Without running the following two blocks of code what do you think will the output be?
/* code 1
SELECT GETDATE()
GO */
SELECT GETDATE()
/* code 2
SELECT GETDATE()
GO
*/
SELECT GETDATE()
Friday, July 20, 2007
Some Pics
I have uploaded some pics on Flickr that I took a while back.
There is Paris, Amsterdam, Hawaii, Croatia and New York. Two of them you can see below. To see the NYC and Amsterdam night shots visit this URL: http://www.flickr.com/photos/denisgobo/tags/nightshot/
Amsterdam
New York city
There is Paris, Amsterdam, Hawaii, Croatia and New York. Two of them you can see below. To see the NYC and Amsterdam night shots visit this URL: http://www.flickr.com/photos/denisgobo/tags/nightshot/
Amsterdam
New York city
Thursday, July 19, 2007
The Internet has Crashed
Don't worry they got it back to work, watch the video here: http://www.scaryideas.com/video/3017/
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Non-Technical: Happy Birthday Twins
HTML Source EditorWord wrap
Today my twins are one year old. It is supposed to be a little easier from now on (until they hit 2 that is). Here is one picture.
If you want to see more you can go here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/denisgobo/
This is the last non technical post I will make for a while, My next post will be about Scrum and planning poker.
I see that Hugo Kornelis and Adam Machanic responded to my tagging. Good, three slackers people left.
Monday, July 16, 2007
Become a Better Developer... in 6 months
I just listened to the latest Hanselminutes podcast: Be a Better Developer in Six Months
Scott Hanselman asks “what are you going to do in the next 6 months to become a better developer”?
He suggest reading books, nerd dinners, having lunches together with other non competitive companies, watch webcasts together during lunch and code reading.
Here is what I am going to do for the next 6 months
I am going to read a technical book every 10 days and review every single book
That should be possible now that my twins are one year old (tomorrow). I have a bit more free time at night to read. Here is the list of books, some of them I have read, some I have partially read.
Code Complete (reread)
I think this is one of those books that you should read once a year.
Practices of an Agile Developer
Some good stuff in here, in ordered it a couple of months ago but did not read it yet.
Inside Microsoft SQL Server 2005: T-SQL Querying (partial reread)
I read several chapters but did not read the whole book.
Inside Microsoft SQL Server 2005: The Storage Engine (reread)
I have read parts of this one; I have read the 2000 edition several times.
Refactoring (reread)
I was thinking Design Patterns (GOF) or this one. As you can see I have chosen Refactoring.
Prefactoring
Why refactor when you can prefactor? I just skimmed through it in the book store and it looks promising.
Open Sources 2.0
Open Sources 2.0 is a collection of insightful and thought-provoking essays from today's technology leaders that continues painting the evolutionary picture that developed in the 1999 book Open Sources: Voices from the Revolution.
Pragmatic Unit Testing in C# with NUnit
New edition.
Building the Data Warehouse (reread)
Read this one several years ago, will read it again
Expert SQL Server 2005 Integration Services
Will read this together with the one below at work; have to convert about 60 DTS packages to SSIS.
Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Integration Services
Beautiful Code
In this unique and insightful book, leading computer scientists offer case studies that reveal how they found unusual, carefully designed solutions to high-profile projects. You will be able to look over the shoulder of major coding and design experts to see problems through their eyes.
Pro SQL Server 2005 Database Design and Optimization (reread)
Read this will read it again
The Art of SQL
Heard some good stuff about this book.
Getting Things Done
We all need some help with organizing our lives.
Lifehacker (reread)
Getting ThingsDone for the computer person, very useful stuff inside.
Framework Design Guidelines (reread)
Very nice book, you will learn why something was done a certain way. Good tips on what to avoid and what should be done.
New language Book probably Python or Ruby( you decide)
Here is a pic of the books I have at home, the others I have at work or I still have to purchase them.
I will watch 2 web casts a week during lunch time and review those also.
I will look at high quality source code from open source projects and also from the book Beautiful Code. I will go to CodePlex to download a couple of open source projects and will study the source code
I will learn a new language (I actually got this from Ken Henderson who suggests to learn a new language every year) and rewrite one of the current applications in that language. This way I don’t have to worry about logic problems and design, I just have to translate the code.
I will learn a new technology. I am thinking either WCF or WPF
I will keep updates on Pownce (sorry folks no invites left) everyday The reason I am doing this is so that someone can call me out in case I don’t keep my promise. This is similar to stopping smoking but not telling anyone, if you do that then who knows you stopped so that they can confront you?
I know this is cheesy but I will do it anyway, I will tag 5 people I (kind of) know and I want them to tell us their plans.
Adam Machanic
Louis Davisdson
Peter DeBetta
Mladen Prajdic
Hugo Kornelis
And I will tag 5 people whose blogs I read but I don’t know them
Jeff Smith
Jason Gaylord
Jeff Altwood
Matija Lah
Ward Pond
And you the reader, what will you do in the next 6 months to become a better developer?
Cross posted from here: http://sqlblog.com/blogs/denis_gobo/archive/2007/07/16/1746.aspx
Scott Hanselman asks “what are you going to do in the next 6 months to become a better developer”?
He suggest reading books, nerd dinners, having lunches together with other non competitive companies, watch webcasts together during lunch and code reading.
Here is what I am going to do for the next 6 months
I am going to read a technical book every 10 days and review every single book
That should be possible now that my twins are one year old (tomorrow). I have a bit more free time at night to read. Here is the list of books, some of them I have read, some I have partially read.
Code Complete (reread)
I think this is one of those books that you should read once a year.
Practices of an Agile Developer
Some good stuff in here, in ordered it a couple of months ago but did not read it yet.
Inside Microsoft SQL Server 2005: T-SQL Querying (partial reread)
I read several chapters but did not read the whole book.
Inside Microsoft SQL Server 2005: The Storage Engine (reread)
I have read parts of this one; I have read the 2000 edition several times.
Refactoring (reread)
I was thinking Design Patterns (GOF) or this one. As you can see I have chosen Refactoring.
Prefactoring
Why refactor when you can prefactor? I just skimmed through it in the book store and it looks promising.
Open Sources 2.0
Open Sources 2.0 is a collection of insightful and thought-provoking essays from today's technology leaders that continues painting the evolutionary picture that developed in the 1999 book Open Sources: Voices from the Revolution.
Pragmatic Unit Testing in C# with NUnit
New edition.
Building the Data Warehouse (reread)
Read this one several years ago, will read it again
Expert SQL Server 2005 Integration Services
Will read this together with the one below at work; have to convert about 60 DTS packages to SSIS.
Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Integration Services
Beautiful Code
In this unique and insightful book, leading computer scientists offer case studies that reveal how they found unusual, carefully designed solutions to high-profile projects. You will be able to look over the shoulder of major coding and design experts to see problems through their eyes.
Pro SQL Server 2005 Database Design and Optimization (reread)
Read this will read it again
The Art of SQL
Heard some good stuff about this book.
Getting Things Done
We all need some help with organizing our lives.
Lifehacker (reread)
Getting ThingsDone for the computer person, very useful stuff inside.
Framework Design Guidelines (reread)
Very nice book, you will learn why something was done a certain way. Good tips on what to avoid and what should be done.
New language Book probably Python or Ruby( you decide)
Here is a pic of the books I have at home, the others I have at work or I still have to purchase them.
I will watch 2 web casts a week during lunch time and review those also.
I will look at high quality source code from open source projects and also from the book Beautiful Code. I will go to CodePlex to download a couple of open source projects and will study the source code
I will learn a new language (I actually got this from Ken Henderson who suggests to learn a new language every year) and rewrite one of the current applications in that language. This way I don’t have to worry about logic problems and design, I just have to translate the code.
I will learn a new technology. I am thinking either WCF or WPF
I will keep updates on Pownce (sorry folks no invites left) everyday The reason I am doing this is so that someone can call me out in case I don’t keep my promise. This is similar to stopping smoking but not telling anyone, if you do that then who knows you stopped so that they can confront you?
I know this is cheesy but I will do it anyway, I will tag 5 people I (kind of) know and I want them to tell us their plans.
Adam Machanic
Louis Davisdson
Peter DeBetta
Mladen Prajdic
Hugo Kornelis
And I will tag 5 people whose blogs I read but I don’t know them
Jeff Smith
Jason Gaylord
Jeff Altwood
Matija Lah
Ward Pond
And you the reader, what will you do in the next 6 months to become a better developer?
Cross posted from here: http://sqlblog.com/blogs/denis_gobo/archive/2007/07/16/1746.aspx
Saturday, July 14, 2007
Best Practice: Backups
What if I told you to take your latest production backup, restore it on a different machine and try using the database? Are you comfortable with that task? Do you think it will work? When was the last time you tested your backups?
Do you even have a backup?
Why am I asking all these things? Because your data is as good as your last good backup. Is your data backed up regularly? You will say “Of course it is we use [Insert expensive backup solution here] for all our enterprise backups”. Prove it, go to work on Monday and ask them to give you the latest backup. I bet out of a 100 people who ask this question to their backup team there will be several people without a backup file.
Here is another problem: three years ago the backups were taking about 1 hour. The backup started at 12 it would be done at 1, at 1:30 a job from another machine would ftp the file down. Two years later the backup takes 2 hours to complete, you didn’t realize this. Can you guess what will happen if you try to restore once of those backup that were moved by FTP? I will tell you it won’t work. What if there is no backup and you do a FTP? Oh yes the 0kb file will be created.
Where do you keep your backups?
Are you backups in the same building? If you would say yes then you have a big problem. Let me tell you a little story. I worked for a company in New York City between 2001 and 2005. This company had their office in WTC tower one. To be safe they kept their backups in WTC tower two. Well I don’t have to tell you what happened with the backup. If you do store your backup offsite (and why wouldn’t you?) make sure it is at least 100 miles away. If you don’t want to go that far from your current location then pick a location which is safe from floods, fires and not worthy to attack.
Where is your Source Code?
Do you backup your source code? Most people will say they keep it in Subversion or Visual Source Safe. But does that get backed up? What happens if your building goes up in flames? What we do is we have a full source code backup every day. In addition to that we also have differential backups every n revisions. We have jobs that create these backups and then FTP them to 3 different locations. If you have 20 developers and you lose 6 hours of work then you have lost 120 * $$ (you do the math). This is the best case scenarios. If the backup was in the building together with all the workstations then you got a lot bigger problem to deal with.
SQL developers are notorious for not using source control. They will tell you that the database backup is their source control. A source control system does not have to be expensive; we use Subversion (which is free and better than VSS). You can either use Tortoise or the plugin for Visual Studio to do your check ins.
Do you even have a backup?
Why am I asking all these things? Because your data is as good as your last good backup. Is your data backed up regularly? You will say “Of course it is we use [Insert expensive backup solution here] for all our enterprise backups”. Prove it, go to work on Monday and ask them to give you the latest backup. I bet out of a 100 people who ask this question to their backup team there will be several people without a backup file.
Here is another problem: three years ago the backups were taking about 1 hour. The backup started at 12 it would be done at 1, at 1:30 a job from another machine would ftp the file down. Two years later the backup takes 2 hours to complete, you didn’t realize this. Can you guess what will happen if you try to restore once of those backup that were moved by FTP? I will tell you it won’t work. What if there is no backup and you do a FTP? Oh yes the 0kb file will be created.
Where do you keep your backups?
Are you backups in the same building? If you would say yes then you have a big problem. Let me tell you a little story. I worked for a company in New York City between 2001 and 2005. This company had their office in WTC tower one. To be safe they kept their backups in WTC tower two. Well I don’t have to tell you what happened with the backup. If you do store your backup offsite (and why wouldn’t you?) make sure it is at least 100 miles away. If you don’t want to go that far from your current location then pick a location which is safe from floods, fires and not worthy to attack.
Where is your Source Code?
Do you backup your source code? Most people will say they keep it in Subversion or Visual Source Safe. But does that get backed up? What happens if your building goes up in flames? What we do is we have a full source code backup every day. In addition to that we also have differential backups every n revisions. We have jobs that create these backups and then FTP them to 3 different locations. If you have 20 developers and you lose 6 hours of work then you have lost 120 * $$ (you do the math). This is the best case scenarios. If the backup was in the building together with all the workstations then you got a lot bigger problem to deal with.
SQL developers are notorious for not using source control. They will tell you that the database backup is their source control. A source control system does not have to be expensive; we use Subversion (which is free and better than VSS). You can either use Tortoise or the plugin for Visual Studio to do your check ins.
DMVStats (A SQL Server 2005 Dynamic Management View Performance Data Warehouse ) Released
Over the last year, Tom Davidson has been working on a tool called DMVstats with some of his CAT colleagues. DMVstats collects performance oriented DMVs into a data warehouse, and provides a methodology called 'Waits' and 'Queues' to identify and track down performance issues. Drill-through analysis is provided by reporting services reports.
DMVStats 1.01
A SQL Server 2005 Dynamic Management View Performance Data Warehouse
Introduction
Microsoft SQL Server 2005 provides Dynamic Management Views (DMVs) to expose valuable information that you can use for performance analysis. DMVstats 1.0 is an application that can collect, analyze and report on SQL Server 2005 DMV performance data. DMVstats does not support Microsoft SQL Server 2000 and earlier versions.
Main Components
The three main components of DMVstats are:
• DMV data collection
• DMV data warehouse repository
• Analysis and reporting.
Data collection is managed by SQL Agent jobs. The DMVstats data warehouse is called DMVstatsDB. Analysis and reporting is provided by means of Reporting Services reports.
Download it here: http://www.codeplex.com/sqldmvstats/
Friday, July 13, 2007
Summer SQL Teaser Datetime Yet Again
Okay one more quick teaser
You have this date '2007-01-01 00:00:00.001'
When adding 1 or 2 milliseconds to that date what will be the result?
SELECT DATEADD(ms,1,CONVERT(datetime, '2007-01-01 00:00:00.001'))
SELECT DATEADD(ms,2,CONVERT(datetime, '2007-01-01 00:00:00.001'))
You have this date '2007-01-01 00:00:00.001'
When adding 1 or 2 milliseconds to that date what will be the result?
SELECT DATEADD(ms,1,CONVERT(datetime, '2007-01-01 00:00:00.001'))
SELECT DATEADD(ms,2,CONVERT(datetime, '2007-01-01 00:00:00.001'))
Summer SQL Teaser: Datetime
First create this table
CREATE TABLE #DateMess (SomeDate datetime)
INSERT #DateMess VALUES('20070710')
INSERT #DateMess VALUES('20070711')
INSERT #DateMess VALUES('20070712')
INSERT #DateMess VALUES('20070713')
This should be easy for most people, but not everyone knows this.
Without running the query do you know how many rows you will get back from the query
SELECT *
FROM #DateMess
WHERE SomeDate <= '2007-07-12 23:59:59.999'
I created this teaser because of a response that Celko made here:
http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.public.sqlserver.programming/browse_thread/thread/345a73f93cf6a684/
CREATE TABLE #DateMess (SomeDate datetime)
INSERT #DateMess VALUES('20070710')
INSERT #DateMess VALUES('20070711')
INSERT #DateMess VALUES('20070712')
INSERT #DateMess VALUES('20070713')
This should be easy for most people, but not everyone knows this.
Without running the query do you know how many rows you will get back from the query
SELECT *
FROM #DateMess
WHERE SomeDate <= '2007-07-12 23:59:59.999'
I created this teaser because of a response that Celko made here:
http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.public.sqlserver.programming/browse_thread/thread/345a73f93cf6a684/
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Oracle Unveils Oracle Database 11g
I know a lot of us don't just work with SQL Server so I decided to share this one
Oracle today introduced Oracle(r) Database 11g, the latest release of the world's most popular database. With more than 400 features, 15 million test hours, and 36,000 person-months of development, Oracle Database 11g is the most innovative and highest quality software product Oracle have ever announced.
"Oracle Database 11g, built on 30 years of design experience, delivers the next generation of enterprise information management," said Andy Mendelsohn, senior vice president of Database Server Technologies, Oracle. "More than ever, our customers are facing the challenges of, rapid data growth, increased data integration, and data connectivity IT cost pressures. Oracle Database 10g pioneered grid computing, and more than half of Oracle customers have moved to that release. Oracle Database 11g delivers the key features our customers have asked for to accelerate broad adoption and growth of Oracle grids; representing real innovation, that addresses real challenges, as told to us by real customers."
Oracle Database 11g can help organizations take control of their enterprise information, gain better business insight, and quickly and confidently adapt to an increasingly changing competitive environment. To do this, the new release extends Oracle's unique database clustering, data center automation, and workload management capabilities. With secure, highly available and scalable grids of low-cost servers and storage, Oracle customers can tackle the most demanding transaction processing, data warehousing, and content management applications.
Real Application Testing Helps Reduce Time, Risk and Cost of Change
Oracle Database 11g features advanced self-management and automation features to help organizations meet service level agreements. For example, with organizations facing regular database and operating system software upgrades, and hardware and system changes, Oracle Database 11g introduces Oracle Real Application Testing, making it the first database to help customers test and manage changes to their IT environment quickly, in a controlled, cost effective manner.
Increase Return On Investment for Disaster Recovery Solutions
In Oracle Database 11g, Oracle Data Guard enables customers to use their standby database to improve performance in their production environments as well as provide protection from system failures and site-wide disasters. Oracle Data Guard uniquely enables simultaneous read and recovery of a single standby database making it available for reporting, backup, testing and 'rolling' upgrades to production databases. By offloading workloads from production to a standby system, Oracle Data Guard helps enhance the performance of production systems and provides a more cost-effective disaster recovery solution.
Enhanced Information Lifecycle Management and Storage Management
Oracle Database 11g has significant new data partitioning and compression capabilities, for more cost-effective Information Lifecycle Management and storage management. Oracle Database 11g automates many manual data partitioning operations and extends existing range, hash and list partitioning to include interval, reference and virtual column partitioning. In addition, Oracle Database 11g provides a complete set of composite partitioning options, allowing storage management that is driven by business rules.
Building on its long-standing data compression capabilities, Oracle Database 11g offers advanced data compression for both structured and unstructured (LOB) data managed in transaction processing, data warehousing, and content management environments. Compression ratios of 2x to 3x or more for all data can be achieved with the new advanced compression capabilities in Oracle Database 11g.
Total Recall of Data Changes
The new release also features "Oracle Total Recall," enabling administrators to query data in designated tables "as of" earlier times in the past. This offers an easy, practical way to add a time dimension to data for change tracking, auditing, and compliance.
Maximum Availability of Information
Oracle has consistently led the industry in protecting database applications from planned and unplanned downtime. Oracle Database 11g continues this lead by making it easier for administrators to meet their users' availability expectations. New availability features include Oracle Flashback Transaction which makes it easy to back out a transaction made in error, as well as any dependent transactions; Parallel Backup and Restore which helps improve the backup and restore performance of very large databases; and 'hot patching,' which improves system availability by allowing database patches to be applied without the need to shut databases down. In addition, a new advisor - Data Recovery Advisor - helps administrators significantly reduce recovery downtime by automating problem investigation, intelligently determining recovery plan and handling multiple failure situations.
Oracle Fast Files
The next-generation capability for storing large objects (LOBs) such as images, large text objects, or advanced data types � including XML, medical imaging, and three-dimensional objects - within the database. Oracle Fast Files offers database applications performance fully comparable to file systems. By storing a wider range of enterprise information and retrieving it quickly and easily, enterprises can know more about their business and adapt more rapidly.
Faster XML
Oracle Database 11g includes significant performance enhancements to XML DB, a feature of Oracle database that enables customers to natively store, and manipulate XML data. Support for binary XML has been added offering customers a choice of XML storage options to match their specific application and performance requirements. XML DB also enables manipulation of XML data using industry standard interfaces with support for XQuery, Java Specification Requests (JSR)-170 and SQL/XML standards.
Transparent Encryption
Oracle Database 11g continues to build on its unmatched security capabilities through the addition of significant enhancements. The new release features improved Oracle Transparent Data Encryption capabilities beyond column level encryption. Oracle Database 11g offers tablespace encryption that can be utilized to encrypt entire tables, indexes, and other data storage. Encryption is also provided for LOBs stored in the database.
Embedded OLAP Cubes
Oracle Database 11g also provides data warehousing innovations. OLAP cubes are enhanced to behave as materialized views in the database. This allows developers to use industry standard SQL for data query, but still benefit from the high performance delivered by an OLAP cube. New Continuous Query Notification features allow applications to be immediately notified when important changes are made to database data without burdening the database with constant polling.
Connection Pooling and Query Result Caches
The performance and scalability features in Oracle Database 11g are designed to help organizations maintain a highly performant, scalable infrastructure to provide users' with the best quality of service. Oracle Database 11g further enhances Oracle's position as the industry's performance and scalability leader with new features such as Query Result Caches which improves application performance and scalability by caching and reusing the results of often called database queries and functions in database and application tiers, and Database Resident Connection Pooling which improves the scalability of web-based systems by providing connection pooling for non-multi-threaded applications.
Enhanced Application Development
Oracle Database 11g offers developers a choice of development tools, and a streamlined application development process that takes full advantage of key Oracle Database 11g features. These include new features such as Client Side Caching, Binary XML for faster application performance, XML processing, and the storing and retrieving of files. In addition, Oracle Database 11g also includes a new Java just-in-time Compiler to execute database Java procedures faster without the need for a third party compiler; native integration with Visual Studio 2005 for developing .NET applications on Oracle; Access migration tools with Oracle Application Express; and SQL Developer easy query building feature for fast coding of SQL and PL/SQL routines.
Enhanced Self-Management and Automation
The manageability features in Oracle Database 11g are designed to help organizations easily manage enterprise grids and deliver on their users' service level expectations. Oracle Database 11g introduces more self-management and automation that will help customers reduce their system management costs, while increasing performance, scalability, availability and security of their database applications. New manageability capabilities in Oracle Database 11g include Automatic SQL and memory tuning, a new Partitioning Advisor which automatically advises administrators on how to partition tables and indexes in order to improve performance, and enhanced performance diagnostics for database clusters. In addition, Oracle Database 11g includes a new Support Workbench which provides an easy-to-use interface that presents database health-related incidents to administrators along with information on how to quickly manage the resolution of incidents.
Oracle is the #1 Database: Gartner 2006 Worldwide RDBMS Market Share Reports 47.1 Percent Share for Oracle
Gartner recently published their market share numbers by operating system for 2006 based on total software revenues. According to Gartner, Oracle:
* Has 47.1 percent share (up from 46.8 percent in 2005);
* Has revenue growth of 14.9 percent, faster than the market average of 14.2 percent with US$7.2 Billions in revenues; and,
* Continues to hold more market share than its two closest competitors combined.
About Oracle Database 11g
Oracle Database is the only database designed for grid computing. With the release of Oracle Database 11g, Oracle is making the management of enterprise information easier than ever; enabling customers to know more about their business and innovate more quickly. Oracle Database 11g delivers superior performance, scalability, availability, security and ease of management on a low-cost grid of industry standard storage and servers. Oracle Database 11g is designed to be effectively deployed on everything from small blade servers to the biggest SMP servers and clusters of all sizes. It features automated management capabilities for easy, cost-effective operation. Oracle Database 11g's unique ability to manage all data from traditional business information to XML and 3D spatial information makes it the ideal choice to power transaction processing, data warehousing, and content management applications.
Oracle today introduced Oracle(r) Database 11g, the latest release of the world's most popular database. With more than 400 features, 15 million test hours, and 36,000 person-months of development, Oracle Database 11g is the most innovative and highest quality software product Oracle have ever announced.
"Oracle Database 11g, built on 30 years of design experience, delivers the next generation of enterprise information management," said Andy Mendelsohn, senior vice president of Database Server Technologies, Oracle. "More than ever, our customers are facing the challenges of, rapid data growth, increased data integration, and data connectivity IT cost pressures. Oracle Database 10g pioneered grid computing, and more than half of Oracle customers have moved to that release. Oracle Database 11g delivers the key features our customers have asked for to accelerate broad adoption and growth of Oracle grids; representing real innovation, that addresses real challenges, as told to us by real customers."
Oracle Database 11g can help organizations take control of their enterprise information, gain better business insight, and quickly and confidently adapt to an increasingly changing competitive environment. To do this, the new release extends Oracle's unique database clustering, data center automation, and workload management capabilities. With secure, highly available and scalable grids of low-cost servers and storage, Oracle customers can tackle the most demanding transaction processing, data warehousing, and content management applications.
Real Application Testing Helps Reduce Time, Risk and Cost of Change
Oracle Database 11g features advanced self-management and automation features to help organizations meet service level agreements. For example, with organizations facing regular database and operating system software upgrades, and hardware and system changes, Oracle Database 11g introduces Oracle Real Application Testing, making it the first database to help customers test and manage changes to their IT environment quickly, in a controlled, cost effective manner.
Increase Return On Investment for Disaster Recovery Solutions
In Oracle Database 11g, Oracle Data Guard enables customers to use their standby database to improve performance in their production environments as well as provide protection from system failures and site-wide disasters. Oracle Data Guard uniquely enables simultaneous read and recovery of a single standby database making it available for reporting, backup, testing and 'rolling' upgrades to production databases. By offloading workloads from production to a standby system, Oracle Data Guard helps enhance the performance of production systems and provides a more cost-effective disaster recovery solution.
Enhanced Information Lifecycle Management and Storage Management
Oracle Database 11g has significant new data partitioning and compression capabilities, for more cost-effective Information Lifecycle Management and storage management. Oracle Database 11g automates many manual data partitioning operations and extends existing range, hash and list partitioning to include interval, reference and virtual column partitioning. In addition, Oracle Database 11g provides a complete set of composite partitioning options, allowing storage management that is driven by business rules.
Building on its long-standing data compression capabilities, Oracle Database 11g offers advanced data compression for both structured and unstructured (LOB) data managed in transaction processing, data warehousing, and content management environments. Compression ratios of 2x to 3x or more for all data can be achieved with the new advanced compression capabilities in Oracle Database 11g.
Total Recall of Data Changes
The new release also features "Oracle Total Recall," enabling administrators to query data in designated tables "as of" earlier times in the past. This offers an easy, practical way to add a time dimension to data for change tracking, auditing, and compliance.
Maximum Availability of Information
Oracle has consistently led the industry in protecting database applications from planned and unplanned downtime. Oracle Database 11g continues this lead by making it easier for administrators to meet their users' availability expectations. New availability features include Oracle Flashback Transaction which makes it easy to back out a transaction made in error, as well as any dependent transactions; Parallel Backup and Restore which helps improve the backup and restore performance of very large databases; and 'hot patching,' which improves system availability by allowing database patches to be applied without the need to shut databases down. In addition, a new advisor - Data Recovery Advisor - helps administrators significantly reduce recovery downtime by automating problem investigation, intelligently determining recovery plan and handling multiple failure situations.
Oracle Fast Files
The next-generation capability for storing large objects (LOBs) such as images, large text objects, or advanced data types � including XML, medical imaging, and three-dimensional objects - within the database. Oracle Fast Files offers database applications performance fully comparable to file systems. By storing a wider range of enterprise information and retrieving it quickly and easily, enterprises can know more about their business and adapt more rapidly.
Faster XML
Oracle Database 11g includes significant performance enhancements to XML DB, a feature of Oracle database that enables customers to natively store, and manipulate XML data. Support for binary XML has been added offering customers a choice of XML storage options to match their specific application and performance requirements. XML DB also enables manipulation of XML data using industry standard interfaces with support for XQuery, Java Specification Requests (JSR)-170 and SQL/XML standards.
Transparent Encryption
Oracle Database 11g continues to build on its unmatched security capabilities through the addition of significant enhancements. The new release features improved Oracle Transparent Data Encryption capabilities beyond column level encryption. Oracle Database 11g offers tablespace encryption that can be utilized to encrypt entire tables, indexes, and other data storage. Encryption is also provided for LOBs stored in the database.
Embedded OLAP Cubes
Oracle Database 11g also provides data warehousing innovations. OLAP cubes are enhanced to behave as materialized views in the database. This allows developers to use industry standard SQL for data query, but still benefit from the high performance delivered by an OLAP cube. New Continuous Query Notification features allow applications to be immediately notified when important changes are made to database data without burdening the database with constant polling.
Connection Pooling and Query Result Caches
The performance and scalability features in Oracle Database 11g are designed to help organizations maintain a highly performant, scalable infrastructure to provide users' with the best quality of service. Oracle Database 11g further enhances Oracle's position as the industry's performance and scalability leader with new features such as Query Result Caches which improves application performance and scalability by caching and reusing the results of often called database queries and functions in database and application tiers, and Database Resident Connection Pooling which improves the scalability of web-based systems by providing connection pooling for non-multi-threaded applications.
Enhanced Application Development
Oracle Database 11g offers developers a choice of development tools, and a streamlined application development process that takes full advantage of key Oracle Database 11g features. These include new features such as Client Side Caching, Binary XML for faster application performance, XML processing, and the storing and retrieving of files. In addition, Oracle Database 11g also includes a new Java just-in-time Compiler to execute database Java procedures faster without the need for a third party compiler; native integration with Visual Studio 2005 for developing .NET applications on Oracle; Access migration tools with Oracle Application Express; and SQL Developer easy query building feature for fast coding of SQL and PL/SQL routines.
Enhanced Self-Management and Automation
The manageability features in Oracle Database 11g are designed to help organizations easily manage enterprise grids and deliver on their users' service level expectations. Oracle Database 11g introduces more self-management and automation that will help customers reduce their system management costs, while increasing performance, scalability, availability and security of their database applications. New manageability capabilities in Oracle Database 11g include Automatic SQL and memory tuning, a new Partitioning Advisor which automatically advises administrators on how to partition tables and indexes in order to improve performance, and enhanced performance diagnostics for database clusters. In addition, Oracle Database 11g includes a new Support Workbench which provides an easy-to-use interface that presents database health-related incidents to administrators along with information on how to quickly manage the resolution of incidents.
Oracle is the #1 Database: Gartner 2006 Worldwide RDBMS Market Share Reports 47.1 Percent Share for Oracle
Gartner recently published their market share numbers by operating system for 2006 based on total software revenues. According to Gartner, Oracle:
* Has 47.1 percent share (up from 46.8 percent in 2005);
* Has revenue growth of 14.9 percent, faster than the market average of 14.2 percent with US$7.2 Billions in revenues; and,
* Continues to hold more market share than its two closest competitors combined.
About Oracle Database 11g
Oracle Database is the only database designed for grid computing. With the release of Oracle Database 11g, Oracle is making the management of enterprise information easier than ever; enabling customers to know more about their business and innovate more quickly. Oracle Database 11g delivers superior performance, scalability, availability, security and ease of management on a low-cost grid of industry standard storage and servers. Oracle Database 11g is designed to be effectively deployed on everything from small blade servers to the biggest SMP servers and clusters of all sizes. It features automated management capabilities for easy, cost-effective operation. Oracle Database 11g's unique ability to manage all data from traditional business information to XML and 3D spatial information makes it the ideal choice to power transaction processing, data warehousing, and content management applications.
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
SQL Server 2008 will launch on Feb. 27, 2008
Turner announced that Windows Server® 2008, Visual Studio® 2008 and Microsoft SQL Server™ 2008 will launch together at an event in Los Angeles on Feb. 27, 2008, kicking off hundreds of launch events around the world. As the next wave of innovation from Microsoft’s Server and Tools Business, these three products will provide a reliable and security-enhanced enterprise platform, serve as the foundation for the next generation of Web-based service applications, and broadly support virtualization and business intelligence. Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008 represent tremendous opportunities for partners and customers, and as part of the launch wave throughout 2008, Microsoft is planning extensive and far-reaching IT pro, developer and partner outreach, including worldwide training, online and virtual events, as well as myriad resources that will be made available in the coming months to help ensure partners and customers are ready to capitalize on the new benefits offered by these products.
Read the rest here: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2007/jul07/07-10WPCDay1PartnersPR.mspx
Read the rest here: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2007/jul07/07-10WPCDay1PartnersPR.mspx
Giving Away 2 Invites For Pownce
I have 2 invites left for Pownce.
Leave me a comment here (explaining why you want/need that invite, also leave your home page URL) and send an email to sqlservercode AT gmail.com (include the home page you left in the comment) if you want one.
Best 2 comments will get the invite.
I will announce the winners tomorrow (July 11 2007) at 6AM EST
Leave me a comment here (explaining why you want/need that invite, also leave your home page URL) and send an email to sqlservercode AT gmail.com (include the home page you left in the comment) if you want one.
Best 2 comments will get the invite.
I will announce the winners tomorrow (July 11 2007) at 6AM EST
Monday, July 09, 2007
SQL Controversy: Capitalizing Keywords
Do you write code like this?
set ROWCOUNT 10
select Products.ProductName as TenMostExpensiveProducts, Products.UnitPrice
from Products
order by Products.UnitPrice desc
Or like this?
SET ROWCOUNT 10
SELECT Products.ProductName AS TenMostExpensiveProducts, Products.UnitPrice
FROM Products
ORDER BY Products.UnitPrice DESC
Do we need to capitalize the keywords, functions and statements when we have syntax coloring built into the product?
Look if you use SPUFI with DB2 I understand (see image below)
Here is another example this time without color.
set ROWCOUNT 10
select Products.ProductName as TenMostExpensiveProducts, Products.UnitPrice
from Products
order by Products.UnitPrice desc
SET ROWCOUNT 10
SELECT Products.ProductName AS TenMostExpensiveProducts, Products.UnitPrice
FROM Products
ORDER BY Products.UnitPrice DESC
And yes I agree the bottom query is much easier to read
But with syntax coloring do you still need this? It is a big pain in the neck to use that CapsLock/Shift key every time you type a keyword. There are tools of course like SQL Formatter which will make it much easier.
Remember Hungarian notation, In VB you would write sLastName(string), iCounter(integer)? Well that is gone also, who needs it when you have IntelliSense?
I think the lowercase sql code is easier on the eyes. So what do you think?
set ROWCOUNT 10
select Products.ProductName as TenMostExpensiveProducts, Products.UnitPrice
from Products
order by Products.UnitPrice desc
Or like this?
SET ROWCOUNT 10
SELECT Products.ProductName AS TenMostExpensiveProducts, Products.UnitPrice
FROM Products
ORDER BY Products.UnitPrice DESC
Do we need to capitalize the keywords, functions and statements when we have syntax coloring built into the product?
Look if you use SPUFI with DB2 I understand (see image below)
Here is another example this time without color.
set ROWCOUNT 10
select Products.ProductName as TenMostExpensiveProducts, Products.UnitPrice
from Products
order by Products.UnitPrice desc
SET ROWCOUNT 10
SELECT Products.ProductName AS TenMostExpensiveProducts, Products.UnitPrice
FROM Products
ORDER BY Products.UnitPrice DESC
And yes I agree the bottom query is much easier to read
But with syntax coloring do you still need this? It is a big pain in the neck to use that CapsLock/Shift key every time you type a keyword. There are tools of course like SQL Formatter which will make it much easier.
Remember Hungarian notation, In VB you would write sLastName(string), iCounter(integer)? Well that is gone also, who needs it when you have IntelliSense?
I think the lowercase sql code is easier on the eyes. So what do you think?
Friday, July 06, 2007
Summer SQL Teaser Non Existing Database
Here is a simple teaser, BTW I assume you don't have a database named WasabiDb or do you?
USE WasabiDb
IF @@Error <> 0
PRINT 'db doesn''t exist'
USE WasabiDb
GO
IF @@Error <> 0
PRINT 'db doesn''t exist'
If you would run this in one shot (hit F5) how many of the error messages below will you see
Server: Msg 911, Level 16, State 1, Line 1
Could not locate entry in sysdatabases for database 'WasabiDb'. No entry found with that name. Make sure that the name is entered correctly.
And how many 'db doesn't exist' messages will you see
USE WasabiDb
IF @@Error <> 0
PRINT 'db doesn''t exist'
USE WasabiDb
GO
IF @@Error <> 0
PRINT 'db doesn''t exist'
If you would run this in one shot (hit F5) how many of the error messages below will you see
Server: Msg 911, Level 16, State 1, Line 1
Could not locate entry in sysdatabases for database 'WasabiDb'. No entry found with that name. Make sure that the name is entered correctly.
And how many 'db doesn't exist' messages will you see
Wednesday, July 04, 2007
SQL Server 2005 Best Practices Analyzer Released, End Of Support For SQL Server 2000 SP3a In 6 Days
End of Support for SQL Server 2000 Service Pack 3a
Support for SQL Server 2000 Service Pack 3a (SP3a) will end on July 10, 2007.
Microsoft will end technical support on this date, which also includes security updates for this Service Pack. Microsoft is ending support for this product as part of our Service Pack support policy, found http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle.
Customers running SQL Server 2000 Service Pack 3a are encouraged to migrate to SQL Server 2000 Service Pack 4 or SQL Server 2005. Remaining current on your service pack installation ensures that your products remain supported per the Support Lifecycle policy. Additionally, your software benefits from the many enhancements, fixes, and security updates provided through the latest service pack.
Read more here: http://blogs.msdn.com/sqlreleaseservices/archive/2007/07/02/end-of-support-for-sql-server-2000-service-pack-3a.aspx
SQL Server 2005 Best Practices Analyzer (July 2007) Realeased
It does not say CTP anywhere on this page so I assume that this is a 'production' version.
Get it here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=da0531e4-e94c-4991-82fa-f0e3fbd05e63&DisplayLang=en
Support for SQL Server 2000 Service Pack 3a (SP3a) will end on July 10, 2007.
Microsoft will end technical support on this date, which also includes security updates for this Service Pack. Microsoft is ending support for this product as part of our Service Pack support policy, found http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle.
Customers running SQL Server 2000 Service Pack 3a are encouraged to migrate to SQL Server 2000 Service Pack 4 or SQL Server 2005. Remaining current on your service pack installation ensures that your products remain supported per the Support Lifecycle policy. Additionally, your software benefits from the many enhancements, fixes, and security updates provided through the latest service pack.
Read more here: http://blogs.msdn.com/sqlreleaseservices/archive/2007/07/02/end-of-support-for-sql-server-2000-service-pack-3a.aspx
SQL Server 2005 Best Practices Analyzer (July 2007) Realeased
It does not say CTP anywhere on this page so I assume that this is a 'production' version.
Get it here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=da0531e4-e94c-4991-82fa-f0e3fbd05e63&DisplayLang=en
SSIS Script Task In SQL Server 2008 Can Use VB Or C#
Where do I send a thank you letter? Finally we are allowed to use C# in the SQL Server Integration Services Script Task. I always wondered why SQL Server 2005 only uses VB and not C#, you can use C# in the SQLCLR but not in a Script Task. It turns out that SSIS in SQL Server 2005 uses VSA (Visual Studio for Applications) but SQL Server 2008 will use VSTA (Visual Studio Tools for Applications). Lets put these 2 right under each other.
Visual Studio for Applications
Visual Studio Tools for Applications
See the only (confusing) difference is the word Tools. So VSTA does support C#. I guess that if you come from a heavy DTS ActiveX usage background VB would be natural to you. I never felt at home with VB.NET, I switched to C# because I was also using Java and it was easier to make the switch to C#.
Enough whining from me, here are 2 screenshots that I took from the latest SQL Server 2008 June CTP. Have a nice holiday, don't overeat
Visual Studio for Applications
Visual Studio Tools for Applications
See the only (confusing) difference is the word Tools. So VSTA does support C#. I guess that if you come from a heavy DTS ActiveX usage background VB would be natural to you. I never felt at home with VB.NET, I switched to C# because I was also using Java and it was easier to make the switch to C#.
Enough whining from me, here are 2 screenshots that I took from the latest SQL Server 2008 June CTP. Have a nice holiday, don't overeat
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Guess What I Will Be Doing Tomorrow (June 29th 2007) At 6PM
Did you think I would be waiting in line like a dummy to purchase the iPhone? Wrong my friend, I will pick up a birthday cake for my wife. As a matter of fact my home is Apple free. That is right not even Quicktime is installed ;-)
Anyway why would I buy the iPhone? I checked my bill last month and I have used a whopping 6 minutes. I don’t really use my phone except for emergencies. It is good that my wife and I share the minutes, if not she would go over every month.
So are you buying an iPhone? And if yes then please tell me why?
The next post will be technical again; it will be about Scrum and Poker.
Anyway why would I buy the iPhone? I checked my bill last month and I have used a whopping 6 minutes. I don’t really use my phone except for emergencies. It is good that my wife and I share the minutes, if not she would go over every month.
So are you buying an iPhone? And if yes then please tell me why?
The next post will be technical again; it will be about Scrum and Poker.
Friday, June 22, 2007
Summer SQL Teaser #4 Nulls and Counts
First create this table
CREATE TABLE Teaser (ID int)
INSERT Teaser VALUES(1)
INSERT Teaser VALUES(2)
INSERT Teaser VALUES(1)
INSERT Teaser VALUES(2)
INSERT Teaser VALUES(NULL)
Without running this try to figure out what the result will be
SELECT COUNT(*),
COUNT(ID),
COUNT(DISTINCT ID)
FROM Teaser
For some more NULL fun you can read NULL Trouble In SQL Server Land
CREATE TABLE Teaser (ID int)
INSERT Teaser VALUES(1)
INSERT Teaser VALUES(2)
INSERT Teaser VALUES(1)
INSERT Teaser VALUES(2)
INSERT Teaser VALUES(NULL)
Without running this try to figure out what the result will be
SELECT COUNT(*),
COUNT(ID),
COUNT(DISTINCT ID)
FROM Teaser
For some more NULL fun you can read NULL Trouble In SQL Server Land
Thursday, June 21, 2007
Good Distributed Partitioned Views / Federated Databases Article
The Microsoft SQL Server Development Customer Advisory Team has a nice blog post about Distributed Partitioned Views / Federated Databases
They cover the following definitions
Definition 1: Local Partitioned View – A single table is horizontally split into multiple tables, usually all have the same structure.
Definition 2: Cross Database Partitioned View – tables are split among different databases on the same server instance
Definition 3: Distributed (across server or instance) Partitioned View. Tables participating in the view reside in different databases which reside on different servers or different instances.
Make sure you read the list of 13 items under Lessons Learned on Distributed Partitioned Views: (multiple servers involved)
Link to the article: http://blogs.msdn.com/sqlcat/archive/2007/06/20/distributed-partitioned-views-federated-databases-lessons-learned.aspx
They cover the following definitions
Definition 1: Local Partitioned View – A single table is horizontally split into multiple tables, usually all have the same structure.
Definition 2: Cross Database Partitioned View – tables are split among different databases on the same server instance
Definition 3: Distributed (across server or instance) Partitioned View. Tables participating in the view reside in different databases which reside on different servers or different instances.
Make sure you read the list of 13 items under Lessons Learned on Distributed Partitioned Views: (multiple servers involved)
Link to the article: http://blogs.msdn.com/sqlcat/archive/2007/06/20/distributed-partitioned-views-federated-databases-lessons-learned.aspx
Monday, June 18, 2007
Which SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services Book Should I Get?
Who can recommend a good SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services book?
I know SQL Server 2000 Analysis Services but did not work with SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services yet. As a matter of fact I haven’t touched Analysis Services in 2 years. I don’t need a book which explains what a start or join schema is, I know what a slowly changing dimension is, I also know the difference between a fact table, a dimension table and MOLAP/ROLAP/HOLAP.
The 2 books that I used previously are the WROX book (Professional SQL Server 2000 Data Warehousing with Analysis Services) and the MS Press Step by Step book. I remember liking both of them, are their successors as good?
The problem with the reviews on Amazon is that it doesn’t match my expectations; the WROX 2000 book only got 2.5 stars which I think is way too low. While the book is not perfect it deserves more than 2.5 stars.
Here are the 5 books I am considering
Microsoft SQL Server(TM) 2005 Analysis Services Step by Step
Delivering Business Intelligence with Microsoft SQL Server 2005
Professional SQL Server Analysis Services 2005 with MDX
Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services
The Microsoft Data Warehouse Toolkit: With SQL Server 2005 and the Microsoft Business Intelligence Toolset
BTW I don’t need the book right now, I won’t actually start working with this until next year. If you know of a book that is coming out between now and January please let me know also.
I know SQL Server 2000 Analysis Services but did not work with SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services yet. As a matter of fact I haven’t touched Analysis Services in 2 years. I don’t need a book which explains what a start or join schema is, I know what a slowly changing dimension is, I also know the difference between a fact table, a dimension table and MOLAP/ROLAP/HOLAP.
The 2 books that I used previously are the WROX book (Professional SQL Server 2000 Data Warehousing with Analysis Services) and the MS Press Step by Step book. I remember liking both of them, are their successors as good?
The problem with the reviews on Amazon is that it doesn’t match my expectations; the WROX 2000 book only got 2.5 stars which I think is way too low. While the book is not perfect it deserves more than 2.5 stars.
Here are the 5 books I am considering
Microsoft SQL Server(TM) 2005 Analysis Services Step by Step
Delivering Business Intelligence with Microsoft SQL Server 2005
Professional SQL Server Analysis Services 2005 with MDX
Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services
The Microsoft Data Warehouse Toolkit: With SQL Server 2005 and the Microsoft Business Intelligence Toolset
BTW I don’t need the book right now, I won’t actually start working with this until next year. If you know of a book that is coming out between now and January please let me know also.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)