name.
  • The Datascript Module includes a single function named oneToMany, which takes as arguments the name of the attribute holding a value that uniquely identifies the incoming record and the incoming record that needs to be divided into multiple output records.
  • Observe how the code uses the generic field names GroupAttribute, Atr, and Val to populate each output record.  It’s not until the collection of output records is returned to the calling code that the coding uses the actual attribute names (Year, Month, Value) of the output record.
    • Consequently, the actual attribute names used by the incoming and outgoing records are only referenced within the calling code, which is specific to an application.
    • All coding within the Datascript Module uses generic names applicable to any incoming data.

Now, let’s turn our attention to the code that uses this Datascript Module.  In this case, the application is quite simple.  It reads a file that contains the yearly summary records, uses a Transform operator to process each record into multiple output records, and then writes each monthly output record to a file.

• Line 2 cross-references the Datascript Module.  This statement is equivalent to simply copying and pasting the scripting from the module into the operator’s coding.
• Line 5 invokes the oneToMany function defined in the module.
• Lines 10 through 20 iterate through the collection of output records returned by the module’s oneToMany function, emitting each record individually.
  • To emit more than one record from the Transform operator, the scripting uses an iterator function, another new feature introduced in expressor 3.3.

Using modules written by other developers is no more involved.  In fact, expressor 3.3 ships with many modules that your code can utilize.  These include a cURL module that you can use to invoke on Web services or FTP servers, a SAX XML module that you can use to parse an XML document, a socket module that you can use to interact with an external application, a SQL module that allows your code to execute a SQL statement against a remote database, as well as some expressor Datascript Modules that include utility functions useful for parsing CSV files and serializing and de-serializing expressor Datascript tables.

To use any of these modules, simply include the necessary require statement at the beginning of your scripting.  The expressor Community Knowledge Base includes entries that describe use of these modules. The expressor Studio desktop ETL tool is freely downloadable from the expressor website.   I encourage you to give it a try!

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

Inviting all Professional Developers, Project Managers, Architects, IT Managers, IT Administrators and Implementers of Ahmedabad to be a part of Tech•Ed on the Road, on 11th June, 2011. We have put together the best sessions from Tech•Ed India 2011 for you in your city. Focal point will be technologies like Database and BI, Windows 7, ASP.NET.

REGISTER HERE!

Venue:
Venue: Ahmedabad Management Association (AMA)
Dr. Vikram Sarabhai Marg,
University Area,
Ahmedabad, Gujarat 380 015

Time: 9:30AM – 5:30PM

The biggest attraction of the event is session HTML5 – Future of the Web by Harish Vaidyanathan. He is Evangelist Lead in Microsoft and hands on developer himself. I strongly urge all of you to attend his session to understand direction of the web and Microsoft’s take on the subject.

I (Pinal Dave) will be presenting on the session of SQL Server Performance Tuning and Jacob Sebastian will be presenting on T-SQL Worst Practices. Do not miss this opportunity. Those who have attended in the past know that from last two years the venue is jam packed in first few minutes. Do come in early to get better seat and reserve your spot.

We will have QUIZ during the event and we will have various gifts – Watches, USB Drives, T-Shirts and many more interesting gifts.

Refer the agenda today and register right away. There will be no video recording so come and visit the event in person.

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

If I could tell the story in words, I wouldn’t need to lug around a camera.  ~Lewis Hine

Vijay Raj is a passionate Technology Evangelist and a Microsoft MVP. He recently took few snaps of my daughter. As soon as he put the images on his album online, it was instant hit and was wallpaper of many desktops. Every praise one does for Vijay is not enough. I personally have no words to express my feeling after looking at the photos he has taken. If you really like the photos, I strongly suggest to visit Vijay’s technical blog – msigeek.com and photo page iClickd.

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

After going back and forward and with lots of revision we come up with winning entry. Idera has also selected five more winner who will get surprise gift from Idera.

Here is the winning entry who will win Windows Phone 7 (limit USD 500).

MarlonFRC
WHAT? I told you, change your RDBMS to SQL Server 2008 and you can use Idera Tools for tunning.

Here are runners-up entries. Idera will send them surprise gift.

Jose
SELECT TOP 1 Name
FROM tools
WHERE Vendor = ‘Idera’
AND Type = ‘Performance’
ORDER BY Rating DESC

Wendell
Holy shish kabob Pinal, better purchase Idera and sign up for SQL Smarts Enewsletter!

Srinivas
Why fear when SQL Doctor from Idera is here? With SQL Doctor, we point, click, and cure. Problem solved!

Harlan
Even House isn’t doctor enough for this,… we need Idera’s SQL doctor. STAT!

Rob Rohr
My social life is running slowly, but at least there are tools to solve your problem.

Thank you all for participating in the cartoon challenge. We will have more such a quiz soon.

Before I end I would like to specially mention the entry of John Sansom. He does not qualify for winning entry or even runners-up as his entry was of 160 character, however, his entry is my personal favorite.

“Got no idea? You need Idera! We’ve got just the right tools for all you SQL fools.Performance tuning, monitoring, backups or development.We’ve got you covered.”

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


This year 2011 has been very nice to me so far- lots of interesting things have been happening. I listed a few here: (in no particular order)

SQL SERVER – Summary of Month – Wait Type – Day 28 of 28

My series on wait types and queues has made me a whole different person. I have started to look at the database performance in a totally different angle. The experience of writing a blog series for an entire month was really a great learning experience. It was exhausting, but every moment was definitely worth it.

SQL SERVER – SQLServer Quiz 2011 – Do you know your execution plan – Two questions – One Answer

This quiz question was my favorite question. If someone is able to find out the correct answer to this question, their understanding of the subject is proven to be deep. I did not receive much participation when this was asked, but I must say I had a great time giving out this quiz.

TechED 2011 – Bangalore – An Unforgettable Experience – Day 0
TechED 2011 – Bangalore – An Unforgettable Experience – Day 1
TechED 2011 – Bangalore – An Unforgettable Experience – Day 2
TechED 2011 – Bangalore – An Unforgettable Experience – Day 3
TechED 2011 – Bangalore – An Unforgettable Experience – Day Next

I have been attending TechEd for quite some time. This year I had a wonderful experience to be one of the event organizers. I really felt I had fun with lots of responsibilities as an organizer.

All in all, lots of things happened during the last 100 posts, and that includes some important changes in my personal life:

• Relocated to Bangalore from my hometown Ahmedabad
• Getting involved in the Community at a much deeper level
• Spending a lot of time with my family
• Started to go to gym
• Training my daughter how to swim

and much more…

Thanks for staying with me all this time. You can subscribe SQLAuthority by FEED and by EMAIL.

I am always active on Twitter so do FOLLOW ME.

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

Niraj Bhatt works as an Enterprise Architect for a Fortune 500 company and has an innate passion for building / studying software systems. He is a top rated speaker at various technical forums including Tech·Ed, MCT Summit, Developer Summit, and Virtual Tech Days, among others. Having run a successful startup for four years Niraj enjoys working on – IT innovations that can impact an enterprise bottom line, streamlining IT budgets through IT consolidation, architecture and integration of systems, performance tuning, and review of enterprise applications. He has received Microsoft MVP award for ASP.NET, Connected Systems and most recently on Windows Azure. When he is away from his laptop, you will find him taking deep dives in automobiles, pottery, rafting, photography, cooking and financial statements though not necessarily in that order. He is also a manager/speaker at BDOTNET, Asia’s largest .NET user group.

Here is the guest post by Niraj Bhatt.

Technology evangelists are individuals who, professionally or in their spare time, spread the news about the latest new products.  Sounds like a salesperson, right?  No they are absolutely different. Salespeople also keep up to date with a large number of people, and like to convince others to buy their product – and some will go to any lengths to sell!  An evangelist, on the other hand, is brutally honest about the product, even if sometimes it means not making a sale.  An evangelist is out there to tell the TRUTH.  A salesperson needs to make sales.

An Evangelist offers a Solution independent of Technology used – a Salesperson offers Particular Technology.

With this definition in mind, you can probably think of a few technology evangelists you already know.  Maybe it’s a relative or a neighbor, someone who loves keeping up with the latest trends and is always willing to tell you about them if you ask even the simplest question.  And, in fact, they probably are evangelists and don’t even know it.  For a long time, the work of technology evangelism was in the hands of community and community technology leaders. Luckily now various organizations have understood the importance of the community and helping community to reach their goals. This has lead them to create role of “Technology Evangelists”.

Let me talk about one of the most famous Evangelist of the SQL Server technology. Technology Evangelist only belongs to technology and above any country, race, location or any other thing. They are dedicated to the technology.

Vinod Kumar is such a man, who have given a lot to community. For years he was a Technology Evangelist for Microsoft, and maintained a blog that was dedicated to spreading his enthusiasm for his favorite products.  He is one of the most respected Evangelists in the field, and has done a lot of work to define the job for other professionals. Vinod’s career has since progressed to the Microsoft Technology Center (read his post), but he is continuing to be a strong presence in the evangelism community.  I have a lot of respect for Vinod.  He has done a lot for the community and technology evangelism.  Everybody has dream to serve community the way he does, and he is a great role model for evangelists everywhere.

On his blog, Vinod created one of the best descriptions of a Technology Evangelist.  It defined the position and also made the distinction between evangelist and salesperson extremely clear.  I will include the highlights of that list here, because no one can say it better than Vinod:

• Bundle of energy – Passion is their middle name
• Wonderful Story tellers
• Empathy, Trust, Loyalty, Openness, Accessibility and Warmth
• Technology Enthusiast – Doers
• Love people, people and more people – Community oriented
• Unique Style and Leadership qualities !!!
• Self-Confident, Self-Motivated but a student

(To read the full list, see: Evangelism Beyond Borders with Evangelists)

His blog is a must-read for anyone interested in technology evangelism as a career or simply a hobby.  His advice about how to gain an audience and become a trusted advisor is the best in the business.

I think there is an evangelist in everyone. I, too, consider myself a technology evangelist.  Regular readers of this blog will recognize that I am dedicated to bringing information to the masses, and that I pride myself on being both brutally and honest and giving every product fair consideration.

I think there is no better way of saying following subject.

“Once an Evangelist – Always an Evangelist!”

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

Consider a situation in which you need to read a field, such as customer_identifier, from a text file and pass that field into a database table. In the source file’s metadata structure, customer_identifier is described as a string; however, in the target database table, customer_identifier is described as an integer. Legitimately, all the source values for customer_identifier are valid numbers, such as “109380”.

To implement this in an ETL application, you probably would have hard-coded a type conversion function call, such as:

output.customer_identifier=stringToInteger(input.customer_identifier)

That wasn’t so bad, was it? For this instance, programming this hard-coded type conversion function call was relatively easy.

However, hard-coding, whether type conversion code or other business rule code, almost always means that the application containing hard-coded fields, function calls, and values is: a) specific to an instance of use; b) is difficult to adapt to new situations; and c) doesn’t contain many reusable sub-parts. Therefore, in the long run, applications with hard-coded type conversion function calls don’t scale well. In addition, they increase the overall level of effort and degree of difficulty to write and maintain the ETL applications.

To get around the trappings of hard-coding type conversion function calls, developers need an access to smarter typing systems. Expressor Studio product offers this feature exactly, by providing developers with a type conversion automation engine based on type abstraction.

The theory behind the engine is quite simple. A user specifies abstract data fields in the engine, and then writes applications against the abstractions (whereas in most ETL software, developers develop applications against the physical model). When a Studio-built application is run, Studio’s engine automatically converts the source type to the abstracted data field’s type and converts the abstracted data field’s type to the target type. The engine can do this because it has a couple of built-in rules for type conversions.

So, using the example above, a developer could specify customer_identifier as an abstract data field with a type of integer when using Expressor Studio. Upon reading the string value from the text file, Studio’s type conversion engine automatically converts the source field from the type specified in the source’s metadata structure to the abstract field’s type. At the time of writing the data value to the target database, the engine doesn’t have any work to do because the abstract data type and the target data type are just the same. Had they been different, the engine would have automatically provided the conversion.

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

Here the result of the poll:

Database Administrator 36.6% (254 votes)
Database Developer 63.4% (440 votes)
Total Votes: 694

This is open poll, if you want you can still participate here.

Vote your Voice – DBD or DBA?

I think it is the time when DBD word for Database Developer gets place in our dictionary.

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