Strate SQL

Don’t forget the July PASSMN meeting is today.  We have Itzik Ben-Gan (blog) coming in to talk about some query tuning tips.

Here are the meeting details…

Date and  Time:

July 20, 2010, 5:00 PM CST

Location:

8300 Norman Center Drive, 9th Floor, Bloomington, MN  55437 (map)

Live Meeting

• URL: https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/usergroups/join?id=7DGRT6&role=attend&pw=h*ZR%248%25%2Fd
• Meeting ID: 7DGRT6
• Entry Code: h*ZR$8%/d

Agenda:

5:00 –5:15 : Announcements
5:15 –5:25 : Sponsor
5:25 –6:45 : Query Tuning Tips (Itzik)
6:45 –7:00 : Survey Collection and Giveaways

Presentation:

Query Tuning Tips

Given a SQL Server querying problem there’s much that you can do to enable a good performing solution. Tuning involves arranging an optimal physical environment, e.g., by creating supporting indexes, as well as writing the query in a way that it would get an optimal execution plan. Many factors can affect the efficiency of the solution including the availability of indexes, data distribution and density, and others. In different scenarios, a different solution could be the most efficient for the same querying problem. Query tuning could be considered an art. This session will provide various tips to do efficient query tuning and demonstrate those through specific tuning examples.

Itzik Ben-Gan is a Mentor and Co-Founder of Solid Quality Mentors. A SQL Server Microsoft MVP (Most Valuable Professional) since 1999, Itzik has delivered numerous training events around the world focused on T-SQL Querying, Query Tuning and Programming. Itzik is the author of several books including Microsoft SQL Server 2008: T-SQL Fundamentals, Inside Microsoft SQL Server 2008: T-SQL Querying and Inside Microsoft SQL Server 2008: T-SQL Programming. He has written many articles for SQL Server Magazine as well as articles and whitepapers for MSDN. Itzik’s speaking activities include TechEd, DevWeek, SQLPASS, SQL Server Magazine Connections, various user groups around the world, and Solid Quality Mentors’ events to name a few. Itzik is the author of Solid Quality Mentors’ Advanced T-SQL Querying, Programming and Tuning and T-SQL Fundamentals courses along with being a primary resource within the company for their T-SQL related activities

The July PASSMN meeting is is coming up next week.  If you’ve not registered now’s a great time to get your RSVP in.  We have Itzik Ben-Gan (blog) coming in to talk about some query tuning tips.

Here are the meeting details…

Date and  Time:

July 20, 2010, 5:00 PM CST

Location:

8300 Norman Center Drive, 9th Floor, Bloomington, MN  55437 (map)

Live Meeting

• URL: https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/usergroups/join?id=7DGRT6&role=attend&pw=h*ZR%248%25%2Fd
• Meeting ID: 7DGRT6
• Entry Code: h*ZR$8%/d

Agenda:

5:00 –5:15 : Announcements
5:15 –5:25 : Sponsor
5:25 –6:45 : Query Tuning Tips (Itzik)
6:45 –7:00 : Survey Collection and Giveaways

Presentation:

Query Tuning Tips

Given a SQL Server querying problem there’s much that you can do to enable a good performing solution. Tuning involves arranging an optimal physical environment, e.g., by creating supporting indexes, as well as writing the query in a way that it would get an optimal execution plan. Many factors can affect the efficiency of the solution including the availability of indexes, data distribution and density, and others. In different scenarios, a different solution could be the most efficient for the same querying problem. Query tuning could be considered an art. This session will provide various tips to do efficient query tuning and demonstrate those through specific tuning examples.

Itzik Ben-Gan is a Mentor and Co-Founder of Solid Quality Mentors. A SQL Server Microsoft MVP (Most Valuable Professional) since 1999, Itzik has delivered numerous training events around the world focused on T-SQL Querying, Query Tuning and Programming. Itzik is the author of several books including Microsoft SQL Server 2008: T-SQL Fundamentals, Inside Microsoft SQL Server 2008: T-SQL Querying and Inside Microsoft SQL Server 2008: T-SQL Programming. He has written many articles for SQL Server Magazine as well as articles and whitepapers for MSDN. Itzik’s speaking activities include TechEd, DevWeek, SQLPASS, SQL Server Magazine Connections, various user groups around the world, and Solid Quality Mentors’ events to name a few. Itzik is the author of Solid Quality Mentors’ Advanced T-SQL Querying, Programming and Tuning and T-SQL Fundamentals courses along with being a primary resource within the company for their T-SQL related activities

Please RSVP here if you will be attending in person, this helps us understand how many people to tell the sponsor to get food for.

Sometimes when we are putting together the user group meetings things change.  Opportunities arise and we get a chance to take a cool meeting and turn it into a great meeting.  That happened with this months meeting and it’s going to be great.

A couple things are different for this month… time and topic.  This month instead of meeting at 3:00 PM we are meeting at 5:00 PM.  And the reason for the change is that we have Itzik Ben-Gan (blog) stopping by for a presentation.

The Presentation

This month he’ll be teaching a course at Benchmark Learning.  His course is Advanced T-SQL Querying, Programming and Tuning for SQL Server 2005 & 2008.  If you want more than what you suspect will be at the meeting, then this class is for you.

What can you suspect will be at the meeting this month?  Well, how about this?

Query Tuning Tips

Given a SQL Server querying problem there’s much that you can do to enable a good performing solution. Tuning involves arranging an optimal physical environment, e.g., by creating supporting indexes, as well as writing the query in a way that it would get an optimal execution plan. Many factors can affect the efficiency of the solution including the availability of indexes, data distribution and density, and others. In different scenarios, a different solution could be the most efficient for the same querying problem. Query tuning could be considered an art. This session will provide various tips to do efficient query tuning and demonstrate those through specific tuning examples.

Pretty cool stuff, eh?

And the Rest of the Details…

This month’s meeting sponsor is Digineer.  They’ll be providing the food and beverages.  Digineer happens to be my employer and if you’re local and looking for a company with talent and skill this is a good place to look.

Date: July 20, 2010
Time: 5:00 PM – 7:00 PM
Location: 8300 Norman Center Drive, 9th Floor, Bloomington, MN  55437
Live Meeting

• URL: https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/usergroups/join?id=7DGRT6&role=attend&pw=h*ZR%248%25%2Fd
• Meeting ID: 7DGRT6
• Entry Code: h*ZR$8%/d

The all important RSVP link – please do RSVP so that we’ll have enough food for the event.

Don’t forget, PASSMN June Meeting is today.  We have Lara Rubbelke (twitter | blog) coming in to talk about some of the new SSRS features in SQL Server 2008 R2.

More details can be found here.

The month has been flying along and I thought I’d remind people that the PASSMN meeting is this week.  If you’ve not registered now’s a great time to get your RSVP in.  We have Lara Rubbelke (twitter | blog) coming in to talk about some of the new SSRS features in SQL Server 2008 R2.

Here are the meeting details…

Date and  Time:

June 15, 2010
3:00 PM CST

Location:

8300 Norman Center Drive, 9th Floor, Bloomington, MN  55437 (map)

Please RSVP here if you will be attending in person, this helps us understand how many people to tell the sponsor to get food for.

Live Meeting

URL: https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/usergroups/join?id=TGJT8N&role=attend&pw=H%3A%7C%3Ds%5C77f

Meeting ID: TGJT8N

Entry Code: H:|=s\77f

Agenda:

3:00 –3:15 : Announcements
3:15 –3:25 : Sponsor
3:25 –4:45 : SSRS 2008 R2 (Lara)
4:45 –5:00 : Survey Collection and Giveaways
5:00 –5:30 : Networking

Presentation:

What’s New in SQL Server 2008 R2 Reporting Services
Lara Rubbelke
Microsoft, Inc.
Amp up your Reporting Services with the many great enhancements in SQL Server 2008 R2. Lara will take you on a tour of all that is new in R2 including collaboration features, new visualizations, rendering enhancements, and new data sources. After this session you will wonder why they call R2 an "interim" release!

It’s time to look at the June meeting for the Minnesota SQL Server User Group.  This month we have Lara Rubbelke (twitter | blog) coming in to talk about some of the new SSRS features in SQL Server 2008 R2.

Here are the meeting details…

Date and  Time:

June 15, 2010
3:00 PM CST

Location:

8300 Norman Center Drive, 9th Floor, Bloomington, MN  55437 (map)

Please RSVP here if you will be attending in person, this helps us understand how many people to tell the sponsor to get food for.

Live Meeting

URL: https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/usergroups/join?id=TGJT8N&role=attend&pw=H%3A%7C%3Ds%5C77f

Meeting ID: TGJT8N

Entry Code: H:|=s\77f

Agenda:

3:00 –3:15 : Announcements
3:15 –3:25 : Sponsor
3:25 –4:45 : SSRS 2008 R2 (Lara)
4:45 –5:00 : Survey Collection and Giveaways
5:00 –5:30 : Networking

Presentation:

What’s New in SQL Server 2008 R2 Reporting Services
Lara Rubbelke
Microsoft, Inc.
Amp up your Reporting Services with the many great enhancements in SQL Server 2008 R2. Lara will take you on a tour of all that is new in R2 including collaboration features, new visualizations, rendering enhancements, and new data sources. After this session you will wonder why they call R2 an "interim" release!

Almost time to hit the road… and I’m heading to SQL Saturday 31 in Chicago.  Rumor has it that this weekend will provide an awesome experience.  From the presentations being provided to the karaoke after party – I’m expecting a great time.

If you will be at SQL Saturday 31, please stop by and introduce yourself.  And if it suits your fancy, sit down and listen in on my topics.  I am scheduled for the following topics:

Using XML to Query Execution Plans

SQL Server stores its execution plans as XML in dynamic management views.  The execution plans are a gold mine of information.  From the whether or not the execution plan will rely on parallelism to what columns are requiring a key lookup after a non-clustered index seek.  Through a the use of XML this information can be available at your finger tips to help determine the value and impact of an index and guide you in improving the performance of your SQL Server databases.

Goals:

1. Discuss information available in an execution plan
2. Demonstrate use of XQuery to query execution cache
3. Demonstrate methods to performance tune

Extended Events – Work Smarter, Not Harder

There are many ways to performance monitor your SQL Server environment.  In this session we’ll review Extended Events, which is one of the newer SQL Server monitoring platforms.  Learn the ins and outs of how to get detailed information on the errors and events that occur within SQL Server and how to dig into the information.  With a few T-SQL statements, issues that could take weeks to research can be investigated in minutes.

Goals:

1. Define the architecture for Extended Events
2. Identify scenarios where Extended Event can be used to troubleshoot performance
3. Demonstrate solutions to real-world performance scenarios

I’ll be staying an extra day in Chicago after the conference, so if anyone has ideas on what I should do please leave a comment.  I haven’t been in Chicago since I was 10 or 11 years old so it’s probably changed a bit.  So far I have been told to get a hot dog from a street vendor and check out the piers.  Any other ideas are very welcome.

PASSMN Meeting Next Tuesday

The Minnesota SQL Server User Group (twitter | website) is meeting next week on Tuesday (4/20/2010).  The meeting should be smoking and I’m not meaning the 4-20 kind.  The meeting will start with a Visual Studio 2010 for the SQL Developers.  Next, Fusion IO (twitter | website) will be on of the presenters on SSD and they have an awesome giveaway – A DRIVE VALUED AT $7,000.  If you plan to attend, please, please, please RSVP so that we can order enough food.  We were a little too close last month and too little is always awkward.

It’s come down to a decision… do you want to learn about SQL Server and network with your peers or don’t you.  Then again, the question could also be do you want some swag and pizza with some work buddies.  Hopefully, you’ll be stopping in for the first item.

Out meeting is today starting at 2:30 PM for networking with announcements an presentations beginning at 3:00 PM.

This month we have Louis Davidson joining us for:

Database Design Fundamentals

In this session I will give an overview of how to design a database, including the common normal forms and why they should matter to you if you are creating or modifying SQL Server databases. Data should be easy to work with in SQL Server if the database has been organized as close as possible to the standards of normalization that have proven for many years. Many common T-SQL programming “difficulties” are the result of struggling against the way data should be structured and can be avoided by applying the basic normalization techniques and are obvious things that you find yourself struggling with time and again (i.e. using the SUBSTRING function in a WHERE clause meaning you can’t use an index efficiently).

And before that, I’ll be presenting:

ABCs of CTEs

Common Table Expressions (CTE) aren’t as common as their name implies. CTEs are often seen as a secret part of the dark art of recursion. This session will explore CTEs to show how they can be extremely useful in improving performance and legibility of T-SQL code. And, of course, we will look at their use in returning recursive data.

Hope to see you there.  If you have any questions, you can reach me on twitter.

It’s that time of the month again.  Time to network and learn about SQL Server with your peers.

Please click here for meeting details and to RSVP.

Registration has changed with the move from our previous hosting site and you will be required to log into www.sqlpass.org in order to register for our events. If you have any issues with this, please contact support@mnssug.org.

ABCs of CTEs
Jason Strate

Common Table Expressions (CTE) aren’t as common as their name implies. CTEs are often seen as a secret part of the dark art of recursion. This session will explore CTEs to show how they can be extremely useful in improving performance and legibility of T-SQL code. And, of course, we will look at their use in returning recursive data.

Database Design Fundamentals
Louis Davidson

In this session I will give an overview of how to design a database, including the common normal forms and why they should matter to you if you are creating or modifying SQL Server databases. Data should be easy to work with in SQL Server if the database has been organized as close as possible to the standards of normalization that have proven for many years. Many common T-SQL programming “difficulties” are the result of struggling against the way data should be structured and can be avoided by applying the basic normalization techniques and are obvious things that you find yourself struggling with time and again (i.e. using the SUBSTRING function in a WHERE clause meaning you can’t use an index efficiently).

If you’ve got the time, stop in to socialize and learn a bit about SQL Server.  Kalen Delaney will be in town teaching a class over at Benchmark Learning and has offered to join the meeting to talk about Simple Recovery Model.   Also, Barbara Rokke has offered to share  some of her experiences with partitioning in SQL Server.

Here are the meeting details:

Please click here for more meeting details and to RSVP.

Case Study: A Partitioning Strategy for a VLDB

Barbara Rokke, 3M

With our database growing rapidly from MB to TB, maintenance tasks locking users out of data access and a 7×24 data access requirement by the clients, the DBA team needed to come up with a better way of managing the large database. Partitioning was discussed however the DBA team didn’t have time to develop a manual partition strategy. With the release of SQL Server 2005, partitioning became a viable option. After discussions with Microsoft experts and reading every bit of information available on the web (only 2 websites offering valuable information at the time), the DBA team took the leap into the Partitioning world. Partitioning was installed and a two year window processing script was developed to maintain a rolling window of data.

This presentation will provide a review of the thought process and the implementation of the partitioning strategy the DBA team developed. Also a walk-through of the two year window processing to show self-maintenance partitioning will be reviewed.

What is Minimal Logging?

Kalen Delaney

There is a common misconception that Simple Recovery Model means no logging, and this is a very dangerous myth to propagate. SQL Server does log database changes in Simple Recovery, but some (not all) operations are minimally logged. In this session, I’ll discuss what exactly minimal logging means and what the benefits and dangers of Simple Recovery model are.