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),

Expert SQL Server 2008 Encryption (Paperback)
Michael Coles (Author), Rodney Landrum (Author)

Link to Amazon

“What is your opinion on encryption? What I mean is: In a world filled with data, how do you see encryption?” This is the precise question Michael Coles posed to me on March 3^rd of this year, while we were heading to Starbucks in Seattle. We were both attending the Microsoft MVP Summit there.

In the information era, security has become one of the most vital aspects of life. Although the topic may seem a little mundane, its importance cannot be overemphasized. It is the pillar of the information age and I shudder to think where we would be without it. We don’t leave our houses unlocked and risk thieves or opportunists taking off with our valuables. We also often take precautions, not only to preserve the precious, but also to avoid the sheer hassle of replacement and misuse. So too it should be with our information.

Encryption’s roots are extremely old and it has resolved numerous security problems over the years. In days gone by, couriers were entrusted with letters sealed with a royal wax stamp. If on delivery, the seal was broken, it was obvious that there had been a security breach. This very concept evolved as CRC checksum and developed into a complex algorithm.  While CRC checksum alerted the end user to the fact that content had been modified, its limitation was that it allowed manipulation of the content to occur in the first place. With encryption, only the authenticated owner can access and modify content.

In response to Michael’s question, I began to tell him what I knew about public and private keys. He looked at me doubtfully and asked me directly if I had ever used encryption in my career. My reluctant answer to this was “No”. He strongly suggested that I not underestimate its capabilities and explore its possibilities. I took his advice and have since implemented encryption for many of my clients, who are now far safer from unauthorized access to data.

To be very honest, in my experience, not many people know much about the subject beyond a little about public and private keys.  You do not often find experts discussing symmetric and asymmetric keys, which are just the tip of the iceberg. SQL Server has come a long way with regard to security. Encryption has taken on a whole new meaning in SQL Server 2008. There are many new features such as Extensible Key Management, Transparent Data Encryption, not to mention the pre-2008 ones such as cryptographic hashing, SQL CLR and many more. In performance terms, these are great enhancements.

The one exception is Transparent Data Encryption, where the whole database is encrypted. This can considerably reduce performance if the SQL Server box is not sufficiently powerful. It this is the case, it is a good time to offload all the encryption and decryption to third-party hardware. SQL Server allows third-party management of encryption and decryption through Extensible Key Management.

Extending the earlier courier analogy, consider the fact that even if our letter is secure and safe in our hands, as soon as we hand it to the courier it is exposed to risk and can be compromised. SQL Server 2008 has many new features, which secure data while it is being communicated between applications. A number of features were introduced that check whether data is manipulated during transmission.

Data is everywhere and taking in terms of Terra Bytes (TB) is the current reality. When a large amount of data needs to be handled, there are two major challenges. The first challenge is the actual encryption process and the resources needed to perform it. The second challenge is how to use the data once it has been encrypted.  In a regular database searching through TBs of data can take a very long time. Imagine how long this could take in and encrypted database?

In Seattle, Michael and I discussed these challenges and a few more subjects. The discussion lasted more than four hours. I have always known Michael to be an excellent author. He is renowned in the industry for his expertise of XML and Full Text Search. To my mind, he is an expert who has the extraordinary ability of relating complex concepts in simple terms. No matter how long, boring or complicated the topic, his delivery is always sweet, like chocolate that melts in the mouth.

Michael always addresses uncommon subjects. Perhaps his experience as a Sergeant in the army has given him the spirit to explore the unexplored.  I have never before encountered a single book on the subject of encryption for SQL Server and Michael’s will a “first”.

I recently had the pleasure of reading it and especially like the manner in which he and his co-author, Rodney, explain the significance of encryption. While many of the concepts covered are domain-specific, quite a few topics are common to all and the appendix is a “must read” for anyone planning a security strategy. One thing that really makes this book special is the fact that each module is written independently and you can find solutions by simply reading the relevant one.

I am a hands-on developer and only like books that have a lot of workable examples. With the exception of the first chapter, the book is filled with examples and hands-on experiments. The first chapter in itself is quite unique, as it not only provides a introduction to encryption, but also the very interesting history of encryption.  Even non-technical readers will enjoy this.

Summary:
It is my great pleasure to welcome this one-of-a- kind book to the SQL Server world. There is no doubt that this book is exceptional and will inspire anyone one who is ready to take their current security mechanism to the next level using encryption.

Stars : 5 Stars

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

Introduction

Today we have a very interesting subject to look at. I tried to look for help online but have not found any other documentation besides what we have from the Book Online.

Let us try to understand what are the different kinds of hints available in SQL Server and how they are helpful.

What is a Hint?

Hints are options and strong suggestions specified for enforcement by the SQL Server query processor on DML statements. The hints override any execution plan the query optimizer might select for a query.

Before we continue to explore this subject, we need to consider one very important fact and say some words of caution. SQL Server Query optimizer is a very smart tool and it makes a best selection of execution plan. Suggesting hints to the Query Optimizer should be attempted when absolutely necessary and by experienced developers who know exactly what they are doing (or in development as a way to experiment and learn).

There are three different kinds of hints. Let us understand the basics of each of them separately.

Join Hint

This hint is used when more than one table is used in a query. Two or more tables can be joined using different kinds of joins. This hint forces the type of join algorithm that is used. Joins can be used in SELECT, UPDATE and DELETE statements.

Query Hint

This hint is used when certain kind of logic has to be applied to a whole query. Any hint used in the query is applied to the complete query, as opposed to part of it. There is no way to specify that only a certain part of a query should be used with the hint. After any query, the OPTION clause is specified to apply the logic to this query. A query always has any of the following statements: SELECT, UPDATE, DELETE, INSERT or MERGE (SQL 2K8); and this hint can be applied to all of them.

Table Hint

This hint is used when certain kind of locking mechanism of tables has to be controlled. SQL Server query optimizer always puts the appropriate kind of lock on tables, when any of the Transact SQL operations SELECT, UPDATE, DELETE, INSERT or MERGE are used. There are certain cases when the developer knows when and where to override the default behavior of the locking algorithm and these hints are useful in those scenarios.

Let us run the following simple query with different kinds of query hints and observe the actual execution plan. The analysis of execution plan is not part of this article and will be covered in future.

The above query will produce the following query execution plan.

In this article we will focus mainly on Join Hints. We will discuss other kinds of hints and their usage in a different article. There are a total of four kinds of join hints available.

Loop Join

This join is also commonly known as nested iteration. This kind of join is composed by an outer loop and an inner loop. When the query runs for each row of the outer loop, the inner loop is executed completely. This join is effective only when the outer loop query is small and the inner loop query has all the proper optimizations applied. This join method is very useful with small transactions.

Merge Join

This join has the unique requirement for tables involved in the operation to be sorted. This join keeps both of the tables sorted in parallel and compares each table row by row simultaneously with each other. It compares one row of the first table with one row of the second table. If they are equal, that row qualifies; otherwise, this join determines which row of each table has the lower value. Once the lowest value of the table is figured out, it moves on to next row of that table and compares that to the original row. This operation keeps going on until all rows from each table are completely examined. This operation can be very expensive when tables are not sorted and it’s required to sort them before they are joined. If tables have non clustered indexes over them and joins are using the same conditions, there are pretty good chances that this join performs better than other kinds of joins.

Hash Join

This is the most complex of all the other joins. There are two major components of this kind of join – build query and probe query. First, a smaller table is assigned as build query and a hash table for the same is created. This hash table is compared with the probe table. This comparison of input table and probe table is done one row at a time. One row of the probe table is hashed and compared against the other row, and qualifying rows are checked.

There are three different kinds of hash joins:  in-memory hash join, grace hash join, and recursive hash join. Let us look in more detail at these three kinds of joins.

In-Memory Hash Join

This kind of hash join is used when tables are very small and a complete table can be hashed and loaded in memory.

Grace Hash Join

This kind of hash join is used when tables are comparatively large and don’t fit in memory. Tables will be partitioned at input levels and processed in steps.

Recursive Hash Join

This kind of join is used for complex tables and for tables which are very large and require multilevel of table partitions.

SQL Server query optimizer is a smart tool and it knows when to use the right kind of join. When it comes to hash join, the query optimizer starts conservatively with in-memory hash join. If join is larger than in-memory it moves up to Grace hash join or Recursive hash join. Sometimes the optimizer makes a mistake in identifying a smaller table and it reverses the role of the build and probe table: this is called role reversal.

Remote Join

This is least-used tabled join ever. There is no example for it given in Book On Line. Every Join has two tables associated with it: Left Table and Right Table. The join usually happens on the Left Table. When Remote close is used, joins are performed on the site of Right Join. This join can only be performed on INNER JOIN as in case of OUTER join there may be NULL values on the right table which makes concept of joining on right table logically incorrect.

Summary

We have closely observed different kinds of Join Hints in this article. We will cover the remaining concepts in another article.

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

Posted in Pinal Dave, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Joins, SQL Performance, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology ]]> http://blog.sqlauthority.com/2009/11/19/sql-server-understanding-table-hints-with-examples/feed/ 4 pinaldave http://blog.sqlauthority.com/2009/11/18/sql-server-size-of-index-table-a-puzzle-to-find-index-size-for-each-index-on-table/ http://blog.sqlauthority.com/2009/11/18/sql-server-size-of-index-table-a-puzzle-to-find-index-size-for-each-index-on-table/#comments Wed, 18 Nov 2009 01:30:16 +0000 pinaldave http://blog.sqlauthority.com/?p=7388 ]]>

It is very easy to find out some basic details of any table using the following Stored Procedure.

USE AdventureWorks
GO
EXEC sp_spaceused [HumanResources.Shift]
GO

Above query will return following resultset

The above SP provides basic details such as rows, data size in table, and Index size of all the indexes on the table.

If we look at this carefully, a total of three indexes can be found on the table HumanResources.Shift.

USE AdventureWorks
GO
SELECT *
FROM sys.indexes
WHERE OBJECT_ID = OBJECT_ID('HumanResources.Shift')
GO

The above query will give result with query listing all the index on the table.

There is a small puzzle for all of you here. The puzzle is to write a query that will return the size for each index that is listed in above query. We need a query that will return an additional column in the above listed query and it should contain the size of the index. In our case, we will have three different sizes, which should add up to a total of 40 KB as shown in earlier query, where the total size is displayed.

I will publish the solution with due credit on this blog.

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

Script of Backup, Integrity Check and Index Optimization are the most important scripts for any developer. SQL Expert and true SQL enthusiast Ola Hallengren is known for his excellent scripts.

Please try it out and let me know what you think. The documentation is available on http://ola.hallengren.com/Documentation.html and the script can be downloaded from http://ola.hallengren.com.

Here is brief documentation sent by Ola himself for his script in his own words.

Backup Maintenance

I think that most of you have experienced the error messages “BACKUP LOG cannot be performed because there is no current database backup.” and “Cannot perform a differential backup for database “”, because a current database backup does not exist.”.

This usually happens when you have created a new database or when you have changed recovery model of a database from Simple to Full.

The consequence is that the database is not getting backed up, until a full backup (or a differential backup for the BACKUP LOG error message if that can be done) has been performed. It will also create some noise in your monitoring system.

The solution is to check if a differential or transaction log backup can be performed before doing the backup. This can be done by checking sys.master_files.differential_base_lsn and sys.database_recovery_status.last_log_backup_lsn.

The backup solution that I have developed has a parameter called @ChangeBackupType.

EXECUTE dbo.DatabaseBackup @Databases = 'USER_DATABASES', @Directory = 'C:\Backup', @BackupType = 'LOG', @ChangeBackupType = 'Y'

If it’s a new database in Full recovery model, the backup type for that database and job run will be changed to full. If it’s a database that was newly changed to Full recovery model, then the backup type for that database and job run will be changed to differential. The next time the job runs a transaction log backup will be performed for that database.

New databases start getting backed up quickly and no more “BACKUP LOG cannot be performed because there is no current database backup.” and “Cannot perform a differential backup for database “”, because a current database backup does not exist.”.

Index Optimization

The design idea is categorize all indexes based on their fragmentation level (High, Medium or Low) and whether there are columns with LOB (Large Object) data types. For each category you can define an action. The possible actions are to rebuild indexes online or offline, reorganize indexes, update statistics, reorganize indexes and update statistics or to do nothing.

Here’s an example.

EXECUTE dbo.IndexOptimize
@Databases = 'USER_DATABASES',
@FragmentationHigh_LOB = 'INDEX_REBUILD_OFFLINE',
@FragmentationHigh_NonLOB = 'INDEX_REBUILD_ONLINE',
@FragmentationMedium_LOB = 'INDEX_REORGANIZE',
@FragmentationMedium_NonLOB = 'INDEX_REORGANIZE',
@FragmentationLow_LOB = 'NOTHING',
@FragmentationLow_NonLOB = 'NOTHING',
@FragmentationLevel1 = 5,
@FragmentationLevel2 = 30,
@PageCountLevel = 1000


Indexes with a fragmentation above 30% are to be rebuilt, online if possible (no LOB columns), otherwise offline (LOB columns). Indexes with a fragmentation between 5% and 30% are to be reorganized. Indexes with a fragmentation below 5% or a size below 1000 pages are not to be touched.

If you are using partitioning IndexOptimize has a parameter, @PartitionLevel to do index rebuilds and reorganizations on the partition level. If you prefer to do sort operations in tempdb you can do that with the parameter @SortInTempdb and if you would like to set a fillfactor you can do that with the parameter @FillFactor.

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)

Many companies are considering or have already implemented consolidation of computing resources, including Microsoft SQL Server instances and databases, in their organization. A consolidation effort is a complex task that requires information, a detailed plan and timeline for success, and a strategy for administering the consolidated environment. This white paper walks through the journey of gathering and analyzing the information to base all planning and implementation decisions on; how to plan, architect, and implement consolidation; and finally, the considerations for administering a consolidated SQL Server environment.

This white paper is based on the Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF). MOF is an iterative approach to the IT lifecycle, and it is designed to bring together both the technical and nontechnical sides of implementation and administration.

Download Whitepaper Consolidation Using SQL Server 2008

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

Posted in SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL White Papers, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology ]]> http://blog.sqlauthority.com/2009/11/15/sql-server-whitepaper-consolidation-using-sql-server-2008/feed/ 0 pinaldave http://blog.sqlauthority.com/2009/11/14/sqlauthority-news-disk-partition-alignment-best-practices-for-sql-server/ http://blog.sqlauthority.com/2009/11/14/sqlauthority-news-disk-partition-alignment-best-practices-for-sql-server/#comments Sat, 14 Nov 2009 01:30:12 +0000 pinaldave http://blog.sqlauthority.com/?p=7124 ]]>

Disk partition alignment is a powerful tool for improving SQL Server performance. Configuring optimal disk performance is often viewed as much art as science. A best practice that is essential yet often overlooked is disk partition alignment. Windows Server 2008 attempts to align new partitions out-of-the-box, yet disk partition alignment remains a relevant technology for partitions created on prior versions of Windows.

This paper documents performance for aligned and nonaligned storage and why nonaligned partitions can negatively impact I/O performance; it explains disk partition alignment for storage configured on Windows Server 2003, including analysis, diagnosis, and remediation; and it describes how Windows Server 2008 attempts to remedy challenges related to partition alignment for new partitions yet does not correct the configuration of preexisting partitions.

The following topics are also included: background information, implementation, vendor considerations, two essential correlations, valid starting partition offsets, and the simple protocol to align partitions, define file allocation unit size, and assign drive letters. It includes results from tests that show how partition alignment can affect performance for SQL Server 2008.

The following topics are also included:

• Background information
• Implementation
• Vendor considerations
• Two essential correlations
• Valid starting partition offsets

The paper also covers the simple protocol to align partitions, define file allocation unit size, and assign drive letters.

Disk Partition Alignment Best Practices for SQL Server

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

Posted in Best Practices, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL White Papers, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology ]]> http://blog.sqlauthority.com/2009/11/14/sqlauthority-news-disk-partition-alignment-best-practices-for-sql-server/feed/ 0 pinaldave http://blog.sqlauthority.com/2009/11/13/sql-server-policy-based-management-create-evaluate-and-fix-policies/ http://blog.sqlauthority.com/2009/11/13/sql-server-policy-based-management-create-evaluate-and-fix-policies/#comments Fri, 13 Nov 2009 01:30:10 +0000 pinaldave http://blog.sqlauthority.com/?p=7118 ]]>

Introduction

This article will cover the most spectacular feature of SQL 2008 – Policy-based management and how the configuration of SQL Server with policy-based management architecture can make a powerful difference. Policy based management is loaded with several advantages. It can help you implement various policies for reliable configuration of the system. It also provides additional administration assistance to DBAs and helps them effortlessly manage various tasks of SQL Server across the enterprise.

Basics of Policy Management

SQL server 2008 has introduced policy management framework, which is the latest technique for SQL server database engine. SQL policy administrator uses SQL Server Management Studio to create policies that can handle entities on the server side like the SQL Server objects and the instance of SQL Server databases. It consists of three components: policy administrators (who create policies), policy management, and explicit administration. Policy-based management in SQL Server assists the database administrators in defining and enforcing policies that tie to database objects and instances. These policies allow the administrator to configure and manage SQL server across the enterprise.

The following advantages can be achieved by appropriate administration of policy management system.

• It interacts with various policies for successful system configuration.
• It handles the changes in the systems that are the result of configuration against authoring policies.
• It reduces the cost of ownership with simple elaboration of administration tasks.
• It detects various compliance issues in SQL Server Management Studio.

Policy Management Terms

To have a better grip on the concept of Policy-based management there are some key terms you need to understand.

• Target – A type of entity that is appropriately managed by Policy-based management. For example, a table, database and index, to name a few.
• Facet -A property that can be managed in policy-based management. A clear example of facet is the name of Trigger or the Auto Shrink Property of database.
• Conditions – Criteria that specifies the state of facet to true or false. For example, you can adjust the state of a facet that gives you clear specifications of all stored procedures in the Schema “Banking”.
• Policy – A set of rules specified for the server objects or the properties of database.

Practical Example of Policy Management

Exploring of Facets

Facets are database objects and each of them is a container of one or more database object. First, you need to navigate the object explorer and expand the policy-based management node and the management node. You will see conditions, policies and facets nodes. SQL Server 2008 has many different facets available to use.

To view the list of facets, expand the facet node

Double click on each of these facets to the list of the facet properties.

Let us understand the two next elements of creating condition and creating policy with real life example of Statistics. We will try to create statistic property of the database. We have property of statistic IsAutoCreated. We can set that using database property window under option tab. This property takes two values True or False.

We will follow up on this property in different steps. We will first create condition and right after we will use the same condition in a policy. That policy will be evaluated by user. User will have to two options either let us evaluated by scheduled task or fix non complaining policy manually.

Create a Condition

Creation of condition in Policy-based management is the next thing after identifying the problem. In our case, we want to make sure that everywhere IsAutoCreate is set to True everywhere.

Each facet displays different kinds of properties. As we are interested in the IsAutoCreated property of the statistics we have to select facet as Statistic.

Create a Policy

Creating a policy is the next important task after creating a condition. The condition has to be created to select the proper property of the object. However, a policy is created to specify the location where the condition has to be applied.

Please follow the instructions given in the above image. Make sure to select all target databases. In given example I have two database installed on my server that brings up two different targets servers.

This brings up an interesting concept of targets. Targets are database objects. They can be whole database or single parts of the database. It may be possible that they are different kind of objects but have same kind of properties.

While creating a policy we have kept the evaluation mode as “on demand”, which means that we will be running this policy manually, instead of scheduled job. Scheduled job is good idea to run policy.

Evaluate a Policy

As in the previous step, we have selected to evaluate the policy manually; we will evaluate that using SSMS. Right click on policy brings up with lots of options. Select Evaluate from the menu, this will bring up the following image.

On the screen of Evaluate Policies there is a button which suggests evaluating the policies. Once clicked it will give the following kind of screen with a status.

You will see a green icon in the image. This icon indicates the policy evaluated the status to True. If you notice you will find that in our example all the policies are complied with.

Fix Non-complying Policy

Now, let us change the IsAutoCreate policy of one of test databases to true and run the evaluation all over again. If you observe you will notice that one of the statuses is marked as false with a little red image on the left.

Furthermore, once you select the checkbox and clicked on the Apply button you will find an additional checkbox on the side. This Apply button will raise a popup confirming that the property of the target has been changed to comply with the policy. Next, click Ok to confirm. This will change the properties of the Test database to comply with the new policy on all of our targets specified earlier.

In our example, we have manually evaluated the policy and fixed its noncompliance. With powershell you can perform the same using SQL Server Agent.

Summary

Policy-Based Management empowers you with greater control over the procedures of database as a Database Administrator. It provides you the ability to enforce paper policies at database level. Paper polices are used as guidelines for understanding database standards. However, it necessitates some skills, time and efforts to enforce these polices. You need to go with a fine toothed comb to enforce these policies. Policy-based management system helps you define these polices and ensure that they will be enforced appropriately.

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

Foreign Key and Check Constraints are two types of constraints that can be disabled or enabled when required. This type of operation is needed when bulk loading operations are required or when there is no need to validate the constraint. The T-SQL Script that does the same is very simple.

USE AdventureWorks
GO
-- Disable the constraint
ALTER TABLE HumanResources.Employee
NOCHECK CONSTRAINT CK_Employee_BirthDate
GO
-- Enable the constraint
ALTER TABLE HumanResources.Employee
WITH CHECK CHECK CONSTRAINT CK_Employee_BirthDate
GO

It is very interesting that when the constraint is enabled, the world CHECK is used twice – WITH CHECK CHECK CONSTRAINT. I often ask those to find the mistake in this script when they claim to know the syntax very well.

Have you ever disabled and enabled constraints in your production environment? I would like to know why you did so.

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

Here is quick list of the tools which are available for SQL Server and Sharepoint. These are recently updated resources from Microsoft.

External Collaboration Toolkit for SharePoint
This solution allows users to create collaboration environments that use the familiar SharePoito deploy a SharePoint-based environment for collaboration with people outside your firewall. The accelerator allows users to create collaboration environments that use the familiar SharePoint interface. Because the solution is easy to use, end users are more likely to use it rather than revert to e-mail.

SQL Server Reporting Services Add-in for SharePoint Technologies
The Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services Add-in for Microsoft SharePoint Technologies is a Web download that provides features for running a report server within a larger deployment of Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 or Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.

Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services August 2009 CTP Add-In For Microsoft Sharepoint Technologies
The Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008 Reporting Services August CTP Add-in for Microsoft SharePoint® Products allows you to take advantage of new SQL Server 2008 R2 Reporting Services report processing and management capabilities in SharePoint integrated mode.

High Availability of SharePoint Server Using Virtualized Environments and Database Mirroring
This paper highlights the lessons learned from a proof of concept configuration of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 across two data centers that included database mirroring.

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

This is very short note announcing details about my course details for ‘MS SQL Server 2005/2008 Query Optimization And Performance Tuning‘.

The course is scheduled to be delivered from 19th Nov, 2009 and 21st Nov, 2009 in Pune, India.

This three day course is an intensive course designed to give attendees an in-depth look at the query optimization and performance tuning concepts and methods found in SQL Server 2005/2008. This course is designed to prepare the SQL Server developers and administrators for a transition to SQL Server 2005/2008 while discussing best practices for a variety of topics.

Day 1 : Strengthen the basics along with SQL Server 2005/2008 New Features

Module 01: Subqueries, Ranking Functions, Joins and Set Operations
Module 02: Table Expressions
Module 03: TOP and APPLY
Module 04: SQL Server 2008 Enhancements

Day 2: Query Optimization & Performance Tuning 1

Module 05: Logical Query Processing
Module 06: Query Tuning
Module 07:  Introduction to the Query Processor
Module 08:  Review of common query coding which causes poor performance

Day 3: Query Optimization & Performance Tuning 2

Module 09:  SQL Server Indexing and index maintenance
Module 10:  Plan Guides, query hints, UDFs, and Computed Columns
Module 11:  Understanding SQL Server Execution Plans
Module 12: Real World Index and Optimization Tips

The space are limited and I encourage you to register as soon as possible.

Call to register – +91 98817 95739, +91 98508 43664, +91 99229 33319

Email to register – workshop “at” seedinfotech.com

If due to any reason, you can not attend this course, please call or email on details above for future schedule for the course and location.

Click to Enlarge

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

Recently, I have been working on Query Optimization project. While working on it, I found the following interesting observation. This entire concept may appear very simple, but if you are working in the area of query optimization and server tuning, you will find such useful hints.

Before we start, let us understand the difference between Seek Predicate and Predicate. Seek Predicate is the operation that describes the b-tree portion of the Seek. Predicate is the operation that describes the additional filter using non-key columns. Based on the description, it is very clear that Seek Predicate is better than Predicate as it searches indexes whereas in Predicate, the search is on non-key columns – which implies that the search is on the data in page files itself.

Earlier, I had posted regarding how to remove key lookup and bookmark lookup in the following:

SQL SERVER – Query Optimization – Remove Bookmark Lookup – Remove RID Lookup – Remove Key Lookup

SQL SERVER – Query Optimization – Remove Bookmark Lookup – Remove RID Lookup – Remove Key Lookup – Part 2

SQL SERVER – Query Optimization – Remove Bookmark Lookup – Remove RID Lookup – Remove Key Lookup – Part 3

Let us see an example where we will remove the bookmark lookup first using the covering index. On removing the bookmark lookup, it resulted in Index Scan, which is not good for performance. When Index Scan is converted to Index Seek, it provides  a significant improvement in performance.

Run following SELECT, which is based on the database AdventureWorks.

USE AdventureWorks
GO
-- CTRL + M Enforces Key Lookup
-- Try 1
SELECT NationalIDNumber, HireDate, MaritalStatus
FROM HumanResources.Employee
WHERE NationalIDNumber = 14417807
GO

Let us check the execution plan for the same. The execution plan consists of the key lookup because there are columns that we are trying to retrieve in SELECT as well in WHERE clause.

Let us create a covering index on this table HumanResources.Employee.

-- Create Non clustered Index
CREATE NONCLUSTERED INDEX [IX_HumanResources_Employee_Example] ON HumanResources.Employee
(
NationalIDNumber ASC, HireDate, MaritalStatus
) ON [PRIMARY]
GO

After creating above index, let us run the same SELECT statement again.

-- CTRL + M Removes Key Lookup, but it still enforces Index Scan
-- Try 2
SELECT NationalIDNumber, HireDate, MaritalStatus
FROM HumanResources.Employee
WHERE NationalIDNumber = 14417807
GO

Due to non-clustered index, Key Lookup is removed along with Nested Loops but Index Scan still remains, and this is not good for performance.

I tried to remove the scan, but my attempts were unsuccessful. I finally looked at the datatype of the NationalIDNumber. All this time, I was assuming that this datatype is INT, but on a careful check, I found that the datatype of NationalIDNumber is nvarchar(15).

In the SELECT statement, we were comparing the datatype of NVARCHAR to INT, and this was forcing the predicate operation while executing the query.

As discussed earlier, due to predicate operation, there has to be explicit conversion on the side of NationalIDNumber, which forces the query optimizer to not use the index and instead it has to scan the complete data in table to get the necessary data. This is not the desired solution. Index Scan reduces performance. The reason for this conversion is because I am using INT value in WHERE clause instead of NVARCHAR.

I changed my WHERE clause and passed STRING as the parameter instead of INT.

-- CTRL + M Removes Key Lookup and it enforces Index Seek
-- Try 3
SELECT NationalIDNumber, HireDate, MaritalStatus
FROM HumanResources.Employee
WHERE NationalIDNumber = '14417807'
GO

After running the query with the changed WHERE clause, the Index Scan is now converted into Index Seek.

Index Seek is definitely the most optimal solution in this particular scenario.

When the detail execution plan was checked, I found the following two notable points. First, the predicate is converted to seek predicate, which is the reason for performance improvement, as described earlier. Instead of scanning data in the table, Index Seek is performed. Second, as the datatype of the NationalIDNumber is NVARCHAR and the parameters are passed as VARCHAR, the conversion happens on the parameters instead of NationalIDNumber column, and this forces Index Scan to Index Seek.

If we pass the parameter as NVARCHAR instead of VARCHAR, the execution plan will remain the same, but CONVERT_IMPLICIT will not be required any more. Let us run the following query, which has NVARCHAR as the parameter.

-- CTRL + M Removes Key Lookup and it enforces Index Seek and no CONVERT_IMPLICIT
-- Try 4
SELECT NationalIDNumber, HireDate, MaritalStatus
FROM HumanResources.Employee
WHERE NationalIDNumber = N'14417807'
GO

The execution plan of the above query is very similar to that in which we had passed the parameter as VARCHAR.

Now let us check the execution plan for the same.

In the WHERE condition, the operators we have on both the sides of “=” are of NVARCHAR. NationalIDNumber and parameter passed – both are NVARCHAR, which has removed CONVERT_IMPLICIT. However, there are no changes in the execution plan.

In summary, when Key Lookup is removed and index seek replaces index scan, the performance is tuned up. Let us quickly compare the execution plan of the above four options. I have included the complete code here for easy reference.

USE AdventureWorks
GO
-- CTRL + M Enforces Key Lookup
-- Try 1
SELECT NationalIDNumber, HireDate, MaritalStatus
FROM HumanResources.Employee
WHERE NationalIDNumber = 14417807
GO
-- Create Non clustered Index
CREATE NONCLUSTERED INDEX [IX_HumanResources_Employee_Example] ON HumanResources.Employee
(
NationalIDNumber ASC, HireDate, MaritalStatus
) ON [PRIMARY]
GO
--WAITFOR DELAY '00:00:30'
-- CTRL + M Removes Key Lookup, but it still enforces Index Scan
-- Try 2
SELECT NationalIDNumber, HireDate, MaritalStatus
FROM HumanResources.Employee
WHERE NationalIDNumber = 14417807
GO
-- CTRL + M Removes Key Lookup and it enforces Index Seek
-- Try 3
SELECT NationalIDNumber, HireDate, MaritalStatus
FROM HumanResources.Employee
WHERE NationalIDNumber = '14417807'
GO
-- CTRL + M Removes Key Lookup and it enforces Index Seek and no CONVERT_IMPLICIT
-- Try 4
SELECT NationalIDNumber, HireDate, MaritalStatus
FROM HumanResources.Employee
WHERE NationalIDNumber = N'14417807'
GO
/* What is the reason for difference between Try 2 and Try 3?
Check the exeuction plan
*/
-- Drop Index
DROP INDEX [IX_HumanResources_Employee_Example] ON HumanResources.Employee WITH ( ONLINE = OFF )
GO

Let us look at the execution plan.

Summary points:

• In general, Index Seek is better than Index Scan (I am not talking about it depends conditions)
• Understand Predicates and Seek Predicates and see if you have only Seek Predicates.
• In case of key lookup or bookmark lookup, see if you can create a covering index or included column index.
• Use the datatype wisely even though there is no change in the resultset.

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

During the PASS summit, one of the attendees asked me the following question.

Why the Stored Procedure takes long time to run for first time?

The reason for the same is because Stored Procedures are compiled when it runs first time. When I answered the same, he replied that Stored Procedures are pre-compiled, and this should not be the case. In fact, Stored Procedures are not pre-compiled; they compile only during their first time execution.

There is a misconception that stored procedures are pre-compiled. They are not pre-compiled, but compiled only during the first run. For every subsequent runs, it is for sure pre-compiled.

If you create any SP, you will find that there is no cache entry for the execution of that SP.

After running the SP for the first time, the entry for the cache is made in the system.

If we see the following script, we can notice the different of cache when SP was created and SP was executed.

/* Exeercise to verify if stored procedure pre-compiled */
USE AdventureWorks
GO
-- Clean Cache
DBCC FREEPROCCACHE
GO
IF EXISTS (SELECT * FROM sys.objects WHERE OBJECT_ID = OBJECT_ID(N'[dbo].[CompSP]') AND type IN (N'P', N'PC'))
DROP PROCEDURE [dbo].[CompSP]
GO
-- Create New Stored Procedure
CREATE PROCEDURE CompSP
AS
SELECT *
FROM HumanResources.Department
GO
-- Check the Query Plan for SQL Batch
-- You will find that there is no ObjectName with CompSP
SELECT cp.objtype AS PlanType,
OBJECT_NAME(st.objectid,st.dbid) AS ObjectName,
cp.refcounts AS ReferenceCounts,
cp.usecounts AS UseCounts,
st.TEXT AS SQLBatch,
qp.query_plan AS QueryPlan
FROM sys.dm_exec_cached_plans AS cp
CROSS APPLY sys.dm_exec_query_plan(cp.plan_handle) AS qp
CROSS APPLY sys.dm_exec_sql_text(cp.plan_handle) AS st;
GO
/* Execute Stored Procedure */
EXEC CompSP
GO
-- Check the Query Plan for SQL Batch
-- You will find that there is one entry with name ObjectName with name CompSP
SELECT cp.objtype AS PlanType,
OBJECT_NAME(st.objectid,st.dbid) AS ObjectName,
cp.refcounts AS ReferenceCounts,
cp.usecounts AS UseCounts,
st.TEXT AS SQLBatch,
qp.query_plan AS QueryPlan
FROM sys.dm_exec_cached_plans AS cp
CROSS APPLY sys.dm_exec_query_plan(cp.plan_handle) AS qp
CROSS APPLY sys.dm_exec_sql_text(cp.plan_handle) AS st;
GO

The result set of above query is as following.

The above script to find out the cache is taken from the white paper SQL SERVER – Plan Caching in SQL Server 2008 by Greg Low. You can also read my follow up article SQL SERVER – Plan Caching and Schema Change – An Interesting Observation, where I have given an interesting conversation with Greg Low.

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

The data compression feature in SQL Server 2008 helps compress the data inside a database, and it can help reduce the size of the database. Apart from the space savings, data compression provides another benefit: Because compressed data is stored in fewer pages, queries need to read fewer pages from the disk, thereby improving the performance of I/O intensive workloads. However, extra CPU resources are required on the database server to compress and decompress the data, while data is exchanged with the application. Therefore, it is important to understand the workload characteristics when deciding which tables to compress.

This white paper provides guidance on the following:

• How to decide which tables and indexes to compress
• How to estimate the resources required to compress a table
• How to reclaim space released by data compression
• The performance impacts of data compression on typical workloads

Read Whitepaper: Data Compression Strategy Capacity Planning and Best Practices

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

Fourth day was awesome! I had scheduled nearly 8 meetings with different groups of people today. It was really great fun. Let us see the keypoints for the same.

• PASS President Wayne Snyder honored and thanked Kevin Kline for his 10 YEARS of service.
• Kevin then gets a well-deserved standing ovation from the entire audience.
• Next year’s PASS Summit will be in Seattle from November 8 to 11, 2010.
• Dell Key note was little flat in delivery. Dell was primary sponsor for the event.
• Dr. David DeWitt, Technical Fellow, Data & Storage Platform Division at Microsoft starts presentation entitled “From 1 to 1000 MIPS.” One of the best sessions I ever had in my life.

The keynote was followed by several meetings. There was lot of food, drinks and entertainment all around. I received so much swag that I had to get brand new bag to contain the same. I will post the photos of the stuff that received once I reach home. I will be heading towards airport in next 15 minutes. So, I will be disconnected from the Internet for 36 hours once I board the flight. I am uploading only 2–3 photos at this moment. Check here again as I have nearly 30 more photos to share.

I really enjoyed the summit. I will post the in-depth summary of my whole trip to USA once I reach home. Thank you PASS; I will come here next year!

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

Posted in MVP, Pinal Dave, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority Author Visit, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology Tagged: PASS, SQL PASS ]]> http://blog.sqlauthority.com/2009/11/06/sqlauthority-news-sql-pass-summit-seattle-2009-day-4/feed/ 1 pinaldave Buck Woody Presenting Excellent Funny Session http://blog.sqlauthority.com/2009/11/05/sqlauthority-news-sql-pass-summit-seattle-2009-day-3/ http://blog.sqlauthority.com/2009/11/05/sqlauthority-news-sql-pass-summit-seattle-2009-day-3/#comments Thu, 05 Nov 2009 01:30:32 +0000 pinaldave http://blog.sqlauthority.com/?p=7156 ]]>

The third day at SQL PASS Summit was education + entertainment day for me. During the last 10 days, I woke up at 4:00 AM regularly. However, as I had way too much fun yesterday at various parties earlier, I did not get up till 7:30 AM. By the time I woke up, I realized that I was late for my early breakfast meeting with Solid Quality Global Mentors. I somehow managed to reach there at 8:00 AM and we talked for nearly an hour. After the meeting, I headed to Keynote. Keynote is the best time of the day and wanton one wants to miss it.

I actively cover all my activities on twitter. So do follow me on twitter for the updates!

Today’s Keynote was extremely entertaining and educating. Audience was seen having a great time at various demos. I wished that all our technical sessions should be like this session as it was one of the excellent demos. Let us see few quick notes from the Keynote.

• Rushabh Mehta – President Elect started the keynote asking humorous question why there is no free drink at PASS and explained the budget
• Projected revenues in FY 2010 are $3.2 million, a 15% drop in revenues, while there was a 40% increase in community spending. There was 67% reduction in IT expenses
• Jacob Sebastian, the PASS Outreach Program leader, was recognized for his excellent leadership
• Charley Hanania and Allen Kinsel won PASSion Award
• Tom Casey, GM, Business Intelligence and Amir Netz presented excellent demos and future vision
• Power pivot demos were excellent and warmly welcomed by community
• Touchscreen Powerpivot demo was the major highlight of the Keynote

I attended technical session of Rushabh Mehta (President Elect for PASS, SQL Server MVP and CEO, Solid Quality India). He talked about ‘Overcome SSIS Deployment and Configuration Challenges’. Now, who knew that it would be very humorous session? Rushabh started the session with reference to the movie ‘What About Bob?’ and kept the whole session as story line of the movie. Many of us will agree that subjects like SSIS, deployment issues and configuration complexity are very dry subjects. However, with audience interaction and the presentation of this technically complex subject in simple words, the whole session was the highlight of the day. I confess that I am expert in BI, but not someone who knew it inside out. In fact, I am intrigued to learn more about this particular subject after attending this excellent session. I have requested Rushabh to spend some time with me and explain the extension of this subject.

I had many different meetings scheduled today. All of them were successful. I managed to run around the exhibition hall and meet many different MS vendors. I really enjoyed meeting them and I also learned about the upcoming technology. One of the vendors really impressed me with an excellent demo; I have requested the full evaluation version for their software. If they provide me the same, I will try that out and post my review here soon. If their software meets my expectations I have built after seeing the demo, I will sincerely wish to see them go mainstream with that product.

During evening, I had two different parties to attend and both party were rockstar party. It is so interesting that no matter how many different parties we go, we usually find the same people walking around. I found very strong presence of Microsoft in both the parties. Party hosted by Solid Quality Mentors had excellent food and drinks. I met many different SQL Experts there and we did NOT talk SQL. It was party and time to relax! As there was such a fun, I was late to attend the party of Microsoft which was hosted at Gameworks. Everybody went crazy with the games. Lots of game, food and drinks again here as well.

In the evening, I attended two different parties and both the parties were rocking to the fullest. It is so interesting that no matter how many different parties we go, we usually find the same people walking around. I found a strong presence of Microsoft in both the parties. Party hosted by Solid Quality Mentors had excellent food and drinks. I met many different SQL Experts there and we did NOT talk SQL! It was party and time to relax! As there was so much fun, I was almost late to attend the party of Microsoft, which was hosted at Gameworks. Everybody went crazy with lots of games, food, and drinks.

I just enjoyed the third day of the summit. Just one more day to go – I just wish this summit never ends. However, I strongly miss my family and especially my 2-month old daughter (and wife! – i know its clichéd but its true!!).

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

The second day of PASS started with very engaging and it started with an original game invented by Stuart Ainsworth. This game involves finding twitter people in real life. As I was not one of the square in bingo, I had decided to participate in game myself and try to win if I can. During this process, I felt guilty that I borrowed a pen from Stuart and did not return it back. In fact, after a while someone took the pen from me and never returned it. It is true that karma pays off! I should have returned it right away.

Well one very first thing in the day was having breakfast with SQL friends. I met few more celebrities and Arnie Rowland again, who is a genius and very friendly. We all headed towards Keynote at around at 10 PM. The Keynote was great; it started with very interesting details. The current PASS President presented few photos before starting the session. They are as follows:

• Year 2009 PASS registration is 2,200 for the full day event
• 24 hours of PASS had 50,123 session registrations from 3,524 people of 70+ countries
• SQL Server Standard is coming back
• Microsoft’s Bob Muglia talked about SQL Server on the very first day and its future, and he covered few interesting demos as well
• Microsoft’s Ted Kummert talked about PASS and reasons to attend PASS. He also presented few testimonies from the customers and interesting demos

Once the session was over, I headed to SQLFool aka Michelle Ufford’s session on Index Optimization session. As I mentioned earlier, she is one expert who should be respected for her extraordinary skills for index optimization.

During lunch we had wonderful event called Features of Birds MVP Lunch. During this event, I talked about Change Data Capture (CDC). I was very fortunate that many people showed up at my table. I really hoped that I could have accommodated everybody; however, the table capacity was only 10. I promise to all of those who missed that I will do special online session.

Michelle’s session was followed up by Jacob Sebastian’s session. This session was attended by a large group of XML fans. Just like any other session of Jacob, this session was very well received, and he got a lot of good feedback. Jacob is officially the human XML.

After these two back–to-back sessions, I felt that I have learned quite a lot for one day. With that confidence, I went to exhibition hall. In the hall, I met so many really cool people whom I always wanted to meet. I also received a lot of giveaways at the expo – 9 T-Shirts, 3 candy boxes, 1 tote bag, and 2 sweet little ducks. I am sure Shaivi (my two-month-old daughter) is going to love those little ducks.

In the evening, Microsoft threw a very interesting party for all the Microsoft MVPs and it was great fun. Jacob and I were almost lost our way to the party location. We had to hire taxi to reach the location. The taxi driver asked us so many questions that we felt like we were at the prison interrogation location. However, the journey (which seemed a year long) was less than a mile! I met many friends and MS employees there. It was a very great place for interacting with everyone.

Overall, today went great at SQL PASS; I am eagerly looking forward to the upcoming events in the following two days.

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

Day 1 at PASS was awesome. I usually write everything in detail when I have to cover any project. This time, I have decided to cover this event little bit differently and with lots of images. For day 1, I have more than 90 photos taken with many SQL celebrities and different sessions. I will be not able to cover all the photos taken today in this post. I will gradually post all the photos as I will do follow up posts. In this post, I will cover my activities on day 1 as well few of the photos that give you a visual tour of the spot that I have covered in one day.

Yesterday I went to city tour where I had walked on the streets of Seattle and had lots of fun. I went on an underground tour in Seattle and then got back to registration desk for registration. Day 1 started great; while I was going to checkout the venue, I had meet Blythe Morrow on my way to Seattle Convention Center. I consider this as great start of SQL PASS event as she has put in considerable work to make this event a success.

Being a vegetarian, thus far I have never faced any difficulties finding good food in USA.

Not every one know that the name “Seattle”is native American name, and it was taken from the name of the Native American tribe chief, Seattle. Please visit this wiki article to read further on Seattle City.

I was also mesmerized with the set up at SQL Pass Summit. SQL PASS Head Quarter has put in considerable efforts in making this event successful.

I met many of the SQL celebrities during my very first day. As I mentioned earlier, I managed to click around 80 photos of the legends. I will share all of them soon.

PASS event is a community event, and the community is heavily encouraged. I was very fortunate to meet two of the very active community leaders in my meeting. They amaze me with their dedication to help the SQL Server Community: Joe Webb and Arnie Rowland.

I have previously mentioned that if I want to be like someone in SQL Community, it would be Steve Jones. He is the founder and current manager for the extremely popular site SQLServerCentral.com. The reason I aspire to be like him is that he is a very nice down-to-earth person who is always smiling. I also attended his SSC Party on day 1.

I have mentioned about Brent Ozar several times on our blog. He is the only person with spectacles besides me in following image. I have been very eager to meet him for many years and early morning, I got the opportunity to have breakfast with him and many other SQL Celebrities. I will write in detail about other members in the image in a separate blog post.

I have previously blogged about SQLFool for her excellent Automated Index Defrag Script, and I was very lucky to meet her on the very first day.

During evening I had delicious dinner along with PASS Regional Mentors. New President Elect Rushabh Mehta was also present the event to encourage our efforts.

Overall, the first day went pretty well, I met many more experts and learned a lot of new tricks. I am looking forward to the second day of the event.

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

This blog has reached a remarkable milestone. It is 3 years old today. So far, there have been more than 10.5 million views on this blog and more than 1140 articles. It is really exciting that on this very important day, I am attending my very first SQL PASS in Seattle. The feeling and excitement to attend the very first summit cannot be put into words. I have been waiting to attend this summit for almost a year now, and today this dream is materializing with my blog’s “birthday.”

You can read all of my articles written thus far here. I will keep you updated with my daily activities at SQL PASS. You can follow me on twitter as well, where I update my status on the same.

Thanks again for staying with me to make this blog a community event as well. Surprisingly, first November has always been a significant day in my life. In fact, three years ago when I started writing, I never thought of reaching this milestone.

1st Nov 2009 – At my very first SQL PASS Summit, Seattle 2009
1st Nov 2008 – Ended my 1 year Outsourcing Manager contract and planned to join SolidQ
1st Nov 2007 – Left USA after 7 years and headed back to India as a permanent resident
1st Nov 2006 – Birth of  SQLAuthority.com

My humble and sincere thanks to the almighty and my family for their unconditional support.

I have got lots of request for photos of Shaivi Pinal Dave (my daughter). Here are few photos.

Nupur, Shaivi and Pinal

Shaivi Dave

Here is the photos of my current superiors (boss!). Thank you very much to you as well. Following photos is taken just 2 hour before this blog post in Sheraton Lobby Downtown Seattle.

Fernando Guerrero, Rushabh Mehta, Pinal Dave

Please note : Though this post is meant to be posted for 1st Nov India time. However, as I am in USA and due to time difference of 13.5 hours, it is posted on 1st Nov US time, which translates as 2nd Nov India time.

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