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Yes, it is already time for T-SQL Tuesday again (well one week away, time for the invite). I have been thoroughly enjoying T-SQL Tuesday (especially the posts ones from Brad Schulz) but the fact that this is #004 means time is flying too fast lately.

You Don’t Know What T-SQL Tuesday Is Yet?

Adam Machanic (Also on twitter as @AdamMachanic) had a great idea 4 months back – Invite new and existing SQL Server bloggers to post about the same topic on the same day. The results have been excellent – diverse skill sets and data related job roles all posting from differing perspectives on the same issue.

Since this is still early in the game, a quick list of the post roundups from the first 3 topics:

• #001 Adam Machanic started this off with a topic of Date/Time tricks
• #002 Adam then wanted to hear about your Puzzling Situations
• #003 Rob Farley got romantic on us and asked about Relationships

IO, IO, It’s Off To Disk We Go!

IO is on my mind lately. It could be some recent “discussions” with a SAN administrator, clients with disk performance issues or helping developers with some queries that are doing lots and lots of needless reads. It could be that I just changed my son’s diaper and it was heavy on the Output side (time to start potty training, I think…)

Actually, as a DBA, IO is often on my mind. So that is what this month’s theme is: IO.

Like last month’s theme, you could treat this topic in a few different ways. Perhaps some best practices that you have implemented for disk allocation. A professional development topic on working better with your storage administrators? A case study with a vendor or type of storage system? A developer writing about better managing reads in your queries? You could brag about your latest experiment with SSDs? Maybe a walk down memory lane of storage performance even. How about writing a beginners guide to setting up optimal storage? Have some really busy SQL Servers running on a virtual? How is your IO configured?

Well, you get the idea, the post has to have something to do with IO but it doesn’t have to be about T-SQL necessarily.

There’s always rules…

Once again, please note the time is in UTC. I also echo earlier encouragements to feel free to write your post ahead of time and schedule it. The rules are around when the post publishes, not when it is written.These rules are the same as the previous couple of T-SQL Tuesday’s but I’ll recap:

1. The Post must go live between 00:00:00 UTC on Tuesday the 9th of March and 00:00:00 UTC on Wednesday the 10th. If it isn’t, it can’t be included in the round up post.
2. Your post must link back to this post here (Trackback or Comment)
3. It is your responsibility to verify the trackback or comment appears (My commenting system has a difficult time with trackbacks – If I can’t resolve it by next week I will disable it and use standard WP comments but please still verify and add your own comment with a link back to your T-SQL Tuesday post and it will be included in the roundup.

That’s it. Hopefully those aren’t too difficult to follow Remember

Twitter

Not a rule but a great idea. A lot of the folks who read and participate are on twitter. Follow the hashtag #TSQL2sDay and when your post goes live, tweet a link to it with that tag.

Want To Host?

All you have to do is participate in at least two events and let Adam Machanic know. You can tweet him or leave a comment on his blog, all described in his first T-SQL Tuesday Invitation.

If you need any more clarification, leave a comment. I will respond in the comments or update this post if necessary. Have fun thinking of a topic and I look forward to reading the posts!

I was tagged by TJay Belt (Twitter/Blog) in this latest series of blog stories.  I believe that it was started by Paul Randal (Twitter/Blog), carried on by Tom LaRock (Twitter/Blog) and then went viral.  Since ‘New Year’ seems to be synonymous with ‘everything going to heck in a handbasket’, it’s taken me awhile to respond, but here goes.

I’ll start by saying that if anyone would have told me that I’d be a DBA (or anything computer related for that matter)

You may ask yourself, well, how did I get here?

when I was in college, I would have fallen down laughing.    My step-father was a biomechanical engineer and one of my main goals in life was not to be a geek like I thought he was.  I majored in Communications with a minor in English.   At the time of my

graduation I had never touched a computer or even wanted to.  So, how did I get to be a DBA?  Sheer coincidence.

IBM

Back in my kid-free days, I worked for IBM.  I actually had to use a computer (odd for me), but my responsibilities were working with IBM’s resellers and the maintenance plans they resold.  It was all about soft skills and I spent a ton of time on the phone with resellers.  All of the information that we gathered was stored in a(wait for it…) DB2 database.   After awhile, I took on the responsibility for putting together reports.  While there was definitely no administration going on, it was kind of fascinating to play with all of that data.  That all stopped, though, for my next life changing event.

And they looked so sweet...

Kids

I left my job at IBM just before I gave birth to my first child and became a stay-at-home mom.  Around the time my

 second child was born, I started to feel the desire to go back to school.  The odd thing is that the field that I was drawn to was computer science.  I’m not sure if it was due to some strange chemical imbalance or the need to spend time with something that actually had logic behind it, but I began my computer science degree shortly after my youngest son turned one. 

Going back to school with two little ones running around was definitely a challenge.  Getting to the end of an 800 line assembly language project and have my son smack his hand on the keyboard deleting it, helped me learn the value of saving and saving often.  I’m sure that trying to learn recursion while dealing with a cranky toddler helped my ability to persevere.   Eventually, though.  I completed the program and became a computer science instructor.  Teaching was and is still the field that provides me with the greatest amount of satisfaction.  I enjoyed it immensely and felt that I was good at it.  Unfortunately, though, by that time I was a single mother of two boys and job satisfaction doesn’t exactly pay the bills.

My first *real* job

After leaving my teaching position at the college, I was able to get a job teaching the medical staff at our local hospital the new order entry/documentation application.   I knew that this had to be temporary and that I needed to become a part of a more technical division.  During the process of keeping our training environment up to date, I ended up interfacing with our DBA group on a regular basis.  One of the DBAs left and that provided me the opportunity to join the team.   Our lead DBA was pure awesomeness and provided me with a good solid platform of knowledge.  That was back in 2003, completed my MCDBA in 2005 and the rest is, well, the rest is now.    Still working, still learning.

It was a crazy, twisted road to get here and I’m looking forward to the road ahead.  I’m not tagging anyone with this, but I’m thankful to TJay for giving me the chance to share my story.

I was tagged by TJay Belt (Twitter/Blog) in this latest series of blog stories.  I believe that it was started by Paul Randal (Twitter/Blog), carried on by Tom LaRock (Twitter/Blog) and then went viral.  Since ‘New Year’ seems to be synonymous with ‘everything going to heck in a handbasket’, it’s taken me awhile to respond, but here goes.

I’ll start by saying that if anyone would have told me that I’d be a DBA (or anything computer related for that matter)

You may ask yourself, well, how did I get here?

when I was in college, I would have fallen down laughing.    My step-father was a biomechanical engineer and one of my main goals in life was not to be a geek like I thought he was.  I majored in Communications with a minor in English.   At the time of my

graduation I had never touched a computer or even wanted to.  So, how did I get to be a DBA?  Sheer coincidence.

IBM

Back in my kid-free days, I worked for IBM.  I actually had to use a computer (odd for me), but my responsibilities were working with IBM’s resellers and the maintenance plans they resold.  It was all about soft skills and I spent a ton of time on the phone with resellers.  All of the information that we gathered was stored in a(wait for it…) DB2 database.   After awhile, I took on the responsibility for putting together reports.  While there was definitely no administration going on, it was kind of fascinating to play with all of that data.  That all stopped, though, for my next life changing event.

And they looked so sweet...

Kids

I left my job at IBM just before I gave birth to my first child and became a stay-at-home mom.  Around the time my

 second child was born, I started to feel the desire to go back to school.  The odd thing is that the field that I was drawn to was computer science.  I’m not sure if it was due to some strange chemical imbalance or the need to spend time with something that actually had logic behind it, but I began my computer science degree shortly after my youngest son turned one. 

Going back to school with two little ones running around was definitely a challenge.  Getting to the end of an 800 line assembly language project and have my son smack his hand on the keyboard deleting it, helped me learn the value of saving and saving often.  I’m sure that trying to learn recursion while dealing with a cranky toddler helped my ability to persevere.   Eventually, though.  I completed the program and became a computer science instructor.  Teaching was and is still the field that provides me with the greatest amount of satisfaction.  I enjoyed it immensely and felt that I was good at it.  Unfortunately, though, by that time I was a single mother of two boys and job satisfaction doesn’t exactly pay the bills.

My first *real* job

After leaving my teaching position at the college, I was able to get a job teaching the medical staff at our local hospital the new order entry/documentation application.   I knew that this had to be temporary and that I needed to become a part of a more technical division.  During the process of keeping our training environment up to date, I ended up interfacing with our DBA group on a regular basis.  One of the DBAs left and that provided me the opportunity to join the team.   Our lead DBA was pure awesomeness and provided me with a good solid platform of knowledge.  That was back in 2003, completed my MCDBA in 2005 and the rest is, well, the rest is now.    Still working, still learning.

It was a crazy, twisted road to get here and I’m looking forward to the road ahead.  I’m not tagging anyone with this, but I’m thankful to TJay for giving me the chance to share my story.

I’m building a new server. Actually, I’m building two. We just bought a new pair of SANS (one production, one DR) and are doing a consolidation project with our databases.

Each DB server will live on its own VMWare host. We’re virtualizing so that we can utilize VMWare’s clustering. It also gives us the flexibility to move things around. My two database servers will have identical configurations. One will server internal applications, and the other will host customer-facing applications.

Hardware wise, I’m using IBM HS22 blades with 32 GB of RAM connected to an EMC Clariion CX4-120SAN. Each server has five datastores, each corresponding a LUN on the SAN. Each virtual drive will live in its own storage group. I have a drive for:

• OS – Aps
• TempDB
• Log (LDF) Files
• Backups
• Data (MDF/NDF) files

My preference would have been to have the virtual machines use an iSCSI initiator to talk to the SAN, but I got overruled on that one. Still, this is a better configuration than I had before. (We had no SAN at all.)

Everything is 64 bit SQL 2005.  Again, I wanted to use SQL 2008, but that’s the next project.

After installing Windows and SQL, I started putting together a checklist of items to do next. Brent Ozar has a great checklist and has been a great reference. Here is my list:

1. System Center Operations Manager Agent
2. Antivirus protection
3. Quest’s LiteSpeed
4. Service Packs, Service Packs, Service Packs.
5. Set default file locations
6. Move master DB
7. Move TempDB
8. Resize TempDB
9. Move Model
10. Move MSDB
11. Load Testing

Several weeks ago on Twitter, Colin Stasiuk (Blog – Twitter), ) asked if anyone had a script to pull back job statuses from the SQL Server Agent.  I had been doing some work on a SQL Server DBA Console and had written some PowerShell scripts to give me various pieces of information and put together a PowerShell script that could be run as a SQL Agent job to periodically report the statuses of SQL Agent jobs.  Eventually, I think Colin went with a different solution, but I figured I would go ahead and post the PowerShell script that I came up with.  This solution has been tested against SQL Server 2000/2005/2008.

This first script is just a SQL script to create the SQL Server table that the PowerShell script writes the status information to and can be downloaded here, LastJobStatus_Table.sql.

CREATE TABLE [dbo].[LastJobStatus](
	[ServerName] [nvarchar](128) NULL,
	[Job_Name] [nvarchar](128) NULL,
	[Run_Date] [datetime] NULL,
	[Job_Duration] [time](7) NULL,
	[Run_Status] [varchar](50) NULL,
	[Sample_Date] [datetime] NULL
) ON [PRIMARY]

The next is the PowerShell script that does all of the work bringing back the SQL Agent job statuses.  It takes a parameter of Server, which is the name of the SQL Server that you want job statuses from.  Make sure that you change the name “MgtServer” to whatever the name is of the SQL Server where you intend to store the results from this script.   You’ll also need to change the root directory for where your scripts are loaded to match your environment. This script can be downloaded here, Get-LastJobStatusServer.ps1.

param([string]$Server=$(Throw "Parameter missing: -Server ServerName"))
[void][reflection.assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("Microsoft.SqlServer.Smo")

##Point to library files
$scriptRoot = "D:\DBAScripts"

--change script root directory to match your environment
#$scriptRoot = Split-Path (Resolve-Path $myInvocation.MyCommand.Path)
. $scriptRoot\LibrarySmo.ps1	#Part of Chad Miller's SQLPSX project on CodePlex
. $scriptRoot\DataTable.ps1	    #Included with the scripts for this blog, also from a CodePlex project (http://www.codeplex.com/PSObject)

Set-Alias -Name Test-SqlConn -Value D:\DBAScripts\Test-SqlConn.ps1

##Define variables

## open database connection
$conn = New-Object System.Data.SqlClient.SqlConnection("Data Source=$server;
Initial Catalog=master; Integrated Security=SSPI")
$conn.Open()
$cmd = $conn.CreateCommand()
$cmd.CommandText= "	CREATE TABLE #JobsRun (	ServerName nvarchar(128),
											Job_Name nvarchar(128),
											Run_Date datetime,
											Job_Duration time(7),
											Run_Status varchar(50),
											Sample_Date datetime
										  );
					insert into #JobsRun
					select	@@SERVERNAME AS ServerName
							,j.name Job_Name
							,(msdb.dbo.agent_datetime(jh.run_date,jh.run_time)) As Run_Date
							,substring(cast(run_duration + 1000000 as varchar(7)),2,2) + ':' +
									substring(cast(run_duration + 1000000 as varchar(7)),4,2) + ':' +
									substring(cast(run_duration + 1000000 as varchar(7)),6,2) Job_Duration
							,case when run_status = 0
										then 'Failed'
								when run_status = 1
										then 'Succeed'
								when run_status = 2
										then 'Retry'
								when run_status = 3
										then 'Cancel'
								when run_status = 4
										then 'In Progress'
							end as Run_Status
							,GETDATE() As Sample_Date
					FROM msdb.dbo.sysjobhistory jh
						join msdb.dbo.sysjobs j
							on jh.job_id = j.job_id
					where	step_id = 0
					and		enabled = 1
					order by cast(cast(run_date as char) + ' ' +
								substring(cast(run_time + 1000000 as varchar(7)),2,2) + ':' +
								substring(cast(run_time + 1000000 as varchar(7)),4,2) + ':' +
								substring(cast(run_time + 1000000 as varchar(7)),6,2)  as datetime) desc

					delete from MgtServer.DBA_Console.dbo.LastJobStatus where ServerName = '$server'                       -- Change 'MgtServer' to the name of whatever the SQL Server is in
                                                                                                                                               -- your env that will house the LastJobStatus table which stores the
                                                                                                                                               -- results of this script
					insert into MgtServer.DBA_Console.dbo.LastJobStatus (ServerName, Job_Name, Run_Date, Job_Duration, Run_Status, Sample_Date)
					select	jr.ServerName,
							jr.Job_Name,
							jr.Run_Date,
							jr.Job_Duration,
							jr.Run_Status,
							jr.Sample_Date
					from	#JobsRun jr
					where	Run_Date = (	select	max(jr1.Run_Date)
											from	#JobsRun jr1
											where	jr1.Job_Name = jr.Job_Name)
					drop table #JobsRun; "
$cmd.ExecuteNonQuery()
$conn.Close()

There are references in the above script to a LibrarySMO.ps1 script that can be obtained from CodePlex (see the comments in the script for URL) and a DataTable.ps1 script (also from CodePlex, but included in the download file for this blog, for your convenience.)

# Taken from out-dataTable script from the PowerShell Scripts Project
# http://www.codeplex.com/PsObject/WorkItem/View.aspx?WorkItemId=7915

Function out-DataTable {

  $dt = new-object Data.datatable
  $First = $true  

  foreach ($item in $input){
    $DR = $DT.NewRow()
    $Item.PsObject.get_properties() | foreach {
      if ($first) {
        $Col =  new-object Data.DataColumn
        $Col.ColumnName = $_.Name.ToString()
        $DT.Columns.Add($Col)       }
      if ($_.value -eq $null) {
        $DR.Item($_.Name) = "[empty]"
      }
      elseif ($_.IsArray) {
        $DR.Item($_.Name) =[string]::Join($_.value ,";")
      }
      else {
        $DR.Item($_.Name) = $_.value
      }
    }
    $DT.Rows.Add($DR)
    $First = $false
  } 

  return @(,($dt))

}

I was tagged by Jorge Segarra (Blog – Twitter) who had been tagged by Thomas LaRock (Blog – Twitter) in his post about his goals and themeword for 2010.  I was going to try to remain blissfully ignorant about being tagged, but then Tim went and posted his goals.  So I guess I’m on the line now.  My theme word for this year is:

Recharge

While there are many things that I want to accomplish this year, I don’t know that (m)any of them will occur until I can figure out a way to recharge.  I’m typically a self motivated type of person, but it seems like, during the previous year, I’ve hit the wall.

I’m not entirely sure what has caused this, but I’m guessing that it is some combination of the cyclical nature of job satisfaction, having a boatload of things going on at home and the disconnect between the amount of things that I would like to learn and the amount of free time that I have.

Is there a human connector on that thing?

I realize that there is no magic button that will instantly recreate the hunger for knowledge that I had when I began learning to be a DBA.  What I can do, though, is set some goals, work hard to follow through on them and be patient.   My hope is that in the process of achieving these goals, I’ll rejuvenate my love of this career path.

Goals

Pick one or two topics to focus on

I have at least three SQL Server books sitting on my desk and more at home that I haven’t done much more than flip through.  Rather than setting a goal to read all 3000 pages (doable, but daunting), I’m going to pick a couple of subjects to focus on and learn them as thoroughly as possible.  This is ongoing – if it’s March and I know everything there is to know about database corruption (or whatever it is I end up focusing on), I’ll move on to the next subjects.

Blog more

My first love is teaching.  It invigorates me and gives me purpose.  Blogging provides me an arena to hopefully teach people that are learning to be DBAs and the chance to share what I’ve learned.

Become more involved with PASS

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts and as Tim mentioned in his goals for 2010, we’ve talked often about starting a PASS chapter in Tucson.  This ties into my love of teaching and will help us to connect with folks locally who have similar interests.  I would also like to take part in other committees within PASS as needed.    This will definitely require a balancing act with work and family, so I’ll be taking baby steps to ensure that I don’t shortchange other areas in my life.

What does this all mean?

None of these individual goals are earth-shattering and that’s intentional.  I have a tendency to swing for the bleachers, but end up hitting to the pitcher and it makes me grumpy.  My hope here is that I make some good, solid line drives and then I’ll be set up to hit it out of the park.

I’m tagging a couple of people that have unknowingly helped me to recharge (some thank you, eh?) 

TJay Belt (Blog – Twitter)

Wendy Pastrick (Blog – Twitter)

Kendal Van Dyke (Blog – Twitter)

If you have never done a technical presentation I HIGHLY recommend you do try it at least once. Volunteer to speak at your local user group or SQL event. Andy Warren (Blog | LinkedIn) recently added the idea of mini-presentations to both his user group meetings as well as the upcoming SQL Saturday #21 in Orlando. The mini-presentations are 15-minute time slots to give first-time presenters the opportunity to practice technical presentation and public speaking skills. If a user group or event is a bit too much for your first time do what I did: user your co-workers! The first time I was going to present my PBM talk I didn’t want to go to my user group without practicing first. So ask your co-workers if they wouldn’t mind letting you practice on them during lunch hour. It makes it much easier doing the presentation to a group of folks you already know and are comfortable with so its a good way to ease into the public presentations. Heck, if you’re feeling really saucy you can start a series of lunch-n-learns within your department and provide free training for everyone: Win-win y’all!

Still don’t have the warm and fuzzies? Well the fine folks at PASS have compiled a great list of resources for learning how to present at events. Check that page and there are TONS of great advice from absolutely awesome speakers like Steve Jones, Kimberly Tripp and Paul Randal.

The last few months I have been travelling around presenting on Policy Based Management at various groups and events. At each event I have learned something new either from conversations with the audience or things simply not going right which cause me to work on those things the next time. But the one thing I haven’t really gotten much (other than the occasional side conversation with a few folks) is presentation feedback. I’ve signed up over at SpeakerRate.com and have put up the different events I’ve spoken at so far. So if you’ve had the pleasure/displeasure of attending one of my sessions I would really love some feedback. Thanks in advance!

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Today, I am going to start a series of blogs on one of my favorite topics Data Warehousing with SQL Server.  I will start by defining a data warehouse.  I will then give some business cases that explain the benefits of a data warehouse.  Finally, I will start writing about the built in tools SQL Server provides to implement a data warehouse with SQL Server.

What is a Data Warehouse?

In its simplest form a Data Warehouse is a way to store data information and facts in an format that is informational.  Hopefully, you were able to pull this information from the photos above.   Personally, I like to think of a Data Warehouse as a tool used by decision makers to improve decision‐making.

Business cases for a Data Warehouse

The following are several reasons business cases that explain how “insert company name here” can benefit from a data warehouse.

• A Data Warehouse is fast to query. After the initial setup is complete, queries can run up to 1000% faster in an OLAP database than in an OLTP database.
• A Data Warehouses improves ROI by allowing end users to make more efficient use of enterprise information so many companies have all the information they need.
• A Data Warehouse is a good solution for application’s that are great for data entry but lacks in depth reporting and drilldown capabilities.
• A Data Warehouse could be used to bring several applications and/or data sources together.
• If you are a service company a data warehouse could be used to analyze work completed to estimate future flat fee engagements. (I can go on and on on these examples…)
• If you already own SQL Server you can implement a data warehouse solution with the built in tools.  This means no additional cost for software is needed.

What tools are needed to Build a Data Warehouse?

Both SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server 2008 include three tools that are very helpful towards implementing a Data Warehouse. These three tools allow you to create an killer data warehouse.

• Analysis Services (SSAS)
• Integration Services (SSIS)
• Reporting Services (SSRS).

We will go over these tools in great detail in future posts.  For now, let’s just think of SSAS as the tool that provides storage for the data used in cubes for your data warehouse. SSIS is the tool we will use to extract, transform and load (ETL) data into our data warehouse.  SSRS is a tool used to view the data in our data warehouse.

Next post : Introduction to Data Warehouse Dimensions

I wanted to give a quick update and thank everyone who has responded to my initial posting about bringing SQL Saturday to Wheeling, WV.    I have spoken to a couple technology groups and several individuals and everyone is very supportive of this event.

The following are upcoming work items:

1. Establish a budget
2. Build a support team that will help with organizing the event.
3. Find a location and pinpoint a date (tentatively First Quarter 2010.)

I look forward to blogging the status of these work items.

On another note, It looks like I will be presenting the following topic “Building a Data Warehouse with SQL Server” twice in November.  I will present first at the Greater Wheeling Chapter of AITP meeting on November 11th.  I will also give the same presentation at the Pittsburgh SQL Server User Group Meeting on November 16th.

You will soon see a series of blog post that go over building a data warehouse.  You can find the first one here.