SQL Server Club

SQLRelay Bristol Event Tuesday 4th October 2011

As part of the National SQL Server week, all the UK SQL Server user groups are holding an event to help promote the benefits of free community events.

As a leader of the Bristol user group I'm delighted to announce that we have Microsoft MVP Tony Rogerson returning for his second visit. Tony will be presenting High Availability in SQL Server Denali. We've had lots of support from sponsors including Microsoft, Wrox, Red Gate software and SQLPASS. There's a little a hint regarding the some of the super swag we have to give away ;-)

It's not too late to sign up for this event and you'd be mad to miss it:

•     HADR in SQL Server Denali with Tony Rogerson
•     Tuesday 4th October 2o11
•     18:30 - 20:30, Doors open 18:00
•     Room with a View, 4th Floor, Bush House, 72 Prince Street, Bristol BS1 4QD
•     Register using SQL Server FAQ here
•     Map, directions, instructions and more details here

You'll not only learn lots from Tony, but you'll get free pizza and beer and get to know lots of other local DBAs and developers. Don't forget to bring a friend!

July Meeting with SQL MVP James Rowland-Jones

I recently found myself without a speaker for the July SQL Server Club User Group meeting, so when James Rowland-Jones offered to step in, I have to say, I was chuffed to bits.

James is one of the SQLBits conference organisers as well as being a regular speaker. I saw James presenting at SQLBits in Newport back in 2009 and was impressed with his knowledge of SQL Server internals.

SQL Server has a complex, fascinating database engine and I can't help but be wowed when reading about its functions and capabilities. One of my favourite topics is page allocation, fragmentation and how data is stored.

What I previously hadn't given much consideration to is how loading data into a data warehouse is affected by fragmentation. When James emailed me to say this was the subject he would be presenting, I was thrilled.

His presentation will take us back to the basics of fragmentation and we will re-visit all those areas of heaps, clustered indexes and page allocation and how fragmentation arises and has an impact on performance. James will tell us about the trace flags we can use to avoid fragmentation and also what design patterns can be applied to minimise its effects.

I'm really looking forward to this event and it will be a pleasure to welcome James to Bristol. If you would like to attend this meeting, here are the details:

• The Art of War-Fast Track Data Warehouse and Fragmentation with James Rowland-Jones
• Thursday 21st July 2011
• 18:30 - 20:30, Doors open 18:00
• Room with a View, 4th Floor, Bush House, 72 Prince Street, Bristol BS1 4QD
• Register using Eventbrite here
• Map, directions, instructions and more details here

SQL Server Database Developer, Bristol, 1 Yr Contract

A company in the Fishponds area of Bristol are expanding their development team and looking to recruit a database developer. This is a 12 months fixed term contract paying £31k. 

Key  Skills

-- SQL Server 2005 / 2008
-- Microsoft Access / VBA
-- Visual Studio / VB.NET / WINDOWS FORMS

Key Tasks

- - Contribute to the development of IT solutions to promote organisational efficiency 
- - Provide support to the Database Manager
- - To aid design and development of a bespoke relational database system and migration of legacy database systems

Main Responsibilities  

1. Review, research and develop new database functionality, and make recommendations to the process of these new functions in liaison with the Head of IT, Database Developers and other teams.

2. Produce effective supporting documentation and provide end user tuition and support for internal database systems.

3. Provide accurate and relevant ad-hoc reports and management information

4. Assist with the design and development of a bespoke relational database system.

5. Establish and maintain effective working relationships with co-workers, regional colleagues and customers.

6. Pursue development of skills and knowledge necessary for the effective performance of the role in liaison with the Head of IT and Head of Personnel and Training.

7. Contribute to the quality customer service by providing a helpful, friendly response to external and internal queries.

To Apply 

If you're interested in applying, please contact my good friend Darren Khan at Randstad Technologies on 0117 311 6437. Please mention you saw this job on SQL Server Club.

I get no commission for this, I'm just providing a service to help match techies to jobs :-) 

 

#SQLBits 7 - York, October 2010 - Registration open!

I've just booked my place at SQLBits The 7 Wonders of SQL and am excited already!

The seventh installment of this conference will be held at York University and the line-up of speakers and subjects is simply mouth-watering. 

Speakers include Simon Sabin, Brent Ozar, Kevin Kline, Andrew Couch, Chris Webb, Neil Hambly, Tony Rogerson, Allan Mitchell, Andre Kamman, Christian Bolton and Brad McGehee. You can check out the full line up here.

As per the Wales conference back in November 2009, the Thursday and Friday are fee-based training days and the Saturday is a free community day. I think you'll agree by the quality of speakers and topics that it's great value for money.

Be quick to register though, this could get booked up pretty quickly.

I'll see you there. 

Interview with Database Expert Dr Mark Whitehorn

Dr. Mark Whitehorn is an internationally recognised expert who specialises in the areas of data analysis, data modelling, data warehousing and business intelligence (BI). His main area of interest is best practice – with reference to the design and implementation of data management systems is general and BI systems in particular.

I first became aware of your work last year at SQLBits 5, when you presented a riveting talk about your application of SQL Server Analysis Services to Charles Darwin's research. And I know many of our readers will be very interested in the MSc in Business Intelligence, which I'll return to later.

But before we come back to that - you've had a very interesting career, Mark, one that's taken you from genetics to databases to business intelligence, as a database book author, OLAP consultant, computer industry journalist, trainer, researcher and lecturer. Please tell me about how you came to take such an interesting course in your work...

I went to University, did a degree in Biochemistry and followed that with a Ph.D. in Genetics which led me to collect a huge amount of data. The storage medium at that time was paper and the analysis was by calculator – it was all painfully slow.

My Ph.D. supervisor, John Parker, once asked me an off-the-cuff question: “This looks interesting. Is this factor correlated with that one?” A week later - we are talking maybe 50 solid hours of thinking, paper shuffling, number scribbling and key punching - I was in a position to give him the definitive answer - “No”. Around that time I became very interested in the idea of storing data more effectively, making analysis better and faster and I started to become interested in databases.

I was offered a job in the Anatomy department at the University of Dundee to work on using computers for teaching and I began to use databases to store and manipulate the data.

My journalism also started around that time, purely by chance. The Anatomy department used Apricot computers and it subscribed to an excellent magazine “Apricot file” that was edited by Dennis Jarrett. Dennis advertised for writers so I replied and he commissioned first one and later several articles. Eventually he moved back to editing a mainstream magazine, “PC User” - of which noble publication he had been the launch editor, and asked me to write for that.

This was 1985, a time when computer magazines blossomed – everyone wanted to know about computers and there was no internet. So the number of titles grew and as the commissioning editors moved from magazine to magazine, they took their list of writers with them.

So eventually I was writing for most of the magazines as a freelancer. I was helped by the fact that very few other people wanted to write about databases whereas I actively wanted to try them all and find their strengths and weaknesses. So I got paid for fun work. At the peak I was writing about 100,000 words a year, in addition to the academic job.

From there it wasn’t a huge step to writing books – they are just very long, complex articles. Books don’t make serious money - unless you are J.K. Rowling - but they have an interesting side effect which is that they make you think very carefully about exactly what it is you believe to be true about a complex subject. So writing a book turns out to be a very powerful way of learning.

DDD Southwest 2.0 Review #dddsw

In the last ten days I’ve been called both a geek and a nerd. A good job then that I was in such good company at DDD Southwest 2.0.

Actually, I was in the presence of lots of people with a much higher nerd rating than me. And many of them were kind enough to share their knowledge with the several hundred developers that registered for this annual event.

These super-nerds presented a wide variety of topics to us tech-hungry developers and there was something for everyone. The “Getting Started with .NET” track aimed at anyone new to development was a great idea!

DDD Southwest was held at the University of the West of England or UWE – pronounced you-ee by us locals - just outside Bristol on a Saturday 5th June. A very hot day too.

Guy Smith-Ferrier gave an opening speech to welcome us all and explain the proceedings for the day. I was very proud that SQL Server Club was a sponsor for this fab event and it was great to see our logo up on the sponsors slide.

I’d also volunteered to help out for the day and was given the role of Room Monitor. Quite an easy one really as I was able to sit in on all the sessions I really wanted to see.

About to Install SQL Server 2005? Read this First!

If you've upgraded any other software before you are about to install SQL Server 2005, please be aware of the following from Microsoft: Article ID: 978026 - Last Review: November 25, 2009 - Revision: 1.0 Some drivers no longer function after you install SQL Server 2005 Consider the following scenario:

• You install an update for third-party software. For example, you install an update for a third-party printer driver.
• You install Microsoft SQL Server 2005 on the same computer after you install the update.
• After you complete both installations, you restart the computer.
• In this scenario, the third-party software no longer functions correctly.

CAUSE

This problem occurs because the SQL Server 2005 Setup program deletes some files that are installed by the update. This problem occurs when you do not restart the computer between the update installation and the SQL Server 2005 installation.

FULL ARTICLE

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;enus;978026&sd=rss&spid=2855#appliesto

SQL Server 2008 Internals and Troubleshooting Book Due January 2010

If you’re currently working as a DBA you’ll know that from time to time problems arise that are not purely inside SQL Server and you have to look to the operating system to find the root.

As SQL Server specialists, we don’t always have a great deal of knowledge of the OS, hardware or networks, just as a sysadmin generally won’t be an expert on databases.

Well, there’s a bunch of guys out there who do know about the operating system underneath SQL Server and have real world experience of the problems a DBA is likely to encounter. They’ve combined their knowledge to write this book and Wrox will be releasing it to Amazon on the 13th January – and I bet it’s going to be popular.

Written to help you troubleshoot your problems and give you advice, the book shows you how to diagnose problems and successfully resolve them.

Ok, so why am I so excited about adding this to my Amazon Wish List? Well over the weekend I was at the SQLBits conference in Newport, Wales and sat in on presentations by three of the five authors. If their presentations are anything to go by, this book is going to be permanently on my desk!

I was lucky enough to see two of Christian Bolton’s talks, one on troubleshooting memory problems, the other on the role statistics play in query optimization. Christian is a Microsoft MVP and Technical Director at Coeo (http://coeo.com), specialist SQL Server consultants.

Twitter : @christianbolton | Blog : sqlblogcasts.com/blogs/christian/

There’s a good chance you’ve heard of Brent Ozar as he’s the SQL Server expert for Quest Software. Like Christian, he’s an MVP and he’s also Editor-in-Chief for SQLServerPedia.

Twitter : @BrentO | Blog : www.BrentOzar.com

I have to give James Rowland-Jones a lot of credit for his presentation on Optimistic Concurrency Internals. On the final day of the conference and the last session of the day at 4pm, he kept it interesting and delivered humor and enthusiasm. I think everyone had a pretty full brain after a couple of days of intense technical training, not to mention plenty of food, beers and some early starts! James is also an MVP so it really was an all-star line-up.

Twitter : @jrowlandjones | Blog : consultingblogs.emc.com/jamesrowlandjones.

This was my first SQLBits and I was amazed at the high standard of all the presenters I watched. Thanks to Christian, Brent and James for sharing your knowledge and tempting me to buy your book!

To pre-order your copy, visit Amazon with the ISBN number 978-0-470-48428-9.

SQL Server Club Tops 1,000 Twitter Followers

I’m proud to announce that we now have over 1,000 followers on our SQLServerClub Twitter account. This puts us in the top three most popular SQL Server profiles!

To thank our followers, as well as our devoted members, we’ve launched a special celebratory promotion. For the next 1,000 hours (until 20 November 2009) our sponsors Norb Technologies are offering you 25% off their SQL Server tools.

If you’d like to take advantage of this offer, please visit the online store and enter the coupon code Twitter1000 when you make your purchase. Thank you for supporting SQL Server Club.

Microsoft Declares Anil Mahadev an Efficiency Super Hero

No masks or capes were required for this particular operation, but SQL Server expert and SSC author Anil Mahadev has won the weekly contest “I love efficiency because…” which is run by India TechNet. He's also been crowned as Microsoft’s first ever Efficiency Super Hero.

Anil wrote an article titled “Don't Throw that Old PC away just yet" demonstrating how Windows 7 increases efficiency by being compatible with older hardware. This is great news for those who can’t afford to upgrade existing hardware or don’t feel the need to, and for those who recognize the environmental impact of throwing out and replacing hardware, myself included.

With an LCD TV on offer as the prize, Anil was amazed when he found out he’d won. “My jaws dropped when my friend sent me an e-mail saying that Anil, congratulations on LCD TV, I was like stumped, huh… me winning an LCD TV, I got to my e-mail and saw the photo that he had sent.

“I jumped from my chair in excitement and awe. I really am honored and humbled for having receiving this prize from Microsoft India. Microsoft really knows how to appreciate its users / customers. I am looking forward to the next level in the contest with Demos and hopefully the Grand Prize.

“I would strongly encourage folks to participate in the contest. Now has never been a better time to explore Microsoft’s innovative product line. Windows 7 truly stands out as a consumer and business OS for the 21st Century. User Experience is absolutely compelling and features are to die for in a modern OS. Once Again, I would like to thank Microsoft and my family for supporting me during this competition.”

Congratulations to Anil for winning this title and getting a fab LCD TV! We wish him lots of luck in the next round and if he wins the grand prize of a trip to Las Vegas, we’re hoping he’ll send lots of pictures back!

You can read Anil’s article here: Don't Throw that Old PC Away Just Yet