I spent an annoying afternoon with SQL Server 2008 today. When we installed it on our cluster it created a job called “syspolicy_purge_history”. I assume it does this in most installations but I haven’t checked. The job was generating an error every time it ran. A quick…
I was recently interviewed on RunAs Radio [http://www.runasradio.com/default.aspx?showNum=103]. We spent quite a bit of time talking about performance tuning. I’m spending quite a bit of time lately looking at how things get into and out of the query cache and we touched…
It was a long time coming but I finally updated ClearTrace [http://www.cleardata.biz/cleartrace/default.aspx] to read SQL Server 2008 trace files. This requires SQL Server 2008 to be installed on the computer where ClearTrace is running. ClearTrace will process traces created in SQL Server 2000, SQL…
The purpose of making a backup is to be able to restore it at some point. Many of the companies I visit do regular backups but haven't ever restored one of them. If you really want to be safe, test the process to pull a SQL Server backup…
Many times when running a trace against SQL Server you'll see RPC:Completed events that look like this: exec sp_execute 66,4,4 Unfortunately this statement was the one causing me a performance problem and I had no idea what it was doing. The 66 is the…
Scriptio [http://www.codeplex.com/scriptio] is a little utility I wrote when I was unhappy with the scripting features in SQL Server 2005. The biggest problem I faced was that I couldn't script a DROP and CREATE in the same file. I'm pretty sure that&…
I'll be in Los Angeles for the launch this week. I'll be the PASS representative at the Heroes Community Booth in the Microsoft Pavilion. When you enter the Microsoft Pavilion we'll be all the way back in the left corner. Come by and say…
Francois Ajenstat posted today that Microsoft expects to release SQL Server 2008 to manufacturing in the third-quarter of 2008 [http://blogs.technet.com/dataplatforminsider/archive/2008/01/25/microsoft-sql-server-2008-roadmap-clarification.aspx] . > Microsoft is excited to deliver a feature complete CTP during the Heroes Happen Here launch wave and a release…
Microsoft just updated the SQL Server 2005 Best Practices Analyzer [http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=da0531e4-e94c-4991-82fa-f0e3fbd05e63] . There are over 60 new rules included in this release. You can find more information on the SQLCAT blog [http://blogs.msdn.com/sqlcat/archive/2008/01/18/sql-server-2005-best-practices-analyzer-january-2008-now-available.aspx] .…
Microsoft just released an updated Read80Trace that works on SQL Server 2005. The name is simplified to just ReadTrace. ReadTrace is a command-line utility that analyzes a SQL Server trace file and summarizes performance. The new version has a more graphical interface. The original was one of the most helpful…