Is There a Shortage of SQL Server Experts?

Do you think we have enough SQL Server experts? Article from Brain indicate there are shortage in SQL Server experts.

“There are certainly many world-class SQL Server experts, and there have been for quite some time. I suppose it’s more of a matter if there are enough available to satisfy demand. One observation I’ll make is that many of “famous” SQL Server experts I know are consultants who presumably aren’t interested in working full-time for a single company in a DBA capacity. Note that I didn’t say the best SQL Server people are consultants; I used the word “famous.” I’ve long suspected that for every PASS pre-con speaker there are dozens of people who are just as talented on a technical level and don’t desire to be famous or simply haven’t had the break that propels them to attention on the community stage. So, I wonder—am I right about that? If I’m right, then I suspect that the lack of expert and very senior SQL Server technologists is largely perception rather than reality.”

Getting Job Category for the SQL Server Agent Jobs

Getting Job Category

There are Job categories associated with SQL Server Agent Jobs. As you know you can get the job information by querying sysjobs system table.

SELECT J.name as jobName,C.name Category FROM sysjobs J

INNER JOIN syscategories C ON J.category_id = C.category_id

WHERE C.category_class = 1

Now you can see this is not huge query. But the problem is Microsoft documentation, If you go the sysjobs documentation as shown in the following image, id does not say from which table you should get the category from. Since job category table does not have job prefix it is bit difficult to find this out.

But the documentation not that bad since you have http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms181367.aspx page which will tell you all the related tables for the Agent Jobs. However, it would have been much better if this information is mention at the sysjobs documentation itself.

Dilbert & SQL Function

I am not a fan of Dilbert. But this seems to be something related to SQL.  

SQL Agent job getting suspended

When you run some SQL Server agent jobs they will be suspended and you will not be permitted to re-run them.

http://www.sql-server-performance.com/faq/sql_agent_job_suspended_p1.aspx

Know your Data with Data Profiling

Data quality is become a major issue in database. In SSIS, there is a new control task called Data Profiler. See my article in sql-server-performance.com

Enabling Resource Governor

This is UI bug which was missed by MS QA team.

Steps to produce

1. Create a classifier function

CREATE FUNCTION dbo.RG_Classifier_2() RETURNS sysname

WITH SCHEMABINDING

AS

BEGIN

DECLARE @grp_name sysname

IF (DB_NAME() = 'Sales')

SET @grp_name = 'GroupSales'

IF (DB_NAME() = 'Reports')

SET @grp_name = 'GroupReports'

IF (SUSER_NAME() LIKE 'DataW')

SET @grp_name = 'GroupDWH'

RETURN @grp_name

END;

GO

-- Register the classifier function with Resource Governor

ALTER RESOURCE GOVERNOR WITH (CLASSIFIER_FUNCTION= dbo.RG_Classifier_2);

GO

-- Start Resource Governor

ALTER RESOURCE GOVERNOR RECONFIGURE;

GO

2. Create another classifier function

CREATE FUNCTION dbo.RG_Classifier_3() RETURNS sysname

WITH SCHEMABINDING

AS

BEGIN

DECLARE @grp_name sysname

IF (DB_NAME() = 'Sales')

SET @grp_name = 'GroupSales'

IF (DB_NAME() = 'Reports')

SET @grp_name = 'GroupReports'

IF (SUSER_NAME() LIKE 'DataW')

SET @grp_name = 'GroupDWH'

RETURN @grp_name

END;

GO

-- Register the classifier function with Resource Governor

ALTER RESOURCE GOVERNOR WITH (CLASSIFIER_FUNCTION= dbo.RG_Classifier_3);

GO

-- Start Resource Governor

ALTER RESOURCE GOVERNOR RECONFIGURE;

GO

3. Go to properties of Resource Governor.

All classifier functions in the drop down while last one is selected with Enable Resource Governor option is selected.

4. Select some other classifier function name and above option is disabled.

5. Select the previous classifier function again where enable resource governor should be enable where as it is disable.

If you cancel the screen and come back to the same dialog box it will be enable as it should be.

35370 Days Remaining…

Well, this is nothing to do with databases, though i got this issue when found that there is not enough disk space to install SQL Server and I went on to compress window folder.

SQL Server 2008 R2 Installation Issue

I was not able to install SQL Server 2008 R2 for a while. I tried this in various environments like Virtual PC (VPC), VMWare  with Windows 2008 with and without service packs, but was failing.

While installing  it gave me a error saying there is some issue with this package and it continued to installed.  At the end of installation, it is saying all the services except analysis service failed to installed. That is, it has failed to installed Database services, Replication and Reporting services and it will successfully installed all the client components.

All the while, I was running the ISO file (en_sql_server_2008_r2_developer_x86_x64_ia64_dvd_522665.iso)which I downloaded from MSDN.

At last I extracted the ISO file into a folder and executed the setup.exe from there. Guess what, it worked.

CUs Released

Microsoft has released SQL Server 2008 SP1 CU8 (Build 2775). There are 18 fixes in this cumulative update, and most of them are for Reporting Services and Analysis Services.

Microsoft released SQL Server 2008 R2 RTM CU1. It is Build 1702, and it contains 76 fixes.

Using SQL Server Default Trace

Default Trace is a useful tool for gathering data and information on your SQL Server environment and can be very useful in troubleshooting your environment.

Read the article at Using SQL Server Default Trace