Randall Neth - BI, SQL, & SharePoint

Microsoft Certified Master (MCM) – SQL Program Changes

Randall Neth — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 15:46:26 +0000

Microsoft Learning has just announced some major changes to the SQL MCM program. The plan is to make it available to more SQL Professionals that were unable to take 3 weeks away from work, could not make the trip to Redmond, and/or did not have $18,500 for the expense of the course.

Candidates can now achieve SQL Master status by passing two exams; a four hour knowledge exam and a six hour lab exam (There is still the prerequisite certifications of MCITP: Database Administrator SQL Server 2008 and MCITP: Database Developer Sql Server 2008). The exams should be available some time in early 2011 and are shown below with associated expense:

Exam 88-970: Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Microsoft Certofoed Master: Knowledge Exam $500/per attempt

Exam 88-971: Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Microsoft Certified Master: Lab Exam $2,000/per attempt

The MCM process was a great experience as it allowed me to meet a great set of people, get training from the best instructors in the SQL realm, provided confidence in my skillset, and has given rise to many new opportunities (jobs, speaking, papers, etc…) Even though there are some changes to the program from when I attended the class these experiences are still available to the future MCMs. Plus by obtaining the certification you will have just obtained Microsoft’s top technical certification for SQL Server and be in the top 1% of SQL professionals worldwide.

There are also many great benefits you get as an MCM; my peersonal favortite is the MCM mailing list which has all of the SQL MCMs, the instructors, and Microsoft internal resources that you can submit questions to when you run into a problem (as well as being able to answer other’s questions and provide assistance).

If nothing else check out the MCM Readiness Videos as they provide insight into the technical expertise you should have before attempting the MCM exams (as well as providing great technical tips and training).

Much appreciation and many thanks should go to Joseph Sack, Program Manager – Microsoft Certified Master: SQL Server, for all of his hard work and dedication to continue to grow the SQL MCM community and for opening the SQL MCM program up to so many great new candidates.

Links:

Joseph Sack MSDN Blog Entry

SQL Server Masters Certification Goes Global

New Path to Microsoft Certified Master: Microsoft SQL Server 2008

Data Sheet (Executive Summary)

SQL Server 2008 Microsoft Certified Master (MCM) Readiness Videos

SQL Server Denali CTP1 Available

Randall Neth — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 15:03:56 +0000

Microsoft has just announced that SQL Server “Denali” CTP1 is available for download at http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/en/us/product-info/future-editions.aspx. Many great things here that I have been looking forward to especially the ‘SQL Server Always On’ which has availability groups and support for multiple secondaries.

“Denali” BOL: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms130214(SQL.110).aspx

Kansas City IT Professionals (KCITP) Posting

admin — Sat, 30 Oct 2010 05:26:02 +0000

Michael Gelphman, the founder of Kansas City IT Professionals (KCITP) interviewed me recently to discuss the Microsoft Certified Master (MCM) program and the interview was just posted here http://www.kcitp.com/2010/10/29/member-highlight-randall-neth/.

KCITP Home Page: http://www.kcitp.com

Microsoft MCM Information: http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/certification/master.aspx

Determine Index Fragmentation

Randall Neth — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 16:59:48 +0000

As part of your analysis of any SQL Server infrastructure you take a good long look at the indexes within their databases. You want to look for and create missing indexes, determine what indexes can be removed or consolidated, determine where to implement covering indexes and filtered indexes, and review overall health of the indexes. As part of this final health check of the indexes you will want to review index fragmentation as depending upon how indexes are utilized and queries are written this can be a major bottleneck within your SQL infrastructure.

I have been looking for a simple script that will return the index information for a specific database and will return the Index Name, Fragmentation Percentage, and the number of pages in the index. Below is a script that will assist you with determining fragmentation of your indexes. This is a mashup of the script by Deepak here: http://www.sql-articles.com/scripts/index-fragmentation-report and a script by Brent Ozar here: http://sqlserverpedia.com/wiki/Index_Maintenance.

SELECT DB_NAME(ps.database_id) AS DBName, S.name AS Schemaname, OBJECT_NAME(ps.OBJECT_ID) AS Tablename, Index_Description = CASE WHEN ps.index_id = 1 THEN 'Clustered Index' WHEN ps.index_id <> 1 THEN 'Non-Clustered Index' END, b.name AS Indexname, ROUND(ps.avg_fragmentation_in_percent, 0, 1) AS 'Fragmentation%', SUM(page_count * 8) AS 'IndexSizeKB', ps.page_count FROM sys.dm_db_index_physical_stats(DB_ID(), NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL) AS ps INNER JOIN sys.indexes AS b ON ps.OBJECT_ID = b.OBJECT_ID AND ps.index_id = b.index_id AND b.index_id <> 0 -- heap not required INNER JOIN sys.objects AS O ON O.OBJECT_ID = b.OBJECT_ID AND O.TYPE = 'U' AND O.is_ms_shipped = 0 -- only user tables INNER JOIN sys.schemas AS S ON S.schema_Id = O.schema_id WHERE ps.database_id = DB_ID() AND ps.avg_fragmentation_in_percent > 30 -- Indexes having more than 30% fragmentation GROUP BY DB_NAME(ps.database_id), S.name, OBJECT_NAME(ps.OBJECT_ID), CASE WHEN ps.index_id = 1 THEN 'Clustered Index' WHEN ps.index_id <> 1 THEN 'Non-Clustered Index' END, b.name, ROUND(ps.avg_fragmentation_in_percent, 0, 1), ps.avg_fragmentation_in_percent, ps.page_count ORDER BY ps.avg_fragmentation_in_percent DESC OPTION ( MaxDop 1 ) ;

A great resource for more information on Indexes and fragmentation is:

Kimberly L. Tripp – SQLSkills Blog

I Have Attained My SQL Server 2008 Microsoft Certified Master (MCM) Certification.

Randall Neth — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 07:35:12 +0000

Just received the confirmation email from Joe Sack, Acting Program Manager Microsoft Certified Master – SQL Server, that I passed the lab exam and am now a Microsoft Certified Master: SQL Server 2008. A link to the blog post on “The Master Blog” is here: http://blogs.technet.com/b/themasterblog/archive/2010/07/31/breadth-and-depth-say-hello-to-randall-neth.aspx

SQL Saturday #53

Randall Neth — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 05:41:43 +0000

I have just submitted a session to speak at SQL Saturday on October 2 in Kansas City, MO. I plan on speaking on the Microsoft Certified Master (MCM) program. Essentially covering the entire experience from applying for, what you learn, what is expected of you, instructors, relationships built, and pretty much everything in between. I also plan on submitting some other topics just trying to narrow down the selection, leaning towars SAN/Storage design, virtualizing SQL, and/or Effective DataWarehouse design.

Information on the event can be found here: http://www.sqlsaturday.com/53/eventhome.aspx

SQL Server/Oracle PASS Virtual Chapter Meeting

Randall Neth — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 01:27:11 +0000

The first meeting of the SQL Server/Oracle PASS Virtual Chapter is upcoming on July 14th. Steve Simon of State Street Corporation will discuss Query Performance and Data Access Layers. http://oracle.sqlpass.org/Home.aspx

The overview of the meeting is shown below:

How often have our SQL Servers and Oracle Servers been bogged down with a myriad of users issuing lengthy and poorly constructed or poorly performing queries against our tables and views. More often than not, nearly bringing our systems to their knees. Nowhere is this truer than within the financial world where heavy number crunching is par for the course. This beginners to intermediate level hands-on presentation is aimed at the SQL Server / Oracle developer and business analyst alike and will show the attendee how we have managed to eliminate 90 % of our poorly performing queries by creating data access layers which provides our end users with a suite of well developed and tuned SQL Server /Oracle FUNCTIONS with which to render their data. The presentation will discuss the high level principles and concepts behind our data access layer, the ways in which data access layers may be implemented with both products, the scenarios under which we have benefited from their usage and then compare and contrast some of the poorly performing queries that we once had..with some more efficient and effective queries that we have now provided to our end users.

SQL 2008 SPARSE COLUMNS and TDE

Randall Neth — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 08:05:00 +0000

I was sitting at home and thinking about some of the different features of SQL 2008 and their interoperability. Thus I wanted to verify the compatability of SPARSE COLUMNS and Transparent Data Encryption (TDE). SPARSE columns shows great gains for NULL values and TDE allows you to encrypt your database; I wanted to verify just as with TDE and Data Compression you still get the space savings benefits. As you can see by the results below it does appear as though databases with TDE enabled to still benefit from SPARSE COLUMNS. (As a note Backup Compression does not show any benefits when utilized on a TDE enabled database.)

Below are the results (Tables within databases contained identical data):

NORMAL DB:

Table Without SPARSE COLUMNS = 39.063MB

Table With SPARSE COLUMNS = .219MB

TDE DB:

Table Without SPARSE COLUMNS = 39.063MB

Table With SPARSE COLUMNS = .219MB

Set for MCM to begin.

Randall Neth — Sun, 02 May 2010 02:23:30 +0000

I have made it to Redmond and am all checked in to the Homestead Suites. I was lucky enough to run into Joe Sack in the hotel lobby during check-in and have had the joy of talking about the program with him for a while. The SQL MCM is up to 73 individuals worldwide with 5 that are in the United States that do not work for Microsoft.

Looks like we have a Who’s Who of SQL presenting during the SQL MCM the next three weeks: Paul Randal, Kimberly Tripp, Adam Machanic, Greg Low, Allan Hirt, and Gert Drapers. This is going to be a great experience.

SQL Server 2008 R2 Launch

Randall Neth — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 18:11:25 +0000

SQL Server 2008 R2 is available for download now, contrary to the “leaked” date of May 21. I ran across this information on Brent Ozar’s Blog. Here is the launch site http://www.sqlserverlaunch.com/.

Time to get my new virtual servers fired up and give it a go to see how this differs from the CTP.