I received an email from a connection on LinkedIn seeking some advice for architecture on a new reporting system. Although I don’t know the gentleman personally, he is a SQL Server professional and I felt obliged to help out a fellow colleague in the field. The email is included below and my suggested solutions following it.
A problem I face often is not knowing the size of a new table that I’m creating. I put some basic code together that pulls the column information from INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS and with some basic math gets the approximate size of the table based on the estimated number of rows.
Everyone’s favorite four letter word is back, FREE! Yes, it is time I gave back to the community since I’ve been mooching off them them for so long. I’ve put together a short Installation Guide for those interested in getting their feet wet with SQL Server. I’m trying to encourage those that have no experience to get a little curious and try to install SQL Server and play with it. Maybe afterward you can even try to set up your own Clustered SQL Server Virtual Lab with Hyper-V. Just trying to rub off some of the enthusiasm and passion, did it work?
Anyway you can view the guide Here on Google Docs or Download it Here as PDF. It is just a first draft, so please feel free to add your suggestions or point out mistakes and I will try to fix it ASAP.
You can also read it right off of this page… check it out by clicking “Read the rest of this entry”
After having a great opportunity to attend a Beta course for Hyper-V with Windows 2012 at Learning Tree, I decided to finally do what I have been planning to do for a while; build a fully working SQL Server Clustered Virtual Lab.
One fine morning as I’m sitting at my desk doing my work I review some emails about cleaning out some old data from a table that stored webpage session information. I’m given hints about first checking out a job that supposedly purges the data automatically. With my first clue, the wheels were turning on this investigation. To my astonishment, I would fine something terrifying… almost unspeakable…
It was a SQL Server job with no owner!
SQL Server Backup and Recovery Fundamentals – February 5th, 2013
A copy of the recording is available here. Code and slides are under the Presentations section of this website.
Correction:Compression on Backups is available on the Standard Edition of SQL 2008R2 and SQL 2012 but not SQL 2008. Thanks to Mark Harrison for pointing that out to me.
Microsoft’s official SQL Server blog put out some cool SQL Server badges. Check them out, put them on your blog, facebook, LinkedIN, Twitter or whatever. Warning, identifying yourself as a geek might have negative consequences… you have been warned!!
