A Fine Slice Of SQL Server
Kenneth Fisher discusses how to get MSDTC working with Integration Services:
tl;dr; The MSDTC service has to be not only turned on, but configured on all of the machines involved. Including the machine running the SSIS package (possibly a workstation).
Configuring remote MSDTC, sure. Configuring local MSDTC, though, is something I hadn’t realized was important, at least if you want to use SSIS transactions. Probably goes to show how often I use SSIS transactions…
Comments closedChris Shaw tells us to optimize TempDB:
By default when you install SQL Server the TempDB database is not optimized. For SQL Servers that use the TempDB even moderately, I recommend optimizing it for the best performance. The TempDB is the storage area that SQL Server uses to store data for a short periods of time, information that can be found in the TempDB include temporary tables, and data that is being sorted for query results. The data in the TempDB is so temporary that each time the SQL Server service restarts, the TempDB is recreated.
Good advice within.
Comments closedBuck Woody shares some tips regarding learning R:
Another mistake I see a lot in beginning R students is forgetting that R cares about case. In other words, the variable “a” is a separate thing than the variable “A”.
NOTE: Package names can be case-sensitive as well.
A lot of this comes down to “learn the syntax.”
Comments closedTim Radney has in introduction on how he tunes a SQL Server instance:
Typically the common compliant when someone’s stating they need to tune a SQL Server is that it’s running slow. What does slow mean? Is it a certain report, a specific application, or everything? Did it just start happening, or has it been getting worse over time? I start by asking the usual triage questions of what the memory, CPU, and disk utilization is compared to when things are normal, did the problem just start happening, and what recently changed. Unless the client is capturing a baseline, they don’t have metrics to compare against to know if current stats are abnormal.
Tuning is about method and tools (in that order). I like the way Tim does both.
Comments closedEd Elliott has a three-part series on database projects in SQL Server Data Tools.
The SSOX or SQL Server Object Explorer is a cool utility that lets you connect to a live database and do things to it like debug stored procedures or update individual objects. It also lets you see a view of you projects after all references have been resolved so if you use “Same Database” references you can see how your end project will end up – really useful.
Using the DacServices via whatever method you want (schema compare, sqlpackage, powershell, something else?) really makes it simple to spend your time writing code and tests rather than manual migration steps. It constantly amazes me who well rounded the deployment side of things is. Every time I use something obscure, something other than a table or procedure I half expect the deployment to fail but it just always works.
Over the last couple of years I must have created hundreds if not thousands of builds all with their own release scripts across tens of databases in different environments and I haven’t yet been able to break the ssdt deployment bits without it acyually being my fault or something stupid like a merge that goes haywire (that’s one reason to have tests).
The ScriptDom has two ways to use it, the first is to pass it some T-SQL (be it DDL or DML) and it will return a representation of the T-SQL in objects which you can examine and do things to.
The second way it can be used is to take objects and create T-SQL.
I know what you are thinking, why would I bother? It seems pretty pointless to me. Let me assure you that it is not pointless, the first time I used it for an actual issue was where I had a deployment script with about 70 tables in. For various reasons we couldn’t guarantee that the tables existed (some tables were moved into another database) the answer would have been to either split the tables into 2 files or manually wrap if exists around each table’s deploy script. Neither of these options were particularly appealing at the particular point in the project with the time we had to deliver.
This is a great series with a lot of informative links.
Comments closed