CSS SQL Server Engineers - Thu, 23 May 2013 17:35
Recently we've seen an issue where some Excel 2010 workbooks containing PowerPivot models encounter errors when attempting to upgrade to Excel 2013. When opening a PowerPivot model that was created in Excel 2010 in Excel 2013 you will be prompted to upgrade with the following message: This workbook has a PowerPivot data model created using a previous version of the PowerPivot add-in. You will need to upgrade this data model with PowerPivot for Excel 2013.
SQL Server Team Blog - Thu, 23 May 2013 16:00
Using a variety of data sources has been a daunting task for mere mortals. Now, with the Data Explorer add-in for Excel, you don’t need to be a super hero to unlock data gems. The Microsoft Data Explorer Preview for Excel is now available for download. Here are the Top 5 Reasons to investigate this new add-in: Discover the World’s Data Connect to a wide variety of Data Sources Combine data from multiple data sources Reshape and transform your data effortlessly Refresh your data anytime Sound in
SQL Server Team Blog - Tue, 21 May 2013 16:00
Today Hortonworks announced the general availability of Hortonworks Data Platform (HDP) for Windows, the industry’s first 100 percent Open Source Apache Hadoop-based distribution for Windows. The beta version of HDP for Windows was released two months ago at the Strata Conference in Santa Clara Hortonworks and was well received by industry press.
Microsoft SQL Server Release Services - Tue, 21 May 2013 00:41
Dear Customers, The 11 th cumulative update release for SQL Server 2008 Service Pack 3 is now available for download at the Microsoft Support site. Cumulative Update 11 contains all the hotfixes released since the initial release of SQL Server 2008...(read more)
CSS SQL Server Engineers - Fri, 17 May 2013 21:17
I ran into a new Kerberos Scenario that I hadn’t hit before when I was working on the cases related to this blog post. It’s rare that I actually see a case related to the Named Pipes protocol. When I do, it is usually a customer trying to get it setup with a Cluster deployment. I have never had a Named Pipes case related to Kerberos. On top of that, I’ve never had a SQL related Kerberos issue that looked like an actual network related issue. I usually see a traditional “Login failed for user” type error from the SQL Server itself. As part of my troubleshooting for the other blog post with the Claims configuration, I stumbled upon some information and theories about how Named Pipes responds when Kerberos is in the picture that I hadn’t ever seen or dealt with before. I love when I see new
CSS SQL Server Engineers - Fri, 17 May 2013 13:07
I’m always amazed that issues usually come in batches. I was looped into a few cases that had the following symptoms. They were running SharePoint 2010 and Reporting Services 2012 SP1. When they went to use a data source with Windows Authentication, they were seeing the following error: Sys
SQL Server Team Blog - Thu, 16 May 2013 16:00
The 3rd Annual Future of Cloud Computing Survey has just been launched by North Bridge and GigaOM Research. We are participating in this survey because your feedback on cloud computing is important to us and the industry. We want to hear about your plans for cloud implementation, where the cloud is making an impact across your software eco-system, what critical issues you might be facing around IT and business, drivers and inhibitors to cloud adoption, etc. We invite you to be among the first to TAKE THE SURVEY and
CSS SQL Server Engineers - Wed, 15 May 2013 14:40
This blog outlines a new twist to my previous blog outlining issues with 4K sector sizes. SQL Server - New Drives Use 4K Sector Size: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/psssql/archive/2011/01/13/sql-server-new-drives-use-4k-sector-size.aspx In the previous post I discussed that it was unsafe for the I/O subsystem to present a sector size that was smaller than the actual, physical sector size. This leads to unsupported, Read-Modify-Write (RMW) behavior. I was doing testing on a Windows 2012 Server - Storage Space setup and found that both Storage Spaces and the VHDx format can report a 4K sector size to the SQL Server. This allows the various drives setup in the pool for Storage Spaces to be of disparate sector sizes (Drive 1 = 512 bytes, 1K, 2K, and Drive 4 = 4K.
SQL Server Team Blog - Tue, 07 May 2013 16:00
Here on the SQL Server Blog, we spend a lot of time talking about the features and technical “how to” behind our products. The only thing we love more than getting into the details of our products is sharing real-world examples of how they help our customers achieve business goals. There’s been a few great examples of this recently, as customers like The Charles Machine Works, Holland America Line and Retail Solutions Inc. made the switch to SQL Server from competitors Oracle and SAP.
SQL Server Team Blog - Wed, 01 May 2013 16:00
Guest blog post by @SamMarraccini of EMC Corporation. To read more from Sam, please visit Sam’s blog at www.insideflash.com.
CSS SQL Server Engineers - Tue, 30 Apr 2013 18:58
I was recently going through an exercise of documenting how to discover certain aspects of Reporting Services for some Kerberos work. RS 2012 in SharePoint is a totally different game though. The easiest way I could discover certain items about Reporting Services within SharePoint was with PowerShell. For previous versions, and RS 2012 in Native Mode, we can use other avenues such as WMI to discover configuration of Reporting Services. Service Enumeration One of the big things we want to do when we are discovering what is out there is to be able to tell if we even have the service installed. This may also lead to multiple services within SharePoint. Within SQL 2012, Reporting Services is a Shared Service within SharePoint and is deployed as such. We could run the following to see the Service Applications that are configured. Get-SPServiceApplication |where {$_.TypeName -like &quo
CSS SQL Server Engineers - Fri, 26 Apr 2013 18:34
The topic I received most in my inbox this week was redo blocked on a secondary while attempting to acquire SCH-M (schema modify) lock. First of all, this is expected behavior and you can monitor for this with your standard blocking activities (sys.dm_exec_requests, blocked process TRC event, blocked process threshold configuration setting(s) and the log_redo_blocked XEvent.) The SQL Server 2012 implementation of Always On extended the database mirroring (DBM) capabilities by allowing read only queries and backups against a secondary replica. With this new activity comes additional overhead. 1. When a replica is marked for read only capabilities the updated/inserted rows on primary add additional overhead for the row versioning to help support snapshot isolation activities of the read only connections. 2. When queries are run against the secondary the SCH-S (schema stability) lock is held during t
SQL Server Team Blog - Fri, 26 Apr 2013 18:00
This video demonstrates how to view a Reporting Services report on an Apple iPad that has Apple iOS 6 and Apple Safari. You'll learn how to access reports from the report server and from email, use touch to collapse and expand row groups, sort columns, and filter data using parameters, and export the report to different formats. For more information about viewing reports on mobile devices, see View Reporting Services Reports on Microsoft Surface Devices and Apple iOS Devi
CSS SQL Server Engineers - Fri, 26 Apr 2013 16:54
The distinction between these two wait types is subtle but very helpful in tuning your Always On environment. The committing of a transaction means the log block must be written locally as well as remotely for synchronous replicas. When in synchronized state this involves specific waits for both the local and remote, log block, harden operations. HADR_SYNC_COMMIT = Waiting on response from remote replica that the log block has been hardened. This does not mean the remote, redo has occurred but instead that the log block as been successfully stored on stable media at the remote, replica. You can watch the remote, response behavior using the XEvent: hadr_db_commit_mgr_update_harden. WRITELOG = Waiting on local I/O to complete for the specified log block. The design puts the local and remote log block writes in motion at the same time (async) and then waits for their completion.&
Microsoft SQL Server Development Customer Advisory Team - Thu, 25 Apr 2013 20:38
One of the great enhancements in Microsoft's HDInsight distribution of Hadoop is the ability to store and access Hadoop data on an Azure Blob Store. We do this via the HDFS API extension called Azure Storage Vault (ASV). This allows you to persist data even after you spin down an HDInsight cluster and to make that data available across multiple programs or clusters from persistent storage. Blob stores can be replicated for redundancy and are highly available. When you need to access the data from Hadoop you point your cluster at the existing data and the data persists even after the cluster is spun down. Azure Blob Storage Let's start with how your data is stored. A storage account is created in the Azure portal and has access keys associated with it. All access to your Azure blob data is done via storage accounts. Within a storage account you need to create at least one container, though you can have many. Files (blobs) are put in the container(s). Fo
SQL Server Team Blog - Thu, 25 Apr 2013 17:00
SQL Server 2012 PDW has a feature called PolyBase, that enables you to integrate Hadoop data with PDW data. By using PDW with PolyBase capabilities, a user can: Use an external table to define a table structure for Hadoop data. Query Hadoop data by running SQL statements Integrate Hadoop data with PDW data by running a PDW query that joins Hadoop data to a relational PDW table. Persist Hadoop data in PDW by querying Hadoop and saving the results to a PDW table. Use Hadoop as an online data archive by exporting PDW data to Hadoop. Since the data is stored online in Hadoop, user will be able to retrieve the data by querying it from PDW.
SQL Server Team Blog - Mon, 22 Apr 2013 16:00
Looking back at this month’s inaugural PASS Business Analytics Conference in Chicago, we can’t believe what an amazing experience it has been! This event included 70+ sessions over the course of two and a half days and was attended by more than 1,100 data professionals, ranging from business analysts and data scientists, to BA/BI practitioners, architects, and IT Pros.
CSS SQL Server Engineers - Mon, 22 Apr 2013 14:35
I keep running into the question: “When will my secondary allow automatic failover?” Based on the question I did some extended research and I will try to summarize in is blog post. I don’t want to turn this post into a novel so I am going to take some liberties and assume you have read SQL Server Books Online topics related to Always On failover. The easy answer: Only when the secondary is marked SYNCHRONIZED. - End of blog right? – not quite! At a 10,000 foot level that statement is easy enough to understand but the issue is really understanding what constitutes SYNCHRONIZED. There are several state machines that determine the NOT vs SYNCHRONIZED state. These states are maintained using multiple worker threads and at different locations to keep the system functional and fast. Secondary Connection State End Of Log Reached State To understand these states I need
SQL Server Team Blog - Tue, 16 Apr 2013 19:00
Today Microsoft announced the general availability of Windows Azure Infrastructure Services, which includes Virtual Machines and Virtual Networks to keep your Windows Azure connected to your on-premises infrastructure and applications. Windows Azure Infrastructure Services provide the robust cloud infrastructure that is needed to run SQL Server and many of the applications that rely on SQL Server. With Windows Azure Virtual Machines, Virtual Networks, Data Sync services and full SQL Server compatibility you can now enable the following scenarios:
Microsoft SQL Server Development Customer Advisory Team - Tue, 16 Apr 2013 16:51
When I talk to people about adding self-service BI to their company's environment I generally get a list of reasons why it won't work. Some things I commonly hear: I can't get anyone in IT or on the business side to even try it. The business side doesn't know how to use the technology. This threatens my job. I just don't know where to start either politically/culturally or with the technology. I have too many other things to do. How can it possibly be secure, allow standardization, or result in quality data and decisions? That's not the way we do things. I don't really know what self-service BI means.
Microsoft SQL Server Release Services - Mon, 15 Apr 2013 22:13
Dear Customers, The 12 th Cumulative Update release for SQL Server 2008 R2 SP1 is now available for download at the Microsoft Support site. Cumulative Update 12 contains all the SQL Server 2008 R2 SP1 hotfixes which have been available since the initial...(read more)
Microsoft SQL Server Release Services - Mon, 15 Apr 2013 22:04
Dear Customers, The 6 th cumulative update release for SQL Server 2008 R2 SP2 is now available for download at the Microsoft Support site. Cumulative Update 6 contains all the SQL Server 2008 R2 SP2 hotfixes which have been available since the initial...(read more)
Microsoft SQL Server Release Services - Mon, 15 Apr 2013 21:58
Dear Customers, The 7 th cumulative update release for SQL Server 2012 is now available for download at the Microsoft Support site. Cumulative Update 7 contains all the SQL Server 2012 hotfixes which have been available since the initial release of...(read more)
SQL Server Team Blog - Fri, 12 Apr 2013 14:00
It’s the final day of the PASS Business Analytics Conference. It’s been a valuable opportunity to learn from other industry leaders, partners and customers, all of whom have great ideas and insight on what the future of analytics looks like. As far as what it looks like for Microsoft, we’ve spent the last couple of days talking about not only the immediate view, with the availability of the preview of project codename “GeoFlow” for Microsoft Excel, but also about
Microsoft SQL Server Release Services - Mon, 08 Apr 2013 21:49
We would like to remind all the customers that Extended Lifecycle Support for SQL Server 2000 SP4 ends on April 9th; 2013. Microsoft is ending support for this product as part of our Service Pack support policy, found in http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle...(read more)
CSS SQL Server Engineers - Fri, 05 Apr 2013 14:57
I had a very specific question asked of me related to the SQLIOSIM.exe, checksum validation logic. It is pretty simple logic (on purpose) but effective so here are the basics. The key is that there are multiple memory locations used to hold the data and do the comparison.
CSS SQL Server Engineers - Fri, 29 Mar 2013 21:47
"Denzil and I were working on this issue for a customer and Denzil has been gracious enough to write-up a blog for all of us." – Bob DorrFrom Denzil: I recently worked with a customer on a Database restore issue where the database being restored had 2TB of File stream data. The restore in this case would just not complete successfully and would fail with the error below. 10 percent processed. 20 percent processed. 30 percent processed. 40 percent processed.
Microsoft SQL Server Release Services - Wed, 20 Mar 2013 15:59
Dear Customers, The 10 th cumulative update release for SQL Server 2008 Service Pack 3 is now available for download at the Microsoft Support site. Cumulative Update 10 contains all the hotfixes released since the initial release of SQL Server 2008...(read more)
Microsoft SQL Server Release Services - Wed, 20 Mar 2013 15:53
Dear Customers, The 3 rd Cumulative update release for SQL Server 2012 SP1 is now available for download at the Microsoft Support site. Cumulative Update 3 contains all the SQL Server 2012 SP1 hotfixes which have been available since the initial release...(read more)
SSIS Team Blog - Thu, 07 Mar 2013 00:07
Today we are releasing SQL Server Data Tools – Business Intelligence for Visual Studio 2012 (SSDT BI) templates. With SSDT BI for Visual Studio 2012 you can develop and deploy SQL Server Business intelligence projects. Projects created in Visual Studio 2010 can be opened in Visual Studio 2012 and the other way around without upgrading or downgrading – it just works. The download/install is named to ensure you get the SSDT templates that contain the Business Intelligence projects. The setup for these tools is now available from the web and can be downloaded in multiple languages right here: http://www.microsoft.com/download/details.aspx?id=36843 The setup includes: Visual Studio 2012 integrated shell (if you don’t have Visual Studio 2012 on your machine) Project templates for
Microsoft SQL Server Release Services - Tue, 19 Feb 2013 01:38
Dear Customers, The 5 th cumulative update release for SQL Server 2008 R2 SP2 is now available for download at the Microsoft Support site. Cumulative Update 5 contains all the SQL Server 2008 R2 SP2 hotfixes which have been available since the initial...(read more)
Microsoft SQL Server Release Services - Tue, 19 Feb 2013 01:26
Dear Customers, The 11 th Cumulative Update release for SQL Server 2008 R2 SP1 is now available for download at the Microsoft Support site. Cumulative Update 11 contains all the SQL Server 2008 R2 SP1 hotfixes which have been available since the initial...(read more)
Microsoft SQL Server Release Services - Tue, 19 Feb 2013 01:04
Dear Customers, The 6 th cumulative update release for SQL Server 2012 is now available for download at the Microsoft Support site. Cumulative Update 6 contains all the SQL Server 2012 hotfixes which have been available since the initial release of...(read more)
Microsoft SQL Server Development Customer Advisory Team - Sat, 02 Feb 2013 01:36
For my #SQLPASS Summit 2012 talk SQLCAT: Big Data – All Abuzz About Hive (slides available to all | recording available to PASS Summit 2012 attendees) I showed a mash-up of Hive, SQL Server, and Excel data that had been imported to PowerPivot and then displayed via Power View in Excel 2013 (using the new SharePoint-free self-service option). PowerPivot brings together the new world of unstructured data from Hadoop with structured data from more traditional relational and multi-dimensional sources to gain new business insights and break down data silos. We were able to take very recent data from Hurricane Sandy, which occurred the week b
SSIS Team Blog - Wed, 19 Dec 2012 00:42
There is now a SSIS 2012 version of the "Creating a Simple ETL Package Tutorial". The tutorial and lesson packages work with the AdventureWorksDW2012 database. And, the tutorial includes a new Lesson 6 that shows you how to convert a project to the project deployment model and replace configuration values with parameters. The tutorial documentation is at SSIS Tutorial: Creating a Simple ETL Package. To download the lesson packages and sample data for the tutorial, navigate to the DOWNLOADS tab of the Integration Services Product Samples project on CodePlex and click the SQL2012.Integration_Serv
SSIS Team Blog - Thu, 06 Dec 2012 19:44
In SQL Server 2012, you can use the catalog.deploy_project stored procedure to deploy an SSIS project to the SSIS server. You need to provide the binary contents of the project deployment file (.ispac extension), for the @project_stream parameter, along with the project name and the folder the project will be deployed to. The @project_stream parameter is varbinary(MAX). You can retrieve the binary contents of the project file by using a SELECT statement with the OPENROWSET function and the BULK rowset provider. The provider enables you to read data from the file, returning the contents as a single-row, single-column rowset of type varbinary(max). In the following example, the SSISPackages_ProjectDeployment project is deployed to the SSIS Packages folder on the SSIS server. The binary data is read from the project file (SSISPackage_ProjectDeployment.ispac) and is stored in the @ProjectBinary parameter of type varbinary(max). The
Microsoft SQL Server Development Customer Advisory Team - Mon, 03 Dec 2012 20:02
A new version of the Partition Management Utility for SQL Server is now available on Codeplex at http://sqlpartitionmgmt.codeplex.com/. This is a tool that helps you create necessary staging tables and indexes and associated check constraints, to support partition-switch operations against existing partitioned tables. This solves the problem of keeping staging table scripts in synch when a permanent partitioned table evolves to contain new boundary values or column attributes. The latest version adds some significant new capabilities: Support for SQL Server 2012 Columnstore Indexes Option to create TSQL scripts for staging stables, rather than executing DDL Date constraints are now specified in a locale-independent format better supporting globalized deployments Compatible with a broader range of p
SSIS Team Blog - Tue, 16 Oct 2012 21:31
I’ve recently updated the SSIS documentation in Books Online (BOL), to add some details around setting SQL Agent job options for packages stored in the SSIS catalog, as well as in MSDB and the file system. I’ve also added some more information about the troubleshooting reports available for projects that are deployed to the new SSIS server. You can find this additional information in the following BOL topics. Reports for the Integration Services Server Schedule a Package by using SQL Server Agent In researching these updates, I would like to thank the members of the Olympia Area SQL Server User Group and
SQL Server Security - Wed, 03 Oct 2012 18:09
In SQL Server 2012, Server Audit can be created with a predicate expression (refer to MSDN). This predicate expression is evaluated before audit events are written to the audit target. If the evaluation returns TRUE the event is written to the audit target else it's not. Hence one can filter audit records going to the audit target based on the predicate expression. Predicate can refer to any of the audit fields described in
SSIS Team Blog - Fri, 21 Sep 2012 00:26
When you upgrade to SQL Server 2012 Integration Services (SSIS) on a machine that has SSIS 2005 or 2008 installed, SSIS 2012 is installed side-by-side with the earlier version. Unlike upgrades to previous versions, the upgrade process does NOT remove the SSIS 2005 or 2008 files, service, and tools. In addition, with this side-by-side install, multiple versions of dtexec utility are installed. To ensure that you run the correct version of the utility, at the command prompt run the utility by entering the full path (<drive>:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\<version>\DTS\Binn). For more information about upgrading to 2012 SSIS, see
SSIS Team Blog - Wed, 19 Sep 2012 21:08
There are a whole bunch of SSIS sessions at the PASS Summit this year – I’m glad to see our product continues to be one of the most popular SQL topics around! Pre-Conference SSIS Design Patterns (BIA-299-P) - Andy Leonard, Jessica Moss, Matt Masson, Michelle Ufford,
SSIS Team Blog - Wed, 19 Sep 2012 20:51
In SQL Server 2012, AlwaysOn Availability Groups maximizes the availability of a set of user databases for an enterprise. In addition, SSIS introduces new capabilities which allow customers with the ability to easily deploy to a centralized SSIS Catalog (i.e. SSISDB user database). In this article, we explore how you can make use of SSIS and AlwaysOn Availability Groups. Using these capabilities, it allows you to provide high-availability of SSISDB and its contents (projects, packages, execution logs, etc). We also discuss how to deal with
Microsoft SQL Server Development Customer Advisory Team - Wed, 18 Jul 2012 02:13
By: Nicholas Dritsas Reviewers: James Podgorski, Olivier Matrat, Sanjay Mishra Overview Azure’s Iaas VMs plus Virtual Networks can be used to configure easily a set of servers/VMs to host the main components of a BI solution. This process assumes you already have an Azure subscription plus access to add new VMs and Virtual Networks. Setting up a virtual network Go to the Azure portal here: https://windows.azure.com/. Ensure you connect to the preview portal. Select +New bottom left of the welcome screen and choose Network, Custom Create. (for setup details, look here.) Enter a network name and choose either an existing
SSIS Team Blog - Tue, 10 Jul 2012 22:59
This video presentation Rakesh Parida (MSFT) demonstrates how to perform CDC for Oracle databases using SSIS 2012. You'll learn how the CDC features work, how to create and administer the CDC service, as well as how to use logs and traces to troubleshoot the service. The video is availble online at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sqlserver/jj218898.aspx . For more information about the CDC for Oracle, see the CDC for Oracle in SQL Server 2012 blog post by Rakesh.
Microsoft SQL Server Development Customer Advisory Team - Thu, 21 Jun 2012 21:31
Author: Kevin Cox Contributors: Min He,Steve Lindell Reviewers: Sanjay Mishra, Juergen Thomas, Jimmy May Creating an availability group needs pings and status checks across the different servers involved. This accounts for approximately 500 bytes per database in the group. The PerfMon counter used to track the activity is “Bytes Received from Replica/sec”. Books Online has recently been changed to reflect a high level description. The purpose of this blog is to provide a bit more detail. Books Online http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff878472.aspx Counter Name Description
SSIS Team Blog - Wed, 20 Jun 2012 12:50
The Balanced Data Distributor (BDD) transform has updated and released for SQL Server 2012. The BDD transform makes it easy to split your data flow up on a buffer-by-buffer basis. The two primary scenarios for it are when you want to do parallel inserts into a destination… … and when you want to parallel work across multiple paths …
SSIS Team Blog - Fri, 04 May 2012 18:34
SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) 2012 doesn't support migrating or running DTS packages. You do have the following options for migrating your DTS packages to SSIS 2012. Migrate the packages to SSIS 2005 or SSIS 2008, and then upgrade the packages to SSIS 2012. For information about migrating packages to 2005 or 2008, see Migrating Data Transformation Services Packages (2005) and Migrating Data Transformation Services Packages (2008) in Books Online. Recreate the SQL Server 2000 Integration Services packages by using SSIS 2012. The
Microsoft SQL Server Development Customer Advisory Team - Mon, 23 Apr 2012 14:17
When using ApplicationIntent=ReadOnly to access a readable secondary via the Availability Group Listener, the login SIDs have to be the same between primary and secondary. The connection attempt generates an error saying the login does not exist. This happens because the restored database on the secondary has a defined user, but no associated login. Two scenarios can cause this behavior: 1. Logins exist on primary but not on secondary 2. Logins exist on both primary and secondary but have
SQL Server Security - Thu, 19 Apr 2012 20:26
Copied from an internal email from a PM on the team, Jakub - I’m pleased to announce that SQL Server 2012 Best Practices Analyzer (BPA) has been released and is available for download at http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=29302. Customer Value The Microsoft SQL Server 2012 BPA is a diagnostic tool thatperforms the following functions: Gathers information about a Server and aMicrosoft SQL Server 2012 instance installed on that Server. Determines if the configurations are setaccording to the recommended best practices. Reports on all configurations, indicatingsettings that differ from recommendations. Indicates potential problems in the installedinstance of SQL Server. Recommends solutions to potential problems.
Microsoft SQL Server Development Customer Advisory Team - Wed, 18 Apr 2012 04:48
Written by: Ed Katibah, Milan Stojic, Michael Rys, Nicholas Dritsas Technical reviewers: Chuck Heinzelman Introduction: Spatial Point Data queries require particular tuning efforts to enhance performance and improve overall application throughput. SQLServer 2012 introduces a few key new features and improvements to assist you in that goal. Below, we go over a few key best practices and suggestions on how to achieve that. Read more here: http://social.technet.microsoft.com
Microsoft SQL Server Development Customer Advisory Team - Wed, 07 Mar 2012 01:57
The Technical Reference Guides for Designing Mission-Critical Solutions provide planning and architecture guidance for various mission-critical workloads deployed by users. These guidesreflect the knowledge gained by the CAT team while working with customers onmission-critical deployments, many of these deployments being the result ofdeep customer engagements by the CAT organization. Each guide provides not onlythe key technical concepts and information helpful for design, but also“lessons learned,” best practices, and references to customer case studies. The Technical Reference Guides for Designing Mission-Critical Solutions cover three workloads: Online Transactional Processing (OLTP)These guides cover transactional and batch processing, relational and “beyond relational” data, scale-up and scale
SQL Server Security - Wed, 07 Mar 2012 01:06
2 New Whitepapers: SQL Server 2012 Security Best Practice white paper (updated link: http://download.microsoft.com/download/8/F/A/8FABACD7-803E-40FC-ADF8-355E7D218F4C/SQL_Server_2012_Security_Best_Practice_Whitepaper_Apr2012.docx) from operational perspective (compliance, encryption, access control, authentication, network security, and auditing) SQL Server 2012 Label Securi
SQL Server Security - Fri, 17 Feb 2012 18:22
Microsoft is working on a new Windows Azure service through SQL Azure Labs, called Trust Services. It is an application-level encryption framework that can be used to protect sensitive data stored on the Windows Azure Platform. By using Trust Services you can store keys, authorizations and encryption policies in the cloud, and use them to encrypt and decrypt sensitive data. Trust Services provides a API that simplifies the development process and enables easy integration with data driven applications. Check it out at
Microsoft SQL Server Support Blog - Wed, 08 Feb 2012 19:34
By Gregory Suarez | Sr. Escalation Engineer | SQL Server I was recently working with one of our customers when he indicated it would be great if the Microsoft Linux ODBC driver could be used to access his other database systems - in addition to Microsoft SQL Server. Apparently, he like
SQL Server Security - Thu, 02 Feb 2012 02:00
Last week, we released SQL Azure Security Services through SQL Azure Labs. In this initial version of our labs, you can Scan your SQL Azure server or individual databases for security issues - We look for design issues, elevation issues and etc. Get a report of your database security model - You can quickly know which users exist in a database, role memberships, permissions on various objects and etc, to reason over presence of user accounts or permissions on various objects. Scan your data for malware presence (Currently we only check for Mass SQL Injection Attacks) - We have been observing Automated Mass SQL Injection at
Microsoft SQL Server Support Blog - Thu, 26 Jan 2012 18:36
By Gregory Suarez | Sr. Escalation Engineer | SQL Server The CTP release of the Microsoft SQL Server ODBC Driver for Linux (http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=28160 ) opens many opportunities for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL 5.x) customers who want to access the power of Microsoft SQL Server. Well known utilities such as BCP (bulk copy) and SQLCMD are provided with the driver and their use is fairly straight forward; however; some customers have mentioned the absence of an SDK and C/C++ samples. These features are slated to be available shortly after the product RTM's at the end of March 2012 but in the meantime, you can use the existing MSDN ODBC C/C++ samples to
SQL Server Storage Engine - Sun, 22 Jan 2012 06:45
In my previous blogs, I had described how Readable Secondary functionality works SQL Server 2012. As you look at other database vendors, you will realize that they also provide the functionality to offload read workload to secondary or mirror. However, if you look closer, you will realize each vendor has significant differences on how this functionality is made available to customers. Here is one comparison that I have done between SQL Server and DB2. Competitive study of Readable Secondary in DB2 9.7 DB2 9.7 HADR configuration supports ‘active’ standby server that can be used for query workload. From competition perspective, it is similar to Readable Secondary functionality. This report is based on DB2 9.7documentation. For details, please refer to the link
SQL Server Storage Engine - Thu, 22 Dec 2011 23:23
When you connect to Secondary Replica, but it has not been enabled for read workload, you will get the following error under two situations (1) You connect directly to one of the databases under availability group. It is denied because the database is not enabld for read workload. (2) You connect to a non-AG database such as master database which succeeds and now you execute ‘use <db>’ command. Msg 976, Level 14, State 1, Line 1 The target databa
SQL Server Storage Engine - Thu, 22 Dec 2011 23:00
In the previous blog http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sqlserverstorageengine/archive/2011/12/22/alwayson-challenges-with-statistics-on-readonly-database-database-snapshot-and-secondary-replica.aspx we described that stale or missing statistics will potentially lead to a sub-optimal query plan and how it can impact the query performance on on read-only database, database snapshot and readable secondary. This blog describes how we have solved this in SQL 12 for all three flavors of databases transparently without any user intervention.
SQL Server Storage Engine - Thu, 22 Dec 2011 22:32
I am sure you all have dealt with situations when the statistics on one or more columns is either missing or not up-to date. When user submits a query for execution, the SQL Server goes through logical (simplifying or restructuring a query) and physical optimization that considers various query plans based on statistical information and then picks the one that has the least estimated cost. The key to physical optimization is the accurate estimation of data distribution (i.e. statistical information) of the input tables and intermediate results (e.g. output of JOIN operator). When optimizing a query, the optimizer generates, the statistical information on one or more tables/indexes, if not available and auto-stats has not been explicitly disabled by the user. It uses statistics generate the optimized query plan. It is not recommended to generate a query plan without the statistics because you may end up with a sub-optimal plan
SQL Server Storage Engine - Thu, 22 Dec 2011 22:07
In my previous blog http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sqlserverstorageengine/archive/2011/12/22/alwayson-minimizing-blocking-of-redo-thread-when-running-reporting-workload-on-secondary-replica.aspx, I described how Readable Secondary eliminates potential REDO thread blocking for DML work running on the primary replica by mapping all isolation levels used in the reporting workloads to Snapshot Isolation. While it was essential that we eliminate REDO thread blocking with concurrent DML on secondary replica, it comes at some overheads as described in this blog. First thing to understand is that if you do not e
SQL Server Storage Engine - Thu, 22 Dec 2011 21:32
In earlier blog http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sqlserverstorageengine/archive/2011/12/22/alwayson-impact-on-the-primary-workload-when-you-run-reporting-workload-on-the-secondary-replica.aspx, I discussed the impact on RTO in case the REDO thread gets blocked. While designing this feature, it was one of the key usability constraints we had (i.e. to eliminate REDO blocking for common usage scenario). For the un-initiated, here is the problem Primary Replica
SQL Server Storage Engine - Thu, 22 Dec 2011 21:23
The primary goal of AlwaysOn technology is to provide High Availability for Tier-1 workloads. The ability to leverage secondary replica(s) to offload reporting workloads and database/transaction log backups is useful, but only if it does not compromise High Availability. This is one of the very common concern/question that I have heard from many of you. In this context, let us evaluate the impact of Active Secondary on the primary replica and workload and what you can do to minimize its impact. Transaction response time: When a transaction is run on
SQL Server Storage Engine - Thu, 22 Dec 2011 19:58
One question that I often get asked is if there will any data latency if you are using 'Sync' replica for read workload. The short answer is yes. Here is the blog that explains it in detail. While the reporting workload running on the secondary replica gets to access the data as it is changing on the primary but there is some data latency, typically of the order of seconds. If your reporting or read work load cannot tolerate data latency then there is no choice but to run it on the primary replica. Most customers whom I interacted with indicated that their reporting workload can indeed tolerate data latency of the order of minutes. This is good news because as offloading reporting workload to secondary replica allows customers to leverage their investment in High Availability configuration and deliver better performance to
SQL Server Storage Engine - Thu, 22 Dec 2011 18:26
In the previous blog http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sqlserverstorageengine/archive/2011/12/22/AlwaysOn-setting-up-readable-seconary-replica.aspx I mentioned that there are two options to configure secondary replica for running read workload. The first option ‘Read-intent-only’ is used to provide a directive to AlwaysOn secondary replica to accept connections that have the property ApplicationIntent=ReadOnly set. The word ‘intent’ is important here as there is no application check made to
SQL Server Storage Engine - Thu, 22 Dec 2011 18:16
The easiest way to create an availability group and adding replicas is to use the availability group wizard. You can invoke the wizard by right-clicking on 'Availability Groups'. The picture of the explorer window below shows that I have created 1 availability group 'StockPro' with two replicas 'SUNILA03-6PLHSI' (primary) and 'SUNILA03-YLZO1U' (secondary). The availability group StockPro contains one database 'hadr_test' but you can have more databases if you want. For now, let us work with this simple example
SQL Server Storage Engine - Thu, 22 Dec 2011 17:34
This series of blogs is targeting AlwaysON Readable Secondary. Please refer to http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sqlalwayson/archive/tags/availability+group/for other blogs in the related area Readable Secondary is part of AlwaysOn suite of functionality available in SQL12 release. It allows customers to leverage their investment in High Availability hardware for offloading read workload such as reporting to one or more secondary replicas. Offloading reporting workload to secondary replica frees up resources on the primary node for primary application workload to achieve higher throughput and at the same time allowing resources on secondary replica to reporting workload to deliver higher performance. So it is a win-win situation both for primary and reporting workload.
Microsoft SQL Server Development Customer Advisory Team - Wed, 14 Dec 2011 18:27
We are proud to announce that the community technology preview (CTP) of ApacheTM HadoopTM-based Services for Windows Azure (or Hadoop on Azure) is now available. As noted in on the SQL Server Data Platform Insider blog, the CTP is by invite only http://blogs.technet.com/b/dataplatforminsider/archive/2011/12/14/availability-of-community-technology-preview-ctp-of-hadoop-based-service-on-windows-azure.aspx While Hadoop is important to our customers for performance, scalability, and extreme volumes - as noted in our blog What’s so BIG about “Big Data”? – it is a slight paradigm shift for our us in t
Microsoft SQL Server Support Blog - Wed, 07 Dec 2011 22:51
The other day I was working with a customer who was in the process of developing SSIS "Control Flow" custom component. He was having an issue in compiling/building his code in Visual Studio and getting Warning about the build process about indirect dependency on the .NET Framework assembly due to SSIS references. Error: The primary reference "Microsoft.SQLServer.ManagedDTS, Version=10.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=89845dcd8080cc91, processorArchitecture=MSIL" could not be resolved because it has an indirect dependency on the .NET Framework assembly "mscorlib, Version=2.0.3600.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" which has a higher version "2.0.3600.0" than the version "2.0.0.0" in the current target framework. The cause and resolution of this error as it is explained by our escalation engineer Jason at:
SQL Server Storage Engine - Tue, 18 Oct 2011 23:06
For those who have been around databases for any length of time, the idea of putting a database that you care about from either a reliability or performance perspective on an (SMB – Server Message Block) file share seems like a crazy idea, but recent developments have made SMB-based file shares a very viable platform for production SQL Server databases with some very interesting advantages. Historically, the perspective has been: File shares are slow. The connections to the share may be unreliable. The storage behind the file share may be flaky. SMB consumes large amounts of CPU if you can get it running fast enough. Over the past few years, all of these conditions have changed, and in particular the work which has been done on the 2.2 revision to the SMB protocol has produced some stunning results. So let’s look at these one by one: File Shares are slow
SQL Protocols - Thu, 13 Oct 2011 17:50
Greetings Developer community: We heard yesterday and today at the PASS conference about the exciting new areas that we are investing in bringing the power of SQL Server to our customers. Many of our developers who rely on native connectivity to SQL Server primarily use ODBC for their connectivity needs. We have been supporting ODBC as a part of the SQL Native Access Client (SNAC)
SQL Server Security - Tue, 11 Oct 2011 22:46
PASS Summit 2011 is coming to Seattle this week starting October 11th 2011. You'll have the opportunity to meet a lot of folks from the SQL Server team during the event, and a variety of speakers that will share their experiences and delight you with awesome SQL Server sessions. Lastly, the SQL Server Engine Security Team will be present at the conference and this is your opportunity to meet with us so that we can answer your questions. For those interested in SQL Server Security, we recommend that you attend the following talks – (1) SQL PASS Session - [DBA-412-M] What’s New in Security for SQL Server Code Name "Denali" Friday, October 14, 2011 2:00 PM-3:15 PM, Room 608 Presented by Il-Sung Lee (2) SQL PASS Theater Session - SQL Server 2011 Audit Enhancements Wednesday,
SQL Server Security - Fri, 26 Aug 2011 17:25
A common scenario in data warehousing applications is knowing what source system records to update, what data needs to be loaded and which data rows can be skipped as nothing has changed since they were last loaded. Another possible scenario is the need to facilitate searching data that is encrypted using cell level encryption or storing application passwords inside the database. Data Hashing can be used to solve this problem in SQL Server. A hash is a number that is generated by reading the contents of a document or message. Different messages should generate different hash values, but the same message causes the algorithm to generate the same hash value. The HashBytes function in SQL Server SQL Server has a built-in function called HashBytes to support data hashing. HashBytes
SQL Server Security - Fri, 26 Aug 2011 00:05
I am posting this on behalf of my colleague Rick Byham, a technical writer on the SQL Server Team. Database Engine permissions are managed at the server level through logins and fixed server roles, and at the database level through database users and user-defined database roles. Logins Logins are individual user accounts for logging on to the SQL Server Database Engine. SQL Server supports logins based on Wind
Microsoft SQL Server Support Blog - Wed, 24 Aug 2011 23:09
We use certificates while setting up database mirroring for two partners that are in a workgroup or in non-trusted domains. The idea is to create a certificate on each partner, export it to the other and then setup a login to use that certificate. As explained in BOL here, this is called setting up Inbound and Outbound connections Here is a simplified representation of how it needs to be setup
SQL Protocols - Wed, 17 Aug 2011 20:43
Greetings to the Developer community: Microsoft SQL Server team has been interacting on a regular basis with the developers and users in the form of surveys. During the last 2 years, we completed surveys that focused on the broad SQL Connectivity components that address major development platforms, including ODBC, ADO.NET, JDBC and PHP. These surveys provide us with an ability to validate some of the requests we have got from developers, users and partners such as you as well as ideas that we have gathered internally as a part of our development process. You have seen our roadmap for SQL Server evolve based on the feedback that we have received. We view your organization as a key stakeholder in the process that we have to identify areas for future investments. The feedback you provide is valuable and each response will be read and will be treated with utmost confidence. The survey can be found
SQL Server Manageability Team Blog - Mon, 25 Jul 2011 18:18
Connection Loss Errors in SSMS query editor Under various situations, connection loss errors in Query editor can cause SQL Server to drop the connection with the Client. Details regarding connection drop errors when working with on-premise server instances...(read more)
SQL Server Security - Fri, 15 Jul 2011 17:16
If PCI compliance with SQL Server is a concern for you, then you'll probably want to check out the Deploying SQL Server 2008 R2 Based on Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS) Version 2.0 white paper published by Parente Beard LLC. The paper is written by certified PCI auditors (QSAs) and is similar to the PCI v1.2 white paper that they previously published but updated for PCI DSS 2.0. It should be an invaluable resource as you prepare for your certification. Il-Sung
SQL Server Manageability Team Blog - Wed, 13 Jul 2011 04:01
This is part 2 of a two part blog series that my colleague Vatsalya Agrawal wrote up on the new tool called Recovery Advisor. Recovery Advisor is a new tool, that we have introduced to make restoring databases easier for users. -- MS SQL Server has capability...(read more)
SQL Server Manageability Team Blog - Wed, 13 Jul 2011 03:58
Vatsalya Agrawal is a colleague of mine, in the test team at SQL Server Manageability. This is part 1 of a two part series that he has written, on Recovery Advisor. This is a new tool, that we have introduced to make restoring databases easier for users...(read more)
SQL Server Manageability Team Blog - Wed, 13 Jul 2011 03:45
In an earlier Denali CTP, we had introduced a mechanism for customers to delete the un-used/not required server names from the drop down in connection box in SSMS. There has been a big customer ask for helping them remove the redundant server names from...(read more)
SQL Server Manageability Team Blog - Wed, 13 Jul 2011 03:37
In SQL Server Code Named “Denali” CTP3, we introduced some enhancements in the way we handled keyboard shortcuts in SSMS. My colleague Prachi Bora, a PM in the SQL Server Manageability team, has a crisp blog write-up on what’s new and...(read more)
SQL Server Manageability Team Blog - Wed, 13 Jul 2011 03:34
Today we announced the next public CTP of Microsoft SQL Server Code Name “Denali". Download links are here . We are also excited to release SQL Server 2008 R2 SP1. Download links are here . You can gather a quick overview of what's new in these two...(read more)
Microsoft SQL Server Support Blog - Wed, 15 Jun 2011 01:15
Recently I got a case and the customer was trying to create an SSIS package to e-mail results of several files to several individuals and he wanted to know if there is any inbuilt task in SSIS out of the box that can do this. He was saving few files in a folder and wanted to send some of the files from that folder that start with a certain series of characters (wildcards) as attachments to the emails. He was trying to do that using SQL Server and SSIS 2008 R2. After some research I was certain that there is no inbuilt task in SSIS that can achieve this directly. Then I started to work on alternate solutions using the exiting tasks that we have in SSIS. We came up with a solution and I thought there are other users out there who may need to do something similar from an SSIS package. So in this blog I will list the detail steps (with a lot of screenshots) of the solution that we provided to that customer. In summary we suggested the following as an alternate to achieve t
Microsoft SQL Server Support Blog - Wed, 15 Jun 2011 01:08
In this blog I will discuss a connection timeout issue that one of my customers was having after failing over the mirror database. For better understanding of the issue let me discuss some key terms/concepts of database mirroring before I get into the issue description. Database mirroring is first introduced in SQL Server 2005 for increasing database availability. It is software solution and does not require any hardware like clustering. Database mirroring involves redoing every insert, update, and delete operation that occurs on the principal database onto the mirror database as quickly as possible. Redoing is accomplished by sending a stream of active transaction log records to the mirror server, which applies log records to the mirror database, in sequence, as quickly as possible. If a SQL server database is configured with a mirrored database and the principal database becomes unavailable for some reason then we can manually or automatically failover to the mirrored dat
Microsoft SQL Server Support Blog - Wed, 25 May 2011 22:40
Consider the following scenario: 1) You have a .NET 4.0 application connecting to SQL Server 2005 or SQL Server 2008 edition (including SQL Server Express Edition) with ADO.NET using SQLClient provider. 2) Only Shared Memory is enabled for protocols for SQL Server Instance 3) All client protocols are enabled for SQL Native Client and SQL Native Client 10.0. 4) The application is running on Windows 7 machine. In this scenario, the application may fail to connect to SQL Server, with the following error message: Login failed. The login is from an untrusted domain and cannot be used with Windows authentication. [CLIENT: <local machine>] Additionally, you may also see the following error message in the application event log: SSPI handshake failed with error code 0x8009030c, state 14 while establishing a connection with integrated security; the connection has been closed. Reason: AcceptSecurityContext failed. The Window
Microsoft SQL Server Support Blog - Wed, 25 May 2011 22:35
Recently we had few cases, where .NET Applications, connecting to a mirrored SQL Server Database, using ADO.NET SQLClient provider, in a mirrored SQL Server 2005 or SQL Server 2008 instance scenario, may intermittently fail with the following error message: System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException: Timeout expired. The timeout period elapsed prior to completion of the operation or the server is not responding. at System.Data.ProviderBase.DbConnectionPool.GetConnection(DbConnection owningObject) at System.Data.ProviderBase.DbConnectionFactory.GetConnection(DbConnection owningConnection) at System.Data.ProviderBase.DbConnectionPool.GetConnection(DbConnection owningObject) at System.Data.ProviderBase.DbConnectionFactory.GetConnection(DbConnection owningConnection) at System.Data.ProviderBase.DbConnectionClosed.OpenConnection(DbConnection outerConnection, DbConnectionFactory connectionFactory) at System.Data.SqlClient.SqlConnection.Open(
SQL Server Performance - Wed, 25 May 2011 22:24
The “Balanced Data Distributor” for SSISLen Wyatt, SQL Server Performance Team There is a new transform component available for SQL Server Integration Services. It’s called the Balanced Data Distributor (BDD) and the download is available here. The BDD provides an easy way to amp up your usage of multi-processor and multi-core servers by introducing parallelism in the data flow of an SSIS package. Functionality of the BDD The functionality of the BDD is very simple: It takes its input data and routes it in equal proportions to its outputs, however m
SQL Server Storage Engine - Tue, 17 May 2011 21:16
Hello to you all, The SQL Server team is hiring arcoss all test, dev and PM discipline. If you or someone you know is interested, please do apply for the job using the link with job postings below. Look forward to hearing from some of you. Thanks Sunil Agarwal "SQL Server is one of the most important products at Microsoft and is the core on which our future server and storage technology will be built. Over the past decade we have experienced tremendous growth making us one of the largest businesses at Microsoft -- and this is still only the beginning. The importance of data continues to grow. Most applications being built today are data-centric. The ability to efficiently store, query, and share data at a low cost with built-in high-availability and flexible compute/storage capacity is a core competitive advantage for today's businesses. The resurgence of Cloud computing is driving a major disruption to technology that is
SQL Server Storage Engine - Thu, 12 May 2011 19:20
Recently, I was asked this question "If I have a compressed index and I rebuild it with fill factor 70%, do I actually get any fill factor? Or does compression take away the empty space?". The answer to this question is 'yes'. In fact all index options listed below available with data compression (both for ROW and PAGE) <relational_index_option> ::={PAD_INDEX = { ON | OFF }| FILLFACTOR = fillfactor| SORT_IN_TEMPDB = { ON | OFF }| IGNORE_DUP_KEY = { ON | OFF } | STATISTICS_NORECOMPUTE = { ON | OFF }| DROP_EXISTING = { ON | OFF }| ONLINE = { ON | OFF }| ALLOW_ROW_LOCKS = { ON | OFF }| ALLOW_PAGE_LOCKS = { ON | OFF }| MAXDOP = max_degree_of_parallelismHere is a simple script to show the 'fill factor" experimentcreate table t1 (c1 int, c2 char (1000))go -- load 10000 rowsdeclare @i intselect @i = 0while (@i < 10000) begininsert into t1 values (@
SQL Server Security - Tue, 05 Apr 2011 23:54
This article is a follow up to “Prevent Tampering of Encrypted Data Using @add_authenticator Argument for ENCRYPTBYKEY”. In the last article we described a scenario where the security risk of copying encrypted data from one row to another could be blocked, but there are other scenarios that can benefit from using the @add_authenticator and @authenticator arguments of ENCRYPTBYKEY.
Microsoft SQL Server Support Blog - Tue, 22 Feb 2011 18:50
Consider this scenario where you have a linked server from one SQL server to another SQL Server. Both the SQL Servers are SQL Server 2008 SP2 on Windows 2008. Say the two SQL Servers are Server A and Server B. Linked server from Server A to Server B is set up using SQL Native Client 10.0 provider. On Server B, you have a VIEW that joins couple of tables, TABLE 1 and TABLE2 and a trigger that fires an INSERT into Table 2 when you INSERT into the View. SERVER B --------------------- Create 2 tables, 1 view, 1 trigger (instead of) CREATE TABLE T1 (c1 INT) GO CREATE TABLE T2 (c2 INT) GO CREATE VIEW vt (cv) AS SELECT c1 FROM t1 UNION ALL SELECT c2 FROM t2 GO The View confirms to the rules of an Updateable View and a Partitioned View CREATE VIEW http://msdn.microsoft.
SQL Server Security - Tue, 22 Feb 2011 04:53
This article is one of several articles discussing some of the best practices for encrypting data. This article demonstrates how the @add_authenticator argument of the ENCRYPTBYKEY function can help prevent tampering with encrypted data. Imagine the following scenario: The DBA is encrypting the salary column for all employees in such a way that people with authorization to access the table, but no access to the encryption key can see and manipulate the table, but cannot access the salary in plaintext. Mallory is one such employee, who has SELECT, INSERT & UPDATE on the table as required for her daily job, but no access to the encryption keys protecting the salary column.
SQL Server Storage Engine - Sun, 20 Feb 2011 22:40
Please refer to http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sqlcat/archive/2011/02/20/concurrency-series-my-application-was-running-fine-yesterday-buy-why-is-it-blocking-today.aspx for details. Cross-referencing here Thanks Sunil Agarwal
SQL Server Storage Engine - Sun, 20 Feb 2011 22:39
Please refer to http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sqlcat/archive/2011/02/20/concurrency-series-minimizing-blocking-between-updaters.aspx for details. Cross referencing my post. Thanks Sunil Agarwal
SQL Server Storage Engine - Sun, 20 Feb 2011 22:37
Please refer to http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sqlcat/archive/2011/02/20/concurrency-series-why-do-i-get-block-when-no-one-has-locked-the-row-s-being-queried.aspx for details Thanks Sunil Agarwal
SQL Server Storage Engine - Sun, 20 Feb 2011 22:36
I posted this in SQLCAT blog site. This post provides reference to http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sqlcat/archive/2011/02/20/concurrency-series-why-do-i-get-blocking-when-i-use-read-uncommitted-isolation-level-or-use-nolock-hint.aspx Thanks Sunil Agarwal
SQL Server Storage Engine - Sun, 20 Feb 2011 22:34
Please refer to the blog http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sqlcat/archive/2011/02/20/concurrency-series-basics-of-transaction-isolation-levels.aspx Thanks Sunil Agarwal
SQL Server Security - Wed, 09 Feb 2011 16:50
The implementation of RC4/RC4_128 in SQL Server does not salt the key and this severely weakens the security of data that is encrypted using the RC4/RC4_128 algorithm. In cryptography, an initialization vector (IV) is a fixed size input to a cryptographic algorithm that is typically required to be random or pseudorandom. Salting of cipher keys makes sure that the encryption algorithm always uses a randomized (IV) value. This leads to the following properties of the cipher-text data - Encrypting the same piece of data two times by using the same key will produce two different c
Microsoft SQL Server Support Blog - Thu, 03 Feb 2011 20:28
The Denali discs will not contain any of the Books Online content; setup only installs the help viewer and a handful of utility .chm files. All of the BOL documentation will by default come from online (MSDN). With the Microsoft strategy moving to the cloud we want to use the internet as the centre of gravity for product documentation. This encourages customers to download the latest version when they install instead of installing stale content from disk that was locked down several months before general availability. We are one of the last few big Microsoft products shift to the online model for content delivery. Here’s some more information: Q: Does this mean no more local BOL? A: You can access BOL locally. On first use of Help, the user is presented with a dialog asking them to choose either online or offline mode as the default setting for Help Viewer. By selecting “Yes,” the viewer will be configured to run in Online mode against