This 15 modules, level 300 course provides students with the knowledge and skills to capitalize on their skills and experience as an Oracle DBA to manage a Microsoft SQL Server 2008 system. This workshop provides a quick start for the Oracle DBA to map, compare, and contrast the realm of Oracle database management to SQL Server database management.

Module 1: Database and Instance
Module 2: Database Architecture
Module 3: Instance Architecture
Module 4: Data Objects
Module 5: Data Access
Module 6: Data Protection
Module 7: Basic Administration
Module 8: Server Management
Module 9: Managing Schema Objects
Module 10: Database Security
Module 11: Data Transport
Module 12: Backup and Recovery
Module 13: Performance Tuning
Module 14: Scalability and High Availability
Module 15: Monitoring

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

Update: Do not forget to checkout last three photos and follow me on twitter (of course!)

I have previously documented my four-day experience of SQL PASS 2009 Summit at Seattle. There were many reasons for SQL enthusiasts to attend the SQL PASS event; I am listing my own reasons here in order of importance to me.

• Networking with SQL fellows and experts
• Putting face to the name or avatar
• Learning and improving my SQL skills
• Understanding the structure of the largest SQL Server Professional Association
• Attending my favorite training sessions

During these four days, there was so much happening that it is difficult to document everything. I had tried to cover this event briefly on a daily basis in the following blog posts:

SQLAuthority News – SQL PASS Summit, Seattle 2009 – Day 1
SQLAuthority News – SQL PASS Summit, Seattle 2009 – Day 2
SQLAuthority News – SQL PASS Summit, Seattle 2009 – Day 3
SQLAuthority News – SQL PASS Summit, Seattle 2009 – Day 4

I will list a few of the additional details that I have not included in the earlier post. Keynotes were the best part of the event, and I have covered major points of the keynote in above mentioned posts. I had met many SQL Legends during this event and included information regarding them. However, there were few things I still missed and I am listing them here. Seattle is great city, and I am visiting it the second time. This time I got an opportunity to take the Underground city tour and I had really enjoyed.

It was great to meet SQL Server MVP Glenn Berry at the MVP Summit. He is a very kind and friendly person. You will always find him hanging around with people from different organizations and countries. If you try to eavesdrop his conversation, you will hear terms like ‘dmv’, ‘performance’, and ‘optimized query’ very often. He is very much known for his excellent optimization script known as “SQL Server 2008 Diagnostic Information Queries“. If you have never taken a look at that, I urge you to go there and check this out. I believe that even if he blogs once a year only with this script, his fans will not complain. I have previously published his interview on my blog. Please note that he is the only person ever featured in an interview on this blog.

It depends! This is one most loved (or hated) phrase in the world of programmers or DBA. It is quite common to start answering question using this phrase. Mostly, this phrase initiates humor but rarely, people take this as offence. Again the intent of speaker is not always conveyed properly, it depends on how the phrase is used (I could not resist to use this phrase as well :P). I had very interesting discussion with Michelle Ufford and Jason Strate when we were waiting for coffee at one afternoon. We discussed both the sides of this phrase. Michelle suggested many good points when and why this phrase is valid. Jason also suggested that this phrase is commonly used a) when the presenter does not have sufficient information to answer or b) when the presenter does not know the answer. We discussed that it would be really interesting to start the conversation answering the most possible answer and then talking about special cases (for which it depends is quite commonly used.) Let us see one example.

Q: Does index improve performance?
A1: It depends on query and data you have.
A2: Usually YES; however, there are cases when it reduces performance, for which the query and data needs to be examined carefully.

There are times when it depends totally make sense. I use it several times; I love the blog of Andy Warren which talks is branded as it depends. This discussion between three of us was just a friendly discussion, and if you think we are talking about you, it is wrong!

During this event, I had great conversation with SQL Legend Buck Woody. This man is full of energy and may be the most loved person in this summit. His session was the funniest session I have ever attended. At the end of his session, I had more than 2 pages of my notebook filled with notes. If I have wrote down how many times, I have laughed loudly, I would have no time to do anything else. Buck had a good hour of discussion with me. We discussed many different topics, ranging from Community to Microsoft and Collage Students to SQL. I am very thankful to Buck for spending his valuable time with me – I am honored.

Joe Celko – this name is very popular in SQL world, and I admit that I was always afraid of him. Every time I see his photo, I just felt nervous. I never thought that I should meet him. Honestly, for the same reason, I did not attend his session. I was absolutely wrong. I met him right after his session was over. He is one of the most friendly people I have met in my life. He is very soft spoken. He gauges the level and understanding of other person and speaks at the same level. He made me laugh and taught many good techniques for how to become good speaker and presenter. When I said I was sorry that I was scared of him, he laughed and said that he knows this. Boy, what a mistake I did!! I should have attended his session. Well, at least I am accepting my mistake here. He is indeed a very friendly soul. He promised me that one time he will come to India.

Brian Moran is the newly elected board member; I would like to call him as ‘the Man with 1000 successful ideas‘. You have to come across him to know what I am talking about. I had the great opportunity to meet him and discuss few things, besides SQL. Brian had many excellent ideas about how to build the community, how to help SQL PASS and few excellent ideas about how to take PASS to the next level. I am glad that he is one of the board members for PASS. PASS is all about passion, and Brian clearly demonstrates the same.

I met all of them and had a great conversation with them. It was great to meet Ed Hackney; he is a wonderful person and very easily approachable. He talked about SQL community in India and how any community cannot be restrained within geographical boundaries.

I was waiting to meet Thomas LaRock. He is an excellent SQL Master, and he talked in detail about outsourcing SQL technology and SQL community. I really enjoyed meeting him and spending some time with him during the summit. I plan to learn more from him when I meet him next time.

Robert Cain, he is one of the very few SQL masters, who have expertise in .net and Business Intelligence at the same time. I have previously wrote about him in Big Thinkers – Robert Cain. He has given approval that I can write about his BI presentation on this blog. I will write about it soon.

I have previously written a lot about Greg Low on this blog. However, I just can not resist to put this excellent photo once again here. He has great respect for the international community; and he had spent some quality time with me discussing how to enhance and grow the global community. Greg gave his insight and few plan cache tips as well. You can read my review of his book ‘Book Review – The Rational Guide to Building Technical User Communities (Rational Guides)‘. You can also read our discussion on plan cache ‘SQL SERVER – Plan Caching and Schema Change – An Interesting Observation‘.

Following image is for sure very interesting! Can you recognize the person? Well, just go here and read about Mr. Denny. And I do have permission from him to publish this photo!

PASS 2010 dates are announced; this event will take place between 8 and 12 November 2010.

Following image is my favorite as it brings the future and past of PASS together. Kevin Kline, a hero of PASS summit, (as he dedicated 10 years of his life to serve PASS board) is in same frame with Rushabh Mehta, who is President Elect for 2010.

Now I am coming to the most interesting part of my experience. I want to introduce to all of you the youngest SQL PASS fan and follower. Her name is Shaivi Dave, and she is big fan of SQL PASS! Shaivi suggests that save your money and register right away for PASS. There is no other conference which is as valuable as SQL PASS.

She had conveyed her wish to SQL PASS President Elect Rushabh Mehta when she was just 19 days old. May be one of following years, we will see her at summit.

This is note is addendum to my four original posts. I strongly suggest you all to read my earlier posts for details on keynote and other SQL legends.

SQLAuthority News – SQL PASS Summit, Seattle 2009 – Day 1
SQLAuthority News – SQL PASS Summit, Seattle 2009 – Day 2
SQLAuthority News – SQL PASS Summit, Seattle 2009 – Day 3
SQLAuthority News – SQL PASS Summit, Seattle 2009 – Day 4

If you have visited this event and have something more to add to what I have written, please feel free to add it here as a comment. I am looking forward for you all to add more details and information here. Follow me on twitter.

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

About a week ago, SQL Server Expert, Imran Mohammed, provided a script, which will list all the missing identity values of a table in a database. In this post, I asked my readers if any could write a similar or better script. The results were interesting. While no one provided a new script, my question sparked a very active discussion that is still ongoing.

When providing the script, Imran asked me if I knew of any specific circumstances in which this kind of query could be useful, as he could not think of an instance where it would be necessary to find a missing identity. I was unable to think of a single reason for listing missing identities in a table. I posted Imran’s script on the assumption that someone would come up with an improved script, but as mentioned earlier, nobody did. Instead, we have been able to follow a very interesting discussion on subject of the need, if any, for listing Missing Identity values.

So, the question is this: “Do you know a real-world scenario where a Missing Identity value in any table can create problems?“

I have already received some extremely interesting comments from many experts, and all have posed the above question in one form or another. At this moment, I am still trying to think of an example from my own experience, but have yet to find one. Imran has since come up with one good example. Here is what he and other experts have suggested so far.

Jacob Sebastian – IDENTITY values are not expected to be sequential and there are all chances of having missing identity values, the most common cause is transaction rollbacks.

Simon Worth – The identity column is basically just a random number – even though they come sequentially. A developer making an assumption that the next record inserted will have an identity that is 1 more than the last inserted record. And if this is the case – then there are flaws in the logic of the developer.

Jacob Sebastian – What if the value in my table is 1, 2, 3, 5, 6 etc where “4″ is missing from the sequence. So what is the importance of knowing whether a table has missing identity values or not?

Imran Mohammed – If you use Identity property as your most unique column and Transaction Identifier, then definitely you would want to know why few transaction did not completely, Is there any specific fashion these transaction fails (Can be found out looking at missing values of identity)… Could be helpful to debug.

Now it is your turn. Let us have your thoughts.

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

Today is July 30 and I am very happy; it’s my Birthday, celebration time!!! The most common question I receive on my every birthday is -what are my plans for birthday. Let me share my plans here today. Additionally, if you are interested to know when SQL Server was born read my post SQLAuthority News – Author BirthDay – SQL Server Birthday.

My first plan is that I am going to take a break from blogging on anything technical today and spend more time with my family.

Let me tell you about my second plan. I am very much pleased and encouraged with active participation from many of you on this blog. I have received so far more than 10s of thousands of comments on my blog. These comments are open for you all to read and you can use them in any fashion that can help you out. Without good participation there is no life in any community, whether it is offline or online.

For the same reason, I have introduced Top 7 Commenters section in the side bar of SQLAuthority.com. There are many active users who have been participating for a long time. One of them I just recognized is Imran Mohammed. This SQL Expert has been extremely helpful to the community and has been providing comprehensive answers to hundreds of questions. Hats Off to you Imran! I totally appreciate your knowledge and dedication to SQL community. Without passion and love toward helping community, this is absolutely not possible.

You can subscribe to SQLAuthority.com feed, which will display all the new posts of my blog as they are published.

You can subscribe to SQLAuthority.com comments, which will show all the new comments posted on the blog as they are published.

If you prefer to receive SQLAuthority.com articles in email, you will get all the fresh posts in email.

There is no automated feature for top commenters where I host, so I will have to calculate this manually. I will keep it updated on weekly basis. Every week we will see new names there. First column is number of post, and second column is number name with link to experts website or blog or email.

Every day I receive a couple of emails about starting a forum on SQLAuthority.com. I do plan to start the forum in future. Currently, there are plenty of very good forums on the web. SQLAuthority.com is a blog and below every blog post there is a discussion related to the subject discussed in the blog post.

SQLAuthority.com is all about community and people who are passionate about SQL. Everyone is welcome to participate here. There are many ways to participate.

• Discussing blog post
• Helping user who have posted their issues on blog
• Asking questions
• Writing Guest Post
• Submitting useful SQL Scripts
• Reviewing any Microsoft-related products
• Reviewing Books

Let me know if you have any other useful and interesting suggestions on how I can involve YOU more in my efforts to take SQL community to the next level.

If you are interested in participating in volunteer program do send me email at pinal ‘at’ SQLAuthority.com and we can discuss something out.

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

Just about a year ago, I had written on the subject of how to insert data from one table to another table without generating any script or using wizard in my article SQL SERVER – Insert Data From One Table to Another Table – INSERT INTO SELECT – SELECT INTO TABLE. Today, we will go over a similar question regarding how to generate script for data from database as well as table. SQL Server 2008 has simplified everything.

Let us take a look at an example where we will generate script database. In our example, we will just take one table for convenience.

Right Click on Database >> Tasks >> Generate Scripts >>

This will pop up Generate SQL Server Scripts Wizards >> Click on Next >> Select Database >> This will bring up a screen that will suggest to Choose Script Option.

On Choose Script Option Screen of Script Wizard under section Table/View Options Look at Script Data row and Turn the Option to True.

The Next Screen will ask about object types. Select all the objects that are required in the generated script. Depending on the previous screen it will show few more screen requesting details about the objects required in script generation.

On the very last screen it will request output options. Select the desired output options of Script to file, Script to Clipboard or Script New Query Window.3

Clicking on Finish button will generate a review screen containing the required objects along with script generating data.

Clicking on Finish button one more time will generate the requested output.

Similarly, if you want to generate data for only one table, you can right click on the table and follow almost a similar wizard. I am sure this neat feature will help everybody who has been requesting for it for a long time.

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

I have been planning to write a general post on the latest technology for a long time but SQL keeps me so busy that I hardly get time. I know being busy is no excuse as everybody is busy with something. A manager is equally busy managing people as much as a peon busy doing errands. Now, coming back to my topic, I have lots of news to share with you all.

Anyway, number one news is that Bing has been finally released a couple of days back. I am very much excited as something is finally challenging Google – The Search Engine King. Google has been my preferred search engine for many years and my home page too. However, I am quite impressed with Bing which has a clearer and more organized interface. The navigation on the left side does make sense. My opinion is that there is no other option for Google but to improve to retain its popularity. In the search engine race Google has always been a clear winner for many years now, and people have always appreciated its simplicity and most importantly, its accurate results. But now, for the very first time I think Bing is going to challenge Google on two fronts – accuracy of search and simplicity of interface. Only time will decide who will rule, but I would like to give Bing a fair chance to improve itself.

Another major improvement I have done is that I have finally upgraded 3 of my 4 computers to Windows 7. I have never hated Vista for its shortcomings. I have seen people and media pointing negative things about it. In fact I think it has now become a trend to just bad mouth Vista. I thoroughly believe that Vista was a significant improvement over XP. There was a time when XP was everywhere and every software was designed in keeping with its compatibility with it. Then, Vista emerged in the market. XP required less hardware while Vista necessitated upgradation of hardware of most of the computer systems. This was not appreciated by many users as they had to spend money on hardware apart from spending on Vista. Additionally, it took a good amount of time for companies to come out with drivers of Vista. Today, Win 7 is out and getting loudly applauded by the same people who criticized it. Win 7 is definitely better and I love it! It has everything what Vista had and even more. If people hated Vista for some of its drawbacks, in that case Win 7 will not disappoint them and it will exceed their expectations with its additional features. Slowly and steadily, Win 7 is coming out as a winner. It took sometime for Vista to get accepted, which was entirely hardware companies fault as they did not release its driver. But today almost all the companies have Vista compatible drivers which work fine with Win 7, thereby making Win 7 more acceptable.

There is one more reason why Win 7 has become my favorite OS. My wife – Nupur Dave has an old laptop, which is single core (when we purchased it there was no concept of double core) and had XP so far. Since the past one month, my wife kept on complaining that her laptop takes forever to start. As her laptop is 6 years old with 1.6 GHz, Single Core and 1 GB RAM, we decided to purchase a new one. However, I decided to give it a shot and see if I can install Win 7 on this old machine. To my surprise, it took only 25 mins to install the whole operating system and it works better than XP. Now this is something really good about it and it saved my bucks!

What else is keeping me busy? There are so many things to say. I am reading a plethora of books and blogs. I have a collection of over 500 books in my home library and have almost the same number of feeds in my RSS reader. I recently finished a book Pro T-SQL 2008 Programmer’s Guide. It is written by one of the most popular book authors Michael Coles. You can read his interview here. His interview was taken by a dear friend of mine who is a .NET expert Vijaya Kadiyala. He is not only writing about .NET but also writing on SQL. Besides, whenever I have free time I try to solve T-SQL Challenges written by my fellow MVP Jacob Sebastian.

Well, my friend Abhishek Kant suggested me to start using twitter but not to forget my blog. Every time I spend too much time on twitter, I remember his saying: Hats Off! Thanks Abhishek for giving me these golden words. I will keep on blogging.

Thanks John-Wu Zioa for sending this cartoon. I’m flattered!

Now you know what I think of the latest technologies and what I have been doing. I will appreciate your comments for the same and please feel free to share your experience here.

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

SQL Server 2008 offers an impressive array of capabilities for developers that build upon key innovations introduced in SQL Server 2005. The  SQL Server 2008 Developer Training Kit  will help you understand how to build web applications which deeply exploit the rich data types, programming models and new development paradigms in SQL Server 2008. The training kit is brought to you by Microsoft Developer and Platform Evangelism.

The training kit includes the following content:

• Presentations (6)
  • Filestream
  • Spatial
  • T-SQL
  • Date and Time Types
  • SQLCLR
  • Reporting Services
• Demos (12)
  • AdventureWorks Racing All-Up SQL Server 2008 Demo
  • SQL Server 2008 All-Up Spatial Demo
  • Spatial Types Demo
  • Intro to Filestream Demo
  • SQL CLR Nullable Types Demo
  • Programming with Filestream Demo
  • Reporting Services Web Application Integration Demo
  • Date and Time Support in SQL Server 2008 Demo
  • T-SQL Table-Valued Parameters Demo
  • T-SQL Row Constructors Demo
  • T-SQL Grouping Sets Demo
  • T-SQL Merge Demo
• Hands-on Labs (3)
  • Using Spatial Data in TSQL
  • Using Spatial Data in Managed Code
  • Using SQL CLR in SQL Server 2008

Download SQL Server 2008 Developer Training Kit

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

I had a gala time at TechEd India 2009 event! Meeting with great people is an experience of a lifetime. My session was well attended and well appreciated, which also gives me another reason to feel happy.  Moreover, my SQL Server Cheat Sheet gained unpredicted popularity at the event. Let me share with you all a little story behind this cheat sheet.

For my personal use, I created one handy SQL Cheat Sheet, which I hang on my desk always. Even though I have a sound knowledge of SQL Syntax there are many occasions when I need to quickly refer to syntax. This cheat sheet helped me quite a bit and saved my time. Besides, it saved me from getting annoyed of looking up for same syntax again and again. This experience gave me the idea of creating a proper SQL Server Cheat Sheet, which was until now in a simple excel document.

I often received numerous requests from my friends, UG members and blog readers to covert the SQL Server Cheat Sheet into a more presentable one. Well, my designing skills are limited and also I never undertook this creative task. I was inspired by Rushabh Mehta of SolidQ as well the directors of Digicorp to create PDF printable version of this cheat sheet. Designers at Digicorp created this professional looking cheat sheet and then it was printed on a high quality glossy paper. When I had the first glimpse of the final SQL Server Cheat Sheet, I realized that I should do something for my community and share this useful cheat sheet with more and more SQL developers. TechEd India 2009 was one such opportunity where I was able to achieve my goal; I distributed several SQL Server Cheat Sheets among the participants.

SQL Server Cheat Sheet acquired so much popularity at TechEd that I ran out of all the copies around noon on the third day of the event. I had promised many attendees that I will put this online and also I will send it to them using physical email.

Now, you can download SQL Server Cheat Sheet and print it on a glossy paper yourself. I request you all to spread the words and pass this cheat sheet to your friends. Bookmark it, reprint it, and distribute it! Due to copyright issues you are not allowed to host it online anywhere other than its original location listed below.

Download SQL Server Cheat Sheet

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

Update : If you visit SQL Server Energy Event, you will get free printed copy of SQL Server Cheat Sheet

Original post : http://blog.sqlauthority.com/2009/05/20/sql-server-download-pdf-sql-server-cheat-sheet/

10 Reasons for Database Outsourcing

While you may feel that your IT material is safe and handled effectively within your own company, these reasons may give you some perspective on why you may want to consider other options.

Cost Reduction – Perhaps the most popular reason to outsource your database is the overall reduction in cost that would benefit your company.  No longer do you have to pay people to check up and maintain your servers, verify that they have uninterrupted power supplies, and ensure their security from hackers.  By going with an IT company that does this exclusively, you can save money on your end because they make money by volume.

Bigger Can Mean Better – Larger IT outsourcing companies are experts at what they do; there’s a reason they have made it to the top of the data storage field.  Not only will they have the resources to back up your data, perhaps multiple times, but they do business by serving many clients, which meant they have the power and money to get the latest technology.

Newer Technology – Firms that specialize in storage can’t afford to let their systems go out of style or date because that could jeopardize their business.  Going with them means you won’t have to worry about constantly updating your systems.

Reduction in Liability – Turning over this task to an expert also means a lot less worrying on your part.  All you have to do is make sure you are operating within a solid contract that protects you in the case of data loss.  Agree to a contract that puts you ahead in the case of a loss and you can sleep soundly knowing that your data is safe.

Competition means Lower Prices Elsewhere as Well – Now that you are in a market where others are competing for your business, you’ll get to shop around and find the best deal in town.  In addition to the number one reason of lowering your overhead, competition also means that if you find you have gone with a company that doesn’t meet your needs you can switch.  Imagine making that mistake if you owned all your own equipment!

More Effective Communication – If your company runs a database that needs to be accessed by multiple points, it will be easier for others to access and probably be faster for them to access as well.  Once again a good contract is key, but in most cases you can get more bandwidth access for your money by outsourcing, than you could by providing your own database connection.

Better Security – On the other hand you will know your data is backed up by competition driven upgraded safeware.

Standardization – What if your resource manager suddenly quits or is fired?  Outsourcing virtually guarantees that your information will be stored in a standard way, accessible consistently and without fear of security leaks.

Cross-referencing with Third Party Information – In many cases it may be possible to have your information collated and cross-referenced with other information for a variety of needs.  Once again get a solid contract and fully understand your security requirements first.

Removal of Duplicate or Incorrect Data – A final way outsourcing can help your database is a common option many companies will offer, which is the examination of your data in various ways as it is transferred.  Think of this as your businesses opportunity to ‘clean house,’ and set out again with a fresh start.

This post was contributed by Claire Webber, who writes about the schools online. She welcomes your feedback at Claire.Webber1223 at gmail.com

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

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)

SQL Server 2008 Service Pack 1 (SP1) is now available. You can use these packages to upgrade any SQL Server 2008 edition.

Download SQL Server 2008 Service Pack 1

Build of SP1 is SP1 is build 10.00.2531.00.

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

SQL Server 2008 new brochure is available for download.

Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008 provides a trusted, productive, and intelligent data platform that enables you to:

• Run your most demanding mission-critical applications.
• Reduce time and cost of development and management of applications.
• Deliver actionable insight to your entire organization.

Your Data, Any Place, Any Time.

Download SQL Server 2008 Brochure

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

I have published a poll on website few days ago for favorite database of SQLAuthority.com readers. The best comment will win USB drive. The poll will close on April 1, 2009. Looking at the poll result, it seems that Oracle has gained a lot over SQL Server from last time when I checked. Please share this poll with your friends, your UG and community to get better sample. If you are not interested in poll there are many interesting comments, please read them.

Click on Image to go to Poll

Additionally, Gandhinagar SQL Server User Group has launch event today. I suggest all of you from surrounding area to show up at this User Group meeting. We have price for best participation in UG as well. Please read more my post for agenda, time and location SQLAuthority News – Announcement – Gandhinagar SQL Server User Group – March 27, 2009.

You can follow me on twitter for latest updates. My tweets will be a mix of fresh product news, database optimization tips, interesting links, upcoming events, and possibly even some giveaways.

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

Today is my 900th article on this blog. You can see list of all the 900 articles here. I suggest you go over the list and read any article you like.

First let us go over 9 Best Practices List.

1. Auto Shrink runs at regular interval (30 mins) in background of SQL Server and it is cause performance dropping fragmentation. It should be turn off.
2. All the statistics should be updated at regular interval.
3. Compressed backup should be used instead of regular backup as it improves speed and performance. Restoring compressed backup is faster than regular restore.
4. Always take full database backups along with differential and log backups. Log backups can be very much useful for point-in-time recovery.
5. Pay attention to “Activity Monitor” – a new feature which displays current activity of a) Process Time, b) Waiting Tasks, c) Database I/O, d) Batch Requests/Sec.
6. Control the configurations as well enforces policies using Policy Based Management.
7. Utilize new datatypes DATE and TIME instead of conventional DATETIME.
8. Keep database updated with latest SPs and Cumulative Updates.
9. Use Dynamic Management Views to figure out longest running queries as well most popular queries.

I really had great time at Microsoft MVP Summit 2009 at Seattle, you can read about my trip to Seattle here. I have recently updated my resume with my latest activities.

Social Media is new thing and I am really enjoying to be part of it. Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Feedreader are my latest interests. Here is my web presence in social media.

Twitter: http://twitter.com/pinaldave
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/profile.php?id=654862451
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/pinaldave
SQLAuthority Feed: http://feeds2.feedburner.com/SQLAuthority
SQLAuthority Email: http://www.feedburner.com/fb/a/emailverifySubmit?feedId=872428

Search@SQLAuthority: http://search.sqlauthority.com/
Job@SQLAuthority: http://jobs.sqlauthority.com
Resume: http://blog.sqlauthority.com/database-administrator-mcdba-resume/

You can hire me through my company, read the details of here.

Best thing about my job is I can work from office as well as from home office. Find me in action at home office.

Pinal at Home Office

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

What is Your Favorite Database?

I have been listening so many different answer to question of favorite database. I would like to know what is favorite database of SQLAuthority.com readers. I encourage all of you to participate in this poll. It is very quick poll and takes a second.

A gift of USB drive will be provided to user who will also add comment discussing this subject matter. I encourage to send emails to your friends to participate in poll. I am hopping this poll becomes landmark poll for people who are finding answer to favorite database.

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

Today SQLAuthority.com has completed 6 Million Visits. In 2 years 3 months miles stone of 6 million visits has been crossed.

I want to thank all of my readers for their continuous support and help.

On milestone of 6 million visits I want to announce small gratitude towards my readers who are continuously participating on this blog. I will be sending small surprise to all the readers who have been consistently participating on this blog. Those who have occasional participated with comments, suggestion or articles, I suggest them to participate more to get the surprise.

Additionally, on this occasion I want to give early heads up about new development on this blog. I am planning to start giving away encouraging gifts to regular participates of this blog, the details of this event will be posted very soon on this blog.

Again, I want to thank all of you who made this SQL journey one successful journey.

There are more than 800+ articles on this blog site and there are good chance that your question is answered already. I suggest that you try custom SQLAuthority Search which exclusively Search @ SQLAuthority.com site.

If you are looking for SQLAuthority specific downloads, I suggest visiting Download @ SQLAuthority.com and download all the important downloads. I have updated all of them recently so if you have downloaded them a week ago, I suggest to download them again and keep it for easy reference.

Reference : Pinal 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)

In these times of economical slowdown, more and more IT professionals are concerned about their jobs and their qualifications. It is a common trend for developers to start looking for ways to update their skills when jobs are not secure. Pure knowledge and real world work experience are always a good way to help secure your future. One way to demonstrate knowledge is by having a certification in the technology one claims to be expert in.

Microsoft offers a series of certifications for IT professional and developers. In this article we will cover the following topics.

1. Importance of Certificates
2. Certification Structure
3. SQL Server Certifications
4. Exam Preparation
5. Registration for Exam
6. Post Examination Benefits

Microsoft certifications are very reputed and validate developers’ hands-on experience.

Click here to read complete article.

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

Recently I have been receiving a lot of emails from employees asking where they can find good employee. I was under impression that due to global recession job market is down but from looking at recent increase in emails for looking for right candidate I have to say that there are good jobs still out there.

There are few jobs in market which are recession proof. There are few decisions one has to make when their job is at risk. Use the website created by SQLAuthority.com for finding right job and right candidate.

Click here to go to find right job and candidate.

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

It is time again to announce SQL Hour – SQL Server User Group Meeting for November 2008. This time it is going to be one really interesting event. Our User Group is growing and getting more interesting. Lots of new SQL Server enthusiastic have contacted me recently for User Group meeting. It is the time for all the SQL Server developers to meet again for SQL Hour.

User group is place to meet fellow developers like us and learn something new at no cost. User groups are free and there is no fee. I suggest you read my article here where I have explained what is user group and its activity.

This month’s meeting is going to particular interesting because of the variety of topics which are going to be covered in this meeting. One of the most important thing which one should not miss is my short talk about how to become MVP and what are its advantages. There will be no slides to download regarding the topic “How to become MVP?” so I encourage every SQL Server Developer/DBA to attend this meeting. I will also share some of the interesting information and photographs of MVP Open day 2008 held at Goa.

Agenda:
1) Introduction by Pinal Dave
2) Direct from New York – Live Meeting by UG President Jacob Sebastian – SQL Pass Roundup and Other News
3) Technical Session by Pinal Dave – Query Optimizer and Backup Tricks
4) Technical Session by Tejas Shah – What is Service Broker?
5) Information Session by Pinal Dave – What is MVP? - MVP Open Day 2008 – Goa
6) Question and Answers
7) Ice Cream

SQL Server User Group Meeting – November 2008

Location : 401, TIME SQUARE, CG road, Op Bazar Calcutta, Ahmedabad, India

Date and Time : November 29, 2008 6:00 PM onwards (6:00 PM sharp)

Hope to see all of you there.

If you with to attend the meeting, please register your name by sending an email to jacob.reliancesp[at]gmail.com latest by Saturday 12 Noon.

Click to join Ahmedabad_SQLServer_UserGroup

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