One of the questions I hear many times concern performance acceleration of 3^rd party applications applications that are critical to business function, the “line of business” applications. In most cases critical software remain intact for many years, growing and expanding but also losing its performance edge and affecting the business for the worse, instead for the good. The main problem with fixing and tuning 3^rd party apps is that it is a closed code or someone else’s code. Those applications are waiting for an upgrade every few years, while the business being affected for the worse.

SafePeak idea: a middleware software that studies SQL Server schema (tables, views, stored procedures, functions, triggers) to learn about object dependencies, and then creates patterns of similar SQL queries and procedures executions while understanding their direct and indirect object dependents. And then it starts actively caching results in RAM, while keeping those update commands (DML, DDL and procs that do DML or DDL) to both effect the cache and the SQL Server. After downloading it (www.safepeak.com/download) the installation is on a standard Windows 2008 R2 virtual machine or a server (different then the SQL server) takes several minutes. Connecting the application is done by pointing the connection string to SafePeak (easy). Configuration is done via their very nice looking GUI and focuses on things SafePeak didn’t understood, which are usually procedures that have some dynamic code inside.

Results can be very exciting: cached queries response time is reduced to 0.25 millisecond or so. Yes, I meant millisecond, pretty impressive. So queries that are slow become extremely fast and queries that are already fast become even faster.

Because it no code change is involved this specifically fits well 3^rd party applications – plug it in, play with it for couple of hours of fine-tuning and see the results.

SafePeak supports SQL 2000, 2005, 2008 and 2008 R2 and can run in a private cloud or the public cloud.

SafePeak provides a 14 days trial with all functions available for a single installation (they also have a safepeak cluster installation, which I plan to review in near future). The download is available here: www.safepeak.com/download – Good luck and tell me your stories.

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)

During the session I have two things for you to spot.

1. How many times, I say word “performance”?
2. How many times, I use the phrase “It is interesting to …”?

Let us see if you can tell me after the session the count. Trust me, I am not going to count there as I will be presenting so I let you come up with the answer of this fun game.

Sessions Details

Title: Practical Tricks and Tips to Speed up Database Queries
Timing: December 15, 2011 1:45pm – 2:45pm IST
In this session I am going to discuss various performance tuning related techniques. Here is the agenda of the session.

• A Quick Start on Performance
• Denali T-SQL Enhancements
• Timeless Best Practices
• The Superlative Performance

Each of the above topics will be associated with very practical solid demo. I am sure you will absolutely enjoy the session.

Giveaways

During my session I will ask a simple question. I will give away 5 copies of my SQL Server Interview Questions and Answers books to five random person who will answer it correctly (more details in the session). 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)

This blog post is written in response to the T-SQL Tuesday post of Tips and Tricks. For me, this is a very interesting subject. I perfectly enjoy a discussion when it is about performance tuning. I commonly get follow-up questions regarding this subject, but most of them do not give the complete information about their environment.

Whenever I get a question which does not have complete information but is obviously requesting for my help, my initial reaction is to ask more questions. When I ask more details, I usually get more questions from them rather than the details I was asking for. Indeed, this is an endless loop. I prefer to resolve a query or a problem quickly, easily and accurately so that there is no more confusion or further problems in the future.

Here is the method I follow: I send people who request my help a couple of SQL Server scripts and ask them to run these scripts on their system. Once they send me the results,  I would then have a good idea on what the status of their system is.

Here are a couple of scripts which I usually request them to run on their respective machines and get back to me with results in Excel.

1) System Configuration

SELECT *
FROM sys.configurations
ORDER BY name OPTION (RECOMPILE);


2) Filename and Paths of Database

SELECT DB_NAME([database_id])AS [DBName],
name, physical_name, type_desc, state_desc,
CONVERT( bigint, size/128.0) [SizeinMB]
FROM sys.master_files
ORDER BY DB_NAME([database_id])

3) Capturing Wait Types and Wait Stats Information at Interva

You can review the script mentioned in my earlier blog post over here.

Honestly, there is a lot of information one needs to solve a query, but this is how I start and get all the basic information from the questioner. Once I get these, I review the results and continue to ask more questions or help right away if I am able to reach the root cause of the issue.

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

Sessions Details

Title: Practical Tricks and Tips to Speed up Database Queries
Timing: December 15, 2011 1:45pm – 2:45pm IST
In this session I am going to discuss various performance tuning related techniques. Here is the agenda of the session.

• A Quick Start on Performance
• Denali T-SQL Enhancements
• Timeless Best Practices
• The Superlative Performance

Each of the above topics will be associated with very practical solid demo. I am sure you will absolutely enjoy the session.

Giveaways

During my session I will ask a simple question. I will give away 5 copies of my SQL Server Interview Questions and Answers books to five random person who will answer it correctly (more details in the session). 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)

The winner of best story is: Jason Brimhall (USA) with a story about a proc with a fair amount of business logic. Congratulations Jason!

The 3 participants won the second prize of $100 gift card on amazon.com are: Michael Corey (USA), Hakim Ali (USA) and Alex Bernal (USA).

And 5 participants won a printed copy of a book of mine (Book Reviews of SQL Wait Stats Joes 2 Pros: SQL Performance Tuning Techniques Using Wait Statistics, Types & Queues) are:
Patrick Kansa (USA), Wagner Bianchi (USA), Riyas.V.K (India), Farzana Patwa (USA) and Wagner Crivelini (Brazil).

The winners are welcome to send safepeak their mail address to receive the prizes (to “info ‘at’ safepeak.com”). Also SafePeak team asked me to welcome you all to continue sending stories, simply because they (and we all) like to read interesting stuff) as well as to send them ideas for future contests. You can do it from here: www.safepeak.com/SQL-Performance-Contest-2011/Submit-Story

Congratulations to everybody!

I found this very funny video about SafePeak:

It looks like someone (maybe the vendor) played with video’s once and created this non-commercial like video:

SafePeak dynamic caching is an immediate plug-n-play performance acceleration and scalability solution for cloud, hosted and business SQL server applications. By caching in memory result sets of queries and stored procedures, while keeping all those cache correct and up to date using unique patent pending technology, SafePeak can fix SQL performance problems and bottlenecks of most applications – most importantly: without actual code changes.

By the way, I checked their website prior this contest announcement and noticed that they are running these days a special end year promotion giving between 30% to 45% discounts.
Since the installation is quick and full testing can be done within couple of days – those have the need (performance problems) and have budget leftovers: I suggest you hurry.

A free fully functional trial is here: www.safepeak.com/download, while those that want to start with a quote should ping here www.safepeak.com/quote.

Good luck!

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

For the same reason, I have created small video for that.

I have written two more article on columstore index. Please read them as followup to the video:

SQL SERVER – How to Ignore Columnstore Index Usage in Query

SQL SERVER – Updating Data in A Columnstore Index

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

SafePeak is in business of accelerating performance of SQL Server applications, as well as their scalability, without making code changes to the applications or to the databases. SafePeak performs database dynamic caching, by caching in memory result sets of queries and stored procedures while keeping all those cache correct and up to date. Cached queries are retrieved from the SafePeak RAM in microsecond speed and not send to the SQL Server. The application gets much faster results (100-500 micro seconds), the load on the SQL Server is reduced (less CPU and IO) and the application or the infrastructure gets better scalability.

SafePeak solution is hosted either within your cloud servers, hosted servers or your enterprise servers, as part of the application architecture. Connection of the application is done via change of connection strings or adding reroute line in the c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts file on all application servers.

For those who would like to learn more on SafePeak architecture and how it works, I suggest to read this vendor’s webpage: SafePeak Architecture.

More interesting new features in SafePeak 2.1

In my previous review of SafePeak new I covered the first 4 things I noticed in the new SafePeak (check out my article “SQLAuthority News – SafePeak Releases a Major Update: SafePeak version 2.1 for SQL Server Performance Acceleration”):

1. Cache setup and fine-tuning – a critical part for getting good caching results
2. Database templates
3. Choosing which database to cache
4. Monitoring and analysis options by SafePeak

Since then I had a chance to play with SafePeak some more and here is what I found.

5. Analysis of SQL Performance (present and history):

In SafePeak v.2.1 the tools for understanding of performance became more comprehensive. Every 15 minutes SafePeak creates and updates various performance statistics. Each query (or a procedure execute) that arrives to SafePeak gets a SQL pattern, and after it is used again there are statistics for such pattern. An important part of this product is that it understands the dependencies of every pattern (list of tables, views, user defined functions and procs). From this understanding SafePeak creates important analysis information on performance of every object: response time from the database, response time from SafePeak cache, average response time, percent of traffic and break down of behavior. One of the interesting things this behavior column shows is how often the object is actually pdated. The break down analysis allows knowing the above information for: queries and procedures, tables, views, databases and even instances level.

The data is show now on all arriving queries, both read queries (that can be cached), but also any types of updates like DMLs, DDLs, DCLs, and even session settings queries.

The stats are being updated every 15 minutes and SafePeak dashboard allows going back in time and investigating what happened within any time frame.

6. Logon trigger, for making sure nothing corrupts SafePeak cache data

If you have an application with many parts, many servers many possible locations that can actually update the database, or the SQL Server is accessible to many DBAs or software engineers, each can access some database directly and do some changes without going thru SafePeak – this can create a potential corruption of the data stored in SafePeak cache. To make sure SafePeak cache is correct it needs to get all updates to arrive to SafePeak, and if a DBA will access the database directly and do some changes, for example, then SafePeak will simply not know about it and will not clean SafePeak cache.

In the new version, SafePeak brought a new feature called “Logon Trigger” to solve the above challenge. By special click of a button SafePeak can deploy a special server logon trigger (with a CLR object) on your SQL Server that actually monitors all connections and informs SafePeak on any connection that is coming not from SafePeak. In SafePeak dashboard there is an interface that allows to control which logins can be ignored based on login names and IPs, while the rest will invoke cache cleanup of SafePeak and actually locks SafePeak cache until this connection will not be closed. Important to note, that this does not interrupt any logins, only informs SafePeak on such connection.

On the Dashboard screen in SafePeak you will be able to see those connections and then decide what to do with them.

Configuration of this feature in SafePeak dashboard can be done here: Settings -> SQL instances management -> click on instance -> Logon Trigger tab.

Other features:

7. User management

ability to grant permissions to someone without changing its configuration and only use SafePeak as performance analysis tool.

8. Better reports

for analysis of performance using 15 minute resolution charts.

9. Caching of client cursors

10. Support for IPv6

Summary

SafePeak is a great SQL Server performance acceleration solution for users who want immediate results for sites with performance, scalability and peak spikes challenges. Especially if your apps are packaged or 3^rd party, since no code changes are done. SafePeak can significantly increase response times, by reducing network roundtrip to the database, decreasing CPU resource usage, eliminating I/O and storage access.

SafePeak team provides a free fully functional trial www.safepeak.com/download and actually provides a one-on-one assistance during such trial.

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

“We are using SQL Server 2012 CTP3 and so far so good. In our data warehouse solution we have created 1 non-clustered columnstore index on our large fact table. We have very unique situation but your article did not cover it. We are running few queries on our fact table which is working very efficiently but there is one query which earlier was running very fine but after creating this non-clustered columnstore index this query is running very slow. We dropped the columnstore index and suddenly this one query is running fast but other queries which were benefited by this columnstore index it is running slow.

Any workaround in this situation?”

In summary the question in simple words “How can we ignore using columnstore index in selective queries?”

Very interesting question – you can use I can understand there may be the cases when columnstore index is not ideal and needs to be ignored the same. You can use the query hint IGNORE_NONCLUSTERED_COLUMNSTORE_INDEX to ignore the columnstore index. SQL Server Engine will use any other index which is best after ignoring the columnstore index.

Here is the quick script to prove the same.

We will first create sample database and then create columnstore index on the same. Once columnstore index is created we will write simple query. This query will use columnstore index. We will then show the usage of the query hint.

USE AdventureWorks
GO
-- Create New Table
CREATE TABLE [dbo].[MySalesOrderDetail](
[SalesOrderID] [int] NOT NULL,
[SalesOrderDetailID] [int] NOT NULL,
[CarrierTrackingNumber] [nvarchar](25) NULL,
[OrderQty] [smallint] NOT NULL,
[ProductID] [int] NOT NULL,
[SpecialOfferID] [int] NOT NULL,
[UnitPrice] [money] NOT NULL,
[UnitPriceDiscount] [money] NOT NULL,
[LineTotal] [numeric](38, 6) NOT NULL,
[rowguid] [uniqueidentifier] NOT NULL,
[ModifiedDate] [datetime] NOT NULL
) ON [PRIMARY]
GO
-- Create clustered index
CREATE CLUSTERED INDEX [CL_MySalesOrderDetail] ON [dbo].[MySalesOrderDetail]
( [SalesOrderDetailID])
GO
-- Create Sample Data Table
-- WARNING: This Query may run upto 2-10 minutes based on your systems resources
INSERT INTO [dbo].[MySalesOrderDetail]
SELECT S1.*
FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail S1
GO 100
-- Create ColumnStore Index
CREATE NONCLUSTERED COLUMNSTORE INDEX [IX_MySalesOrderDetail_ColumnStore]
ON [MySalesOrderDetail]
(UnitPrice, OrderQty, ProductID)
GO


Now we have created columnstore index so if we run following query it will use for sure the same index.

-- Select Table with regular Index
SELECT ProductID, SUM(UnitPrice) SumUnitPrice, AVG(UnitPrice) AvgUnitPrice,
SUM(OrderQty) SumOrderQty, AVG(OrderQty) AvgOrderQty
FROM [dbo].[MySalesOrderDetail]
GROUP BY ProductID
ORDER BY ProductID
GO

We can specify Query Hint IGNORE_NONCLUSTERED_COLUMNSTORE_INDEX as described in following query and it will not use columnstore index.

-- Select Table with regular Index
SELECT ProductID, SUM(UnitPrice) SumUnitPrice, AVG(UnitPrice) AvgUnitPrice,
SUM(OrderQty) SumOrderQty, AVG(OrderQty) AvgOrderQty
FROM [dbo].[MySalesOrderDetail]
GROUP BY ProductID
ORDER BY ProductID
OPTION (IGNORE_NONCLUSTERED_COLUMNSTORE_INDEX)
GO

Let us clean up the database.

-- Cleanup
DROP INDEX [IX_MySalesOrderDetail_ColumnStore] ON [dbo].[MySalesOrderDetail]
GO
TRUNCATE TABLE dbo.MySalesOrderDetail
GO
DROP TABLE dbo.MySalesOrderDetail
GO

Again, make sure that you use hint sparingly and understanding the proper implication of the same. Make sure that you test it with and without hint and select the best option after review of your administrator. Here is the question for you – have you started to use SQL Server 2012 for your validation and development (not on production)? It will be interesting to know the answer.

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

Column store indexes are run by Microsoft’s VertiPaq technology. However, all you really need to know is that this method of storing data is columns on a single page is much faster and more efficient. Creating a column store index is very easy, and you don’t have to learn new syntax to create them. You just need to specify the keyword “COLUMNSTORE” and enter the data as you normally would. Keep in mind that once you add a column store to a table, though, you cannot delete, insert or update the data – it is READ ONLY. However, since column store will be mainly used for data warehousing, this should not be a big problem. You can always use partitioning to avoid rebuilding the index.

A columnstore index stores each column in a separate set of disk pages, rather than storing multiple rows per page as data traditionally has been stored. The difference between column store and row store approaches is illustrated below:

In case of the row store indexes multiple pages will contain multiple rows of the columns spanning across multiple pages. In case of column store indexes multiple pages will contain multiple single columns. This will lead only the columns needed to solve a query will be fetched from disk. Additionally there is good chance that there will be redundant data in a single column which will further help to compress the data, this will have positive effect on buffer hit rate as most of the data will be in memory and due to same it will not need to be retrieved.

Let us see small example of how columnstore index improves the performance of the query on a large table.

As a first step let us create databaseset which is large enough to show performance impact of columnstore index. The time taken to create sample database may vary on different computer based on the resources.

USE AdventureWorks
GO
-- Create New Table
CREATE TABLE [dbo].[MySalesOrderDetail](
[SalesOrderID] [int] NOT NULL,
[SalesOrderDetailID] [int] NOT NULL,
[CarrierTrackingNumber] [nvarchar](25) NULL,
[OrderQty] [smallint] NOT NULL,
[ProductID] [int] NOT NULL,
[SpecialOfferID] [int] NOT NULL,
[UnitPrice] [money] NOT NULL,
[UnitPriceDiscount] [money] NOT NULL,
[LineTotal] [numeric](38, 6) NOT NULL,
[rowguid] [uniqueidentifier] NOT NULL,
[ModifiedDate] [datetime] NOT NULL
) ON [PRIMARY]
GO
-- Create clustered index
CREATE CLUSTERED INDEX [CL_MySalesOrderDetail] ON [dbo].[MySalesOrderDetail]
( [SalesOrderDetailID])
GO
-- Create Sample Data Table
-- WARNING: This Query may run upto 2-10 minutes based on your systems resources
INSERT INTO [dbo].[MySalesOrderDetail]
SELECT S1.*
FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail S1
GO 100


Now let us do quick performance test. I have kept STATISTICS IO ON for measuring how much IO following queries take. In my test first I will run query which will use regular index. We will note the IO usage of the query. After that we will create columnstore index and will measure the IO of the same.

-- Performance Test
-- Comparing Regular Index with ColumnStore Index
USE AdventureWorks
GO
SET STATISTICS IO ON
GO
-- Select Table with regular Index
SELECT ProductID, SUM(UnitPrice) SumUnitPrice, AVG(UnitPrice) AvgUnitPrice,
SUM(OrderQty) SumOrderQty, AVG(OrderQty) AvgOrderQty
FROM [dbo].[MySalesOrderDetail]
GROUP BY ProductID
ORDER BY ProductID
GO
-- Table 'MySalesOrderDetail'. Scan count 1, logical reads 342261, physical reads 0, read-ahead reads 0.
-- Create ColumnStore Index
CREATE NONCLUSTERED COLUMNSTORE INDEX [IX_MySalesOrderDetail_ColumnStore]
ON [MySalesOrderDetail]
(UnitPrice, OrderQty, ProductID)
GO
-- Select Table with Columnstore Index
SELECT ProductID, SUM(UnitPrice) SumUnitPrice, AVG(UnitPrice) AvgUnitPrice,
SUM(OrderQty) SumOrderQty, AVG(OrderQty) AvgOrderQty
FROM [dbo].[MySalesOrderDetail]
GROUP BY ProductID
ORDER BY ProductID
GO

It is very clear from the results that query is performance extremely fast after creating ColumnStore Index. The amount of the pages it has to read to run query is drastically reduced as the column which are needed in the query are stored in the same page and query does not have to go through every single page to read those columns.

If we enable execution plan and compare we can see that column store index performance way better than regular index in this case.

Let us clean up the database.

-- Cleanup
DROP INDEX [IX_MySalesOrderDetail_ColumnStore] ON [dbo].[MySalesOrderDetail]
GO
TRUNCATE TABLE dbo.MySalesOrderDetail
GO
DROP TABLE dbo.MySalesOrderDetail
GO

In future posts we will see cases where Columnstore index is not appropriate solution as well few other tricks and tips of the columnstore index.

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

Yesterday I came across a very interesting system, where the top most wait type was TRACEWRITE. The DBA of the system reached out to me asking what this wait types means and how it can be resolved. As I had not written about this in the book so far, this is the blog post dedicated to his question. It will definitely be included in future versions of the book. For the moment let us go over it quickly and see what we can learn about TRACEWRITE.

Personally I consider TRACEWRITE a harmless and innocent wait type and I recommend that you ignore it too. However, the DBA who ran the script mentioned in my very first blog still found this wait type on the top as I did not include this wait type in the exclusion list.  I think it should be there and in future versions of the script I will include it.

From Book On-Line:

TRACEWRITE
Occurs when the SQL Trace rowset trace provider waits for either a free buffer or a buffer with events to process.

TRACEWRITE Explanation:

SQL Trace is a SQL Server database engine technology which monitors specific events generated when various actions occur in the database engine. When any event is fired it goes through various stages as well various routes. One of the routes is Trace I/O Provider, which sends data to its final destination either as file or rowset. This rowset provider does not provide any guarantees to data. It stores the data into its internal buffers. If the data from the internal buffer is not consumed quickly enough (20 seconds) the buffers start to drop the events to free itself up to handle future events. This is when it sends a special error messages to the profiler client. When more threads are waiting for free buffers the wait type TRACEWRITE is implemented. The higher this wait type, the higher the number of threads waiting for free buffer, degrading performance in most of the system.

Reducing TRACEWRITE wait:

It is not necessary to consider this wait type as bad or evil. In most systems it can be a perfectly normal wait type and you just need to ignore it. If you are convinced, you should stop reading this blog post here. However, if still want to reduce this wait type, here is something you can experiment with on your development server (never on production server).

Run the following query and see if it returns any value. This query will list all the trace running in your system.

SELECT *
FROM sys.fn_trace_getinfo(0)


In most of the systems I have come across I have noticed default trace enabled for the system. I personally like this to keep it on as it helps the DBA to diagnosis problems the first time they occur. Additionally, this helps Microsoft to diagnosis your system if you request their support. (One more reason to ignore this wait type and do not attempt to disable default trace). However, you can manually disable this trace by following script.

sp_configure 'show advanced options', 1;
GO
RECONFIGURE;
GO
sp_configure 'default trace enabled', 0;
GO
RECONFIGURE;
GO

Well, as this is not harmful wait type, I had not included it in my book or initial series. Anyway, now we have learned about this wait type so I will include it in future versions.

Read all the post in the Wait Types and Queue series.

Note: The information presented here is from my experience and there is no way that I claim it to be accurate. I suggest reading my book OnLine for further clarification. All the discussion of Wait Stats in this blog is generic and varies from system to system. It is recommended that you test this on a development server before implementing it to a production server.

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

It looks like SafePeak team gave a very serious thinking how to make things even easier during the integration and fine tuning, thus improving the short term benefits, and also to provide a valuable information about the usage of the database by the application, an important long term benefit. Before I get into my key findings of the new features and improvements let me give a short reminder of SafePeak.

SafePeak in a brief:

SafePeak is a dynamic caching proxy that resides between the application and the database. It is unique in the way it requires neither code changes nor database changes. The only change required is routing the application through SafePeak instead of the database (by changing connection string, a DNS record, or simply adding reroute line in the c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts file).

Here is a short video about SafePeak (thanks to ApplicationPerformance.com team for benchmark and the video):

SafePeak analyses the database schema and the SQL traffic, prepares sql patterns for decision making process and applies those sql patterns as caching rules. When data served from cache – the result is immediate (tests show 100-400 micro seconds per query – that is 0.000,100 of a second).

Concept of “dynamic caching” is actually very interesting and unique: SafePeak caches in RAM the results of queries and stored procedures, but makes sure that the data integrity is enforced real-time both in SafePeak and in SQL Server.

The benefits of such a solution are obvious: quick integration, immediate ROI, no complex projects and most importantly, minimal downtime for production systems.

To learn more about the concept and how SafePeak works see my previous post here.

New features in the SafePeak version 2.1

As this is my first semi-deep look at the new version, I’ll cover the top features that I found useful.

1. Improvement of the cache setup and fine-tuning.

The #1 obstacle in previous versions was the understanding what needs to be actually configured to improve cache efficiency. Most of the setup is automated, some applications still demand important fine-tuning process. You see, SafePeak takes data integrity as its primary concern and that can reduce even significantly he cache effectiveness at the beginning. Two factors to consider from the beginning: A) “Dynamic Objects”; B) Manual (or non-deterministic) patterns to be enabled for cache. Actually few of the comments of my previous review asked questions exactly about this.

The “dynamic objects” are usually stored procedures that your application has, that dynamically create SQL and then execute it (actually CLR objects and encrypted objects are also considered as “dynamic”). For SafePeak such procs are signed as “dynamic objects” and by default SafePeak takes the safest course of action to ensure data correctness: each execution of such proc ALL Cache is cleaned and SafePeak mode during the execution is “Disabled (DDL)” (visible on the dashboard screen).

Consider that you have 2-3 procedures with dynamic code that do not change any data and are executed every 5 seconds. This means that instead of caching them, SafePeak all instance cache is cleaned each 5 seconds. This doesn’t really give you a chance for improvement, right..?

While it was configurable in the previous versions, the new version makes the process of both identification of such events and procedures and the configuration much easier: Immediately on such execution you will see on the Dashboard the name of the procedure that needs to be configured:

Clicking on the line will take to the Dynamic Objects configuration screen (Caching managementàInstanceàDatabaseàDynamic Object tab) where a filter will apply to show you only this procedure plus all of its dependant dynamic procedures. You will need to manually configure to all these procedures.

Configuration became easier too, eliminating the previous requirement running “sp_helptext” on your production SQL Server each time. The “Available Objects” popup (under “Object Dependencies” tab) shows us the text of the procedure. All we are left to do is identify the tables that are read from (selects, joints), tables that are updated (DMLs) and/or which other stored procedures it calls. Focus only the SQL code that is dynamic (the regular code has already been learned by SafePeak automatically).

At the end configure the checkboxes at the “Object Information”: if object is deterministic (makes the activation of cache automatic), does it have transactions inside, DDL – does it changes schema, and should it clear all SafePeak cache (best not to do that J ).

The new version makes it simple to know what needs to be configured (from the dashboard) and the configuration is simpler and no longer requires opening in parallel your database server. This makes things also nice, as this can be done remotely.

2. Database templates

What happens if I have multiple similar structured database (like content databases in SharePoint)? Or I have several servers with same structured databases?

Well this is the next improvement by SafePeak: creation of Database Templates.

After you configure One database, you can save this a as a database template (in the Caching Management area). Then if you have additional similar database, SafePeak will recognize their pattern and apply that configuration to those databases too. You have also control for it under the very much enhanced “SettingsàInstance Configuration” section. You can also export these settings to a file and then import it on another SafePeak installation. A very nice feature.

3. Controlling caching by databases was also enhanced. In addition to controlling sql patterns, at the “SettingsàInstance Configuration” section you can enable and disable cache per each database. Because SafePeak licensing model is based on cached databases this makes it very simple to control.

4. SafePeak extends to near real-time analytical abilities of the SQL Server usage

SafePeak version 2.1 brings the DBA new abilities to see and analyze all the SQL queries that were executed during anytime. While previously we could see only cacheable “read” sql patterns, the new SafePeak allows investigation of all executed SQL patterns, including DMLs, DDLs, DCLs etc. The new SafePeak also makes it possible to check exactly what happened by choosing the specific timeframe. The new version creates analytical statistics every 15 minutes (reduced from 1 hour), which allows better investigation of suspicions events. SafePeak team also changed the columns list, added a “DB” column. This way you immediately see the queries response time as they run on SQL, performance from cache, and the change on the average performance new performance with SafePeak.

Actually this is interesting, as just couple of weeks ago one of my customers had a sudden overload on the SQL server during evening hours. It is not really clear when it started, when it ended, what happened there and why – all remain a mystery up to day. SafePeak’s new analytical abilities could definitely unveil the mystery and help the DBAs to save their precious time and back to normal work.

Summary

I was impressed of SafePeak first version, but the new features and components make SafePeak a very advanced and comprehensive SQL Server performance, acceleration and analytical solution. In this post scanned a small part of the overall changes and improvement. I would very much like to hear your findings and suggestions.

SafePeak is a great acceleration solution for users who want immediate results for sites with performance, scalability and peak spikes challenges.

SafePeak can significantly increase response times, by reducing network round-trip to the database, decreasing CPU resource usage, eliminating I/O and storage access.

For all those SQL Server shops – definitely worth giving SafePeak a try. You can download a free, fully functional trial www.safepeak.com/download.

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

Database Design and Performance (SQL Server Compact Edition)

• Use Database Denormalization
• Decide Between Variable and Fixed-length Columns
• Create Smaller Row Lengths
• Use Smaller Key Lengths
• Publication Article Types and Options

Query Performance Tuning (SQL Server Compact Edition)

• Improve Indexes
• Choose What to Index
• Use the Query Optimizer
• Understand Response Time vs. Total Time
• Rewrite Subqueries to Use JOIN
• Use Parameterized Queries
• Query Only When You Must

Optimizing Connectivity (SQL Server Compact Edition)

• Synchronization Time-Out Properties
• Time-out Optimization

I found above articles very interesting and useful, and looking forward to your opinion on the same.

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)

My question just got published at DBA Quiz 2011. This question is inspired from a real life incident, which occurred to me a few years ago. That time, I was a DBA myself and then one fine day, everything went south. When we checked the log, all the logs were fine till few minutes before our server started to face the issue. After working for long hours, we fixed the issue. Our CTO had called us to analyze the situation. Instead of blaming anyone, he adorned an extremely positive attitude. He suggested that we all go out and come back with three top best solutions. We all gathered after a week and looked at each other’s solution. We combined that and put them in order for our later reference.

Well, today we are going to do the same task. SQL Server MVP Jacob Sebastian has come up with an SQL Server DBA Quiz where my question has just got published.

A query that was working fine every time suddenly became slow. There has been no change in the workload; no new development changes have been deployed, and there have been no other configuration changes in the system. Everybody runs to the DBA asking for resolution. If you were the DBA, what will be the first thing you would do and why? List the three most important priorities.

There are various awards for the winner, but here is a small effort from me. Irrespective of the whoever wins the SQL Quiz at the end, I will give a copy of my wait stats print book to one person who has attempted to answer the question I have asked. If you are not sure on how to answer this question, here is a quick hint.

Hint: SQL Programming Joes 2 Pros (vol 4) [Amazon] | [Flipkart]- Chapter 13 has few interesting hints.

Please participate in the DBA Quiz Here.

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

Given how important performance is these days among SQL Server critical applications, I was excited to look into a new product by SafePeak Technologies (www.SafePeak.com) that aims to immediately resolve, in a plug-and-play way, the performance, scalability and peaks challenges of SQL Server applications on the Cloud, hosting servers and enterprise data centers.

Click to Enlarge

While most SQL Server shops ask me about performance monitoring and alert solutions, to allow them to identify and analyze performance bottlenecks, this unique product actually can resolve them and increase performance in dramatic ways.

SafePeak is a caching proxy that resides between the application and the database. It is unique in the way it requires neither code changes nor database changes. The only change required is routing the application through SafePeak instead of the database.

The benefits of such a solution are obvious: quick integration, immediate ROI, no complex projects and most importantly, minimal downtime for production systems.

As far as I know, this is the only true plug & play caching solution available on the market today and it can provide instant acceleration to any Cloud, hosted or business SQL Server application.

The concept

The idea behind SafePeak is that simple – repeatable queries should not be executed against the database, the result sets can be stored in RAM and can be returned immediately, in fractions of a millisecond, without the need to validate the syntax, calculate the execution plan, read IO blocks from the disk and perform data aggregation.

On transactional applications there are many such repeatable queries and SafePeak can reduce the overhead of executing them against the database over and over again.

How Does SafePeak work?

SafePeak’s solution to the performance problem is to store the result sets returned by the database in RAM, as is. When a recurring query or SP execution with the same parameters is passed through SafePeak, it will reply from RAM in a fraction of a millisecond instead of sending the query to the database, thus significantly reducing resources from the database server and the database storage.

In order to achieve this behavior, SafePeak reads and analyzes the TDS protocol (the protocol between the application and the SQL Server), making it transparent to any application working with SQL Server.

Data integrity, reliability and high availability

The main challenge with database caching is to understand in real time when data is no longer valid and should be evicted from the cache. Data can become obsolete for numerous reasons: DML, DDL, executing complex stored procedures, triggers etc.

SafePeak solved this complicated challenge with patent-pending algorithms with three parts: 1) Automatic analysis algorithm of the database schema and creation of a relations graph between all the objects in the database: tables, views, triggers, functions, stored procedures, etc.; 2) A self-adaptive algorithm that studies the application traffic, creates patterns of queries and understands their dependant objects; 3) Real-time analysis of the TDS and the T-SQL queries upon arrival of data modification event, and then flushing or refreshing in real-time the relevant cache items results.

The data on the SQL Server is always up-to-date and the cache items that remain in SafePeak memory are always up to date.

SafePeak’s team made sure to protect the application and database from potential glitches of software and hardware. Basically, in single-mode installation the worst case of any failure the traffic will be sent directly to the database server. In cluster installation, SafePeak second, the passive server takes over (Virtual IP) and becomes the active one.

Installation and configuration

SafePeak Installation is quick and simple, and is completed in few minutes. It requires a different server than the database with Windows 2008 64bit or Windows 2008R2 (VMware, Microsoft Hyper-V or any cloud virtual instance/server are supported as well).

Adding a database instance to SafePeak requires mixed authentication on the database but again, it is simple and takes few seconds. From this point SafePeak analyzes the schema and creates the relations graph, a procedure that takes between seconds to an hour and is a one-time operation. Once this is completed, you are good to go.

The application should be pointed (via connection string or etc\hosts file or a change of DNS record) to the SafePeak server instead of the database. If you have Jobs running on SQL Server using the agent then you may need to define an “alias” to the agent that will route all the jobs via SafePeak (but only if want SafePeak to be aware on any updates they may perform).

From this point SafePeak is in auto-pilot, learns the traffic patterns and does caching of whatever is possible.

There is fine tuning that can be done to improve performance in relation to stored procedures that perform dynamic SQL (inform SafePeak which objects are being accessed) and the same operation is required for CLR and encrypted objects. The application will continue to work without the configuration, but the effectiveness of SafePeak decreases. Basically within one hour the application will be accelerated.

User Interface

The nice, easy browser-based GUI allows both product management and also provides tools for performance bottlenecks identifications and analysis.

Click to Enlarge

The product provides a structured way to see performance information starting with the instance level all the way through the queries execution.

On each level the product shows the amount read and records the average response time, the cached response time.

Historical information can be viewed using the product reports.

Conclusion

Overall, I am very impressed with SafePeak as a novel product. SafePeak is a great acceleration solution for users who want immediate results for sites with performance, scalability and peak spikes challenges.

While there are specific environments that will clearly benefit from SafePeak, such as SQL Servers with high SELECTivity and read-intensive databases, it is designed for OLTP applications. Such environments that seem to get the most out of SafePeak’s acceleration are E-commerce, Cloud and Hosted apps, large SharePoint and CRM Dynamics implementations, ERP & CRM applications.

SafePeak can significantly increase response times, by reducing network roundtrip to the database, decreasing CPU resource usage, eliminating I/O and storage access

It is simple, plug-and-play, and easily integrates into the current architecture. If you have an important SQL Server website or enterprise application whose performance affects company sales and productivity – then it is definitely worth giving SafePeak a try.

However, while SafePeak works well with SQL Server OLTP apps, it does not play well with OLAP databases. You can still use SafePeak, but you will need to specially configure CLR objects with SafePeak.

You can download a free, fully functional trial here: www.SafePeak.com/download.

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

http://www.safepeak.com/download?source=sqlauthority-sidebar

I was recently delivering session on Performance Tuning subject. I was asking if there is any harm having duplicate indexes. Of course, duplicate indexes are nothing but overhead on the database system. Database system has to maintain two sets of indexes when it has to do update, delete, insert on the table which has duplicate indexes. There is also a possibility that indexes are overlapped.

For example,

Index1 have Col1, Col2, Col3 but Index2 have Col1,Col2,Col3,Col4,Col5. Here Index1 and Index2 are overlapping and there is no need of Index1, which should be removed.

Following is the script which does the same task. You can run the script, get duplicate indexes and overlapping indexes. Carefully review each of them first and test this by deploying on your development server (not on production). If this script has any issue, do write back and I will do necessary modifications.

;WITH MyDuplicate AS (SELECT
Sch.[name] AS SchemaName,
Obj.[name] AS TableName,
Idx.[name] AS IndexName,
INDEX_COL(Sch.[name] + '.' + Obj.[name], Idx.index_id, 1) AS Col1,
INDEX_COL(Sch.[name] + '.' + Obj.[name], Idx.index_id, 2) AS Col2,
INDEX_COL(Sch.[name] + '.' + Obj.[name], Idx.index_id, 3) AS Col3,
INDEX_COL(Sch.[name] + '.' + Obj.[name], Idx.index_id, 4) AS Col4,
INDEX_COL(Sch.[name] + '.' + Obj.[name], Idx.index_id, 5) AS Col5,
INDEX_COL(Sch.[name] + '.' + Obj.[name], Idx.index_id, 6) AS Col6,
INDEX_COL(Sch.[name] + '.' + Obj.[name], Idx.index_id, 7) AS Col7,
INDEX_COL(Sch.[name] + '.' + Obj.[name], Idx.index_id, 8) AS Col8,
INDEX_COL(Sch.[name] + '.' + Obj.[name], Idx.index_id, 9) AS Col9,
INDEX_COL(Sch.[name] + '.' + Obj.[name], Idx.index_id, 10) AS Col10,
INDEX_COL(Sch.[name] + '.' + Obj.[name], Idx.index_id, 11) AS Col11,
INDEX_COL(Sch.[name] + '.' + Obj.[name], Idx.index_id, 12) AS Col12,
INDEX_COL(Sch.[name] + '.' + Obj.[name], Idx.index_id, 13) AS Col13,
INDEX_COL(Sch.[name] + '.' + Obj.[name], Idx.index_id, 14) AS Col14,
INDEX_COL(Sch.[name] + '.' + Obj.[name], Idx.index_id, 15) AS Col15,
INDEX_COL(Sch.[name] + '.' + Obj.[name], Idx.index_id, 16) AS Col16
FROM sys.indexes Idx
INNER JOIN sys.objects Obj ON Idx.[object_id] = Obj.[object_id]
INNER JOIN sys.schemas Sch ON Sch.[schema_id] = Obj.[schema_id]
WHERE index_id > 0)
SELECT    MD1.SchemaName, MD1.TableName, MD1.IndexName,
MD2.IndexName AS OverLappingIndex,
MD1.Col1, MD1.Col2, MD1.Col3, MD1.Col4,
MD1.Col5, MD1.Col6, MD1.Col7, MD1.Col8,
MD1.Col9, MD1.Col10, MD1.Col11, MD1.Col12,
MD1.Col13, MD1.Col14, MD1.Col15, MD1.Col16
FROM MyDuplicate MD1
INNER JOIN MyDuplicate MD2 ON MD1.tablename = MD2.tablename
AND MD1.indexname <> MD2.indexname
AND MD1.Col1 = MD2.Col1
AND (MD1.Col2 IS NULL OR MD2.Col2 IS NULL OR MD1.Col2 = MD2.Col2)
AND (MD1.Col3 IS NULL OR MD2.Col3 IS NULL OR MD1.Col3 = MD2.Col3)
AND (MD1.Col4 IS NULL OR MD2.Col4 IS NULL OR MD1.Col4 = MD2.Col4)
AND (MD1.Col5 IS NULL OR MD2.Col5 IS NULL OR MD1.Col5 = MD2.Col5)
AND (MD1.Col6 IS NULL OR MD2.Col6 IS NULL OR MD1.Col6 = MD2.Col6)
AND (MD1.Col7 IS NULL OR MD2.Col7 IS NULL OR MD1.Col7 = MD2.Col7)
AND (MD1.Col8 IS NULL OR MD2.Col8 IS NULL OR MD1.Col8 = MD2.Col8)
AND (MD1.Col9 IS NULL OR MD2.Col9 IS NULL OR MD1.Col9 = MD2.Col9)
AND (MD1.Col10 IS NULL OR MD2.Col10 IS NULL OR MD1.Col10 = MD2.Col10)
AND (MD1.Col11 IS NULL OR MD2.Col11 IS NULL OR MD1.Col11 = MD2.Col11)
AND (MD1.Col12 IS NULL OR MD2.Col12 IS NULL OR MD1.Col12 = MD2.Col12)
AND (MD1.Col13 IS NULL OR MD2.Col13 IS NULL OR MD1.Col13 = MD2.Col13)
AND (MD1.Col14 IS NULL OR MD2.Col14 IS NULL OR MD1.Col14 = MD2.Col14)
AND (MD1.Col15 IS NULL OR MD2.Col15 IS NULL OR MD1.Col15 = MD2.Col15)
AND (MD1.Col16 IS NULL OR MD2.Col16 IS NULL OR MD1.Col16 = MD2.Col16)
ORDER BY MD1.SchemaName,MD1.TableName,MD1.IndexName


Related Posts:

SQL SERVER – 2008 – Missing Index Script – Download

SQL SERVER – 2008 – Unused Index Script – Download

Update: Additionally, please read the comment left by Paul Randal, why there is more modifications required to this query.

This is version one query. Please provide all your suggestions and based on the same, I will have final query posted on blog.

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

Why SELECT * throws an error but SELECT COUNT(*) does not

This is indeed very interesting question as not quite many realize that this kind of behavior SQL Server demonstrates out of the box. Once you run both the code and read the explanation it totally makes sense why SQL Server is behaving how it is behaving. Also there is connect item is associated with it. Also read the very first comment by Rob Farley it also shares very interesting detail.

Statistics are not Updated but are Created Once

This puzzle has multiple right answer. I am glad to see many of the correct answer as a comment to this blog post. Statistics are very important and it really helps SQL Server Engine to come up with optimal execution plan. DBA quite often ignore statistics thinking it does not need to be updated, as they are automatically maintained if proper database setting is configured (auto update and auto create). Well, in this question, we have scenario even though auto create and auto update statistics are ON, statistics is not updated. There are multiple solutions but what will be your solution in this case?

When to use Function and When to use Stored Procedure

This question is rather open ended question – there is no right or wrong answer. Everybody developer has always used functions and stored procedures. Here is the chance to justify when to use Stored Procedure and when to use Functions. I want to acknowledge that they can be used interchangeably but there are few reasons when one should not do that. There are few reasons when one is better than other. Let us discuss this here. Your opinion matters.

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

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

I am running this test on SQL Server 2008 R2. Here is the quick scenario about my setup.

• Create Table
• Insert 1000 Records
• Check the Statistics
• Now insert 10 times more 10,000 indexes
• Check the Statistics – it will be NOT updated

Note: Auto Update Statistics and Auto Create Statistics for database is TRUE

Expected Result – Statistics should be updated – SQL SERVER – When are Statistics Updated – What triggers Statistics to Update

Now the question is why the statistics are not updated?

The common answer is – we can update the statistics ourselves using

UPDATE STATISTICS TableName WITH FULLSCAN, ALL

However, the solution I am looking is where statistics should be updated automatically based on algorithm mentioned here.

Now the solution is to ____________________.

Vinod Kumar is not allowed to take participate over here as he is the one who has helped me to build this puzzle.

I will publish the solution on next week. Please leave a comment and if your comment consist valid answer, I will publish with due credit.

Here is the script to reproduce the scenario which I mentioned.

-- Execution Plans Difference
-- Create Sample Database
CREATE DATABASE SampleDB
GO
USE SampleDB
GO
-- Create Table
CREATE TABLE ExecTable (ID INT,
FirstName VARCHAR(100),
LastName VARCHAR(100),
City VARCHAR(100))
GO
-- Insert One Thousand Records
-- INSERT 1
INSERT INTO ExecTable (ID,FirstName,LastName,City)
SELECT TOP 1000 ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY a.name) RowID,
'Bob',
CASE WHEN  ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY a.name)%2 = 1 THEN 'Smith'
ELSE 'Brown' END,
CASE WHEN ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY a.name)%20 = 1 THEN 'New York'
WHEN  ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY a.name)%20 = 5 THEN 'San Marino'
WHEN  ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY a.name)%20 = 3 THEN 'Los Angeles'
WHEN  ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY a.name)%20 = 7 THEN 'La Cinega'
WHEN  ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY a.name)%20 = 13 THEN 'San Diego'
WHEN  ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY a.name)%20 = 17 THEN 'Las Vegas'
ELSE 'Houston' END
FROM sys.all_objects a
CROSS JOIN sys.all_objects b
GO
-- Display statistics of the table - none listed
sp_helpstats N'ExecTable', 'ALL'
GO
-- Select Statement
SELECT FirstName, LastName, City
FROM ExecTable
WHERE City  = 'New York'
GO
-- Display statistics of the table
sp_helpstats N'ExecTable', 'ALL'
GO

-- Replace your Statistics over here
-- NOTE: Replace your _WA_Sys with stats from above query
DBCC SHOW_STATISTICS('ExecTable', _WA_Sys_00000004_7D78A4E7);
GO
--------------------------------------------------------------
-- Round 2
-- Insert Ten Thousand Records
-- INSERT 2
INSERT INTO ExecTable (ID,FirstName,LastName,City)
SELECT TOP 10000 ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY a.name) RowID,
'Bob',
CASE WHEN  ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY a.name)%2 = 1 THEN 'Smith'
ELSE 'Brown' END,
CASE WHEN ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY a.name)%20 = 1 THEN 'New York'
WHEN  ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY a.name)%20 = 5 THEN 'San Marino'
WHEN  ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY a.name)%20 = 3 THEN 'Los Angeles'
WHEN  ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY a.name)%20 = 7 THEN 'La Cinega'
WHEN  ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY a.name)%20 = 13 THEN 'San Diego'
WHEN  ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY a.name)%20 = 17 THEN 'Las Vegas'
ELSE 'Houston' END
FROM sys.all_objects a
CROSS JOIN sys.all_objects b
GO
-- Select Statement
SELECT FirstName, LastName, City
FROM ExecTable
WHERE City  = 'New York'
GO
-- Display statistics of the table
sp_helpstats N'ExecTable', 'ALL'
GO
-- Replace your Statistics over here
-- NOTE: Replace your _WA_Sys with stats from above query
DBCC SHOW_STATISTICS('ExecTable', _WA_Sys_00000004_7D78A4E7);
GO
-- You will notice that Statistics are still updated with 1000 rows
-- Clean up Database
DROP TABLE ExecTable
GO
USE MASTER
GO
ALTER DATABASE SampleDB
SET SINGLE_USER WITH ROLLBACK IMMEDIATE;
GO
DROP DATABASE SampleDB
GO


Reference: 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)


But my friend suddenly asked, “what if we can put TempDB on RAM, as RAM is the fasted drive?”

Good question! This was supported in earlier versions of the SQL Server (I think in 6.5). In later version of the SQL Server, the whole algorithm was written more efficiently and it is not that much of an absolute requirement. However, I still prefer putting TempDB on the drive which has lesser IO pressure.

Afterwards, he introduced to me a tool which can create drive from RAM. Well, that was an interesting thought. But then again, I will not go for this solution as it is not natively provided with SQL Server. For me, SQL Server Engine knows the right thing to do and how to maximize the usage of the RAM. Taking away RAM from OS and from other applications may not be a good idea. There are more optimization tricks that exist for TempDB than going for this option.

I would like to ask my readers who among you use this method in the production environment. What is your experience?

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

Session Time

Sessions Date: March 25, 2011

Understanding SQL Server Behavioral Pattern – SQL Server Extended Events
Date and Time: March 25, 2011 12:00 PM to 01:00 PM

SQL Server Waits and Queues – Your Gateway to Perf. Troubleshooting
Date and Time: March 25, 2011 04:15 PM to 05:15 PM

Surprise Gifts

If you are attending the session – rest assure – few of you are going to get very interesting surprise gift. A good quality one! To win – you just have to walk in the sessions.

Who Should Attend?

YOU! This session is for everybody who wants to learn something new in the area. It does not matter you work with SQL or not. If you are using application with database as back-end. This session is for you.

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

Sessions Date: March 25, 2011

Here is the abstract of the session:

Understanding SQL Server Behavioral Pattern – SQL Server Extended Events
Date and Time: March 25, 2011 12:00 PM to 01:00 PM

History repeats itself! SQL Server 2008 has introduced a very powerful, yet very minimal reoccurring feature called Extended Events. This advanced session will teach experienced administrators’ capabilities that were not possible before. From T-SQL error to CPU bottleneck, error login to deadlocks –Extended Event can detect it for you. Understanding the pattern of events can prevent future mistakes.

SQL Server Waits and Queues – Your Gateway to Perf. Troubleshooting
Date and Time: March 25, 2011 04:15 PM to 05:15 PM

Just like a horoscope, SQL Server Waits and Queues can reveal your past, explain your present and predict your future. SQL Server Performance Tuning uses the Waits and Queues as a proven method to identify the best opportunities to improve performance. A glance at Wait Types can tell where there is a bottleneck. Learn how to identify bottlenecks and potential resolutions in this fast paced, advanced performance tuning session.

Here is the video which my wife shot while I was preparing for the sessions.

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