Thursday, November 29, 2007

To understand how the Resource Governor works let’s try to work with this feature

To Resource Governor everything is a workload, and we are going to create a group on to which we would like to limit a resource, so this group would become a workload group for Resource Governor – does it make sense?

CREATE WORKLOAD GROUP grpDeveloper

Now let’s create a function which will return our workload group name every time when Resource Governor runs and limits the resource

CREATE FUNCTION ResGovMgr () RETURNS SYSNAME

WITH SCHEMABINDING

AS

BEGIN

                DECLARE @grpName AS SYSNAME

                                IF (APP_NAME = 'MANAGEMENT STUDIO’)

                                                SET grpName = 'grpDeveloper'

                RETURN grpDeveloper

END

Now let’s make the resource governor aware of our function

ALTER RESOURCE GOVERNOR WITH (CLASSIFIER_FUNCTION = dbo.ResGovMgr)

In order to limit the resource for our workload group we have to apply the limit changes to the workload group earlier created. Here the resource is CPU and the limit value is 30%

ALTER WORKLOAD GROUP grpDeveloper

WITH (MAX_CPU_PERCENT = 30)

And finally we make the in-memory resource governor aware of our changes

ALTER RESOURCE GOVERNOR RECONFIGURE

 Now once you configure your workload and add to the resource governor, your work is done – let the Resource Governor handles the resource. In case if the workload group tries to utilize more the percentage allocated the Resource Governor either trigger some event or stop the victim process.

Bandagi!

11/29/2007 2:01:09 PM UTC  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [0]  | 
 Wednesday, November 28, 2007

It was a nightmare when DBA has to keep an eye on resource utilization, thanks to Resource Governor which provides control of resources on finger tips.

Resource Governor or RG is SQL Server 2008's new feature through which one can easily manage system resources like CPU, I/O. With RG you can define resource limits, priorities and enable consistent performance.

By executing this statement you can limit the percentage usage CPU utilization for certain SQL Server group to 50.

ALTER WORKLOAD GROUP grpDev WITH ( MAX_CPU_PERCENT = 50 )

You can also try and see how easy it is to manage the system resources, but only if you have the latest CTP.

You can only execute this command on the latest CTP, if you've not downloaded yet then do so.

Bandagi!

11/28/2007 9:22:31 PM UTC  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [0]  | 
 Tuesday, November 20, 2007

A long awaited feature after the July CTP, Transparent Data Encryption or TDE is one of the features which makes the developer life easier. Well DTE was almost available in the version 2005 of SQL Server at the cell level but here in 2008 its available on database level - it doesn't mean that we can't use on cell level but its an added functionality.

In the past developer has to take care by making the application encryption aware and as the database application is I/O intensive the encryption/decrytpion degrade the performance. Now with SQL Server 2008 Katmai - developers no need to make the application encryption aware, with the Transparent Data Encryption feature the developer can easily control the encryption without letting the application encryption aware, whenever the request comes from database application, SQL Server 2008 Katmai decrypts the database and when not needed encrypts again.

To check whether your CTP possess this feature simply execute the DDL command

ALTER DATABASE [database_name] SET ENCRYPTION ON

and you will come to know whether your CTP is TDE aware or not.

While the TDE can be controlled using the above command their is more to be use to encrypt or decrypt, Database Encryption Key or DEK.

DEK is always stored in database boot record for instant recovery and can be controlled using CREATE | ALTER | DROP command.

Download the new CTP and enjoy this new feature.

Bandagi!

11/20/2007 10:00:40 AM UTC  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [0]  | 
 Monday, November 19, 2007

"Be the first to know"

Many of you have anxiously waited for this day. The SQL Server Connect Team in conjunction with the SQL Server Product Team are proud to announce the release of the November CTP of SQL Server 2008 Katmai.

Here is a direct link http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=3BF4C5CA-B905-4EBC-8901-1D4C1D1DA884&displaylang=en to the download on the Download Center. Yes, the installers and media ISOs available. Along with x86, x64, and IA64 releases, along with these Express version is also available.

At least i cant wait for few more minutes, i am downloading my copy you should also do the same :-)

Bandagi!

 

11/19/2007 6:50:34 PM UTC  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [0]  | 
 Saturday, November 17, 2007

The November Community Technology Preview (CTP) for Microsoft SQL Server 2008 is available for customer download this month. It features a significant amount of new functionality, including compatibility with Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 as well as new features such as Resource Governor, Backup Compression and Transparent Data Encryption. This CTP also includes new business intelligence enhancements such as Design Alerts, Block Computation, Enhanced Report Designer with new visualizations and integration with the 2007 Microsoft Office system.

This also is the first CTP to help customers store and consume any type of data, including new FileStream data types for unstructured documents, and to provide spatial data support for location intelligence technologies. Separately, companies such as Barrodale Computing Services (BCS) Ltd., Environmental Systems Research Institute Inc., I.S. Consulting Inc., Manifold and SpatialPoint announced their intention to ship applications that take advantage of spatial data support in SQL Server 2008.

Bandagi!

11/17/2007 4:16:52 PM UTC  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [0]  | 
 Sunday, November 11, 2007

Tech Days 2007 is on your way - run for your seat or else you loose!

Register yourself here http://www.techdaysgulf.com/

 

 

11/11/2007 1:14:24 PM UTC  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [0]  | 
 Saturday, November 10, 2007

The TechNet and MSDN Roadshow proudly presents the “Gaining Insight Tour 2007”.

This tour, coming to Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman, is packed with live demonstrations and technical content on upcoming and much anticipated solutions from Microsoft.
 
Get a sneak peek into technologies that include Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008, .Net, Silverlight, Virtualization and more. You will also be among the
first to see us unveil the new Unified Communications technologies from Microsoft – a solution that will revolutionize the way people communicate and collaborate in the workplace.
 
If you’re an IT Professional or a Developer looking to gain insight and an edge over others, then you’ve got no excuse to miss out on this event! You may even walk away as the
lucky winner of the new X-box 360 Elite!
 
Register Now.

Where and when

Kuwait City         Movenpick        Nov 14th
Muscat              Shangri La        Nov 17th
Manama             Sheraton          Nov 19th
Doha                 Intercon           Dec 9th


11/10/2007 2:32:17 PM UTC  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [0]  | 
 Friday, November 09, 2007

"I can't stand longer to see your hunger" - these words slipped when I saw people were rushing towards the technical sessions, TechEd is an excellent event to learn exciting new things.

I'm really happy about the Speaker Idol Competition winners and congratulating them on their excellent performance.

This event brought me such a professional peers - I would like to thanks Robo Meyers to give me excellent company during the Ask the Expert round.

Hope to see you guys next year in some event place.

Thanks to Microsoft for organizing such an excellent event to gather all the industry leads and experts - and not to be forgotten MYSELF ;-)

Bandagi!

11/9/2007 1:34:08 PM UTC  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [1]  | 
 Tuesday, November 06, 2007

So its the second day at the event, lots of technical sessions and huge amount of information - i am unable to bear everything ;-)

Today I met the rest of ATE Team at the SQL Server booth.

It was an honor for me to meet the Patterns & Paractices Technology Architect A. P. Ward Pond - it was a nice talking about this new group they founded one and a half year back, the solution is still in its infancy and they it will take time to make it part of the products, resource kits.

I would love to meet Goksin Bakir, and surprisingly i met him at the first and second day of event - he was the point of contact in INETA, now he joined Microsoft Turkey. I would love work with him from INETA perspective, and he is willing to help;

The day at ATE booth was good but it was a little quiet today as people are really buzy in taking sessions and making most of out it.

It's 6:00 pm and time to take off! will write more tomorrow and stay tuned as i am going to Speaker Idol Competition tomorrow.

Bandagi!

11/6/2007 6:08:05 PM UTC  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [0]  | 
 Monday, November 05, 2007

Those were the exciting moments when I saw Somasegar VP Developer Division announcing the release of Visual Studio 2008 and .Net Framework 3.5 for the month of November. It was my dream to "meet the man" behind all the successfull deliverables but due to the size of hall and the number of audience (4000+) i was unable to cover the distance to reach the stage and meet. Some views of Soma on his blog http://blogs.msdn.com/somasegar/archive/2007/11/05/teched-developer-in-europe.aspx

Next there were couple of demos ran by the other Microsoft Lead Product Managers including the Visual Studio 2008 and PoplFly a new tool for game developers. I am uploading the videos which shows you the announcement of new upcoming version of Visual Studio tools and PopFly.

This whole day was full of surprises - next I was able to see Bob Bucheman a great name for SQL Server, i saw him in action, he discussed the CLR integration and performance improvement from SQL Server 2005 perspective - some highlights are available in this video.

There were around many technical sessions but it was not practical to attend all in same time ;-) but the most important ones i attend were

SQL Server CLR Integration
Implementing SQL Server Express Edition
Understanding the Service Oriented Architecture

Then comes the "Ask the Expert" round - There were other couple of product booths including - .Net Framework, Dynamics, Windows Mobile, MSDN, Visual Studio 2008 but SQL Server has the biggest booth with six machines two for SQL Server 2005, two for Business Intelligence and two for SQL Server 2008. Fortunately it was an honor for me that only I was the one who have knowledge about the SQL Server 2008 so I was also taking care of this version.

ATE or Ask the Expert is an area where people come and ask your help to solve their product related problems. I was assigned on SQL Server ATE booth as per my expertise. Here I was planning to deal the Performance related problems but i was assigned to work with BI "Business Intelligence" team so i was answering all the questions on Dataware housing, Business Intelligence, Data minning. I receive quite a good feedback on BI feature of SQL Server. I am more then happy that Microsoft trusted on my knowledge and expertise and understand that i can add value to this great event. It was very excited that people with different background, knowledge and expertise came and asked about the resolutions of their problems and solutions. There was a time when I had a chance to solve the SQL related problems onsite, "man developers dont let you go" - if they have problem they dont let you escape unless you solve it.

Not to forget the people here with me at the booth are Microsoft Regional Director, Microsoft BI Evangelist and other fellow MVP's from Croatia - next to Italy.

Anyways It was a good start, hoping that tomorrow i will be having same great time with the product team and especially with the audiance.

Bandagi!

11/5/2007 9:55:06 AM UTC  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [0]  | 
 Sunday, November 04, 2007

On entering the Briefing Room all ATE's received their Green color Polo Shirts with "Ask the Expert" on front and ATE logo on the back.  It a great excitement because you've been given an honor present yourself as an Expert in the product domain.

The Briefing started at 18:00 (6:00 pm) with the Microsoft Marketing Team for TechEd, the Marketing Manager TechEd EMEA announced that TechEd 2007 Barcelona is sold out with 4000 seats and still we are receiving requests for registration, since there is no more space in the convention center we are not entertaining any further registration.

We've been briefed how to deal with the audiance, and how important our feedback back to Microsoft staff in order to improve the products. It was a great chance to meet a lot of people from different part of Europe, most of the people i met were Microsoft Regional staff's especially from Croatia, Russia.

It was fun and i learned a lot that how these people are managing this great number of audiences every year and every year the number of audiences are more then the previous so it means its worth attending this event, anyways let see tomorrow what's gonna happen.

Ok, I am off for today and will be leaving to hotel in a while.

Bandagi!

11/4/2007 10:15:15 AM UTC  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [0]  | 
 Saturday, November 03, 2007

Its weekend here in Spain, you will find people enjoying at the beach, bars, clubs and especially in the cinemas. But

But surprisingly I spent the entire day in the hotel thinking about what to do when i first meet the Microsoft product teams, how i will answer all the developer questions - but I am very much confident that I will tackle all the questions asked as an "Subject Matter Expert" in ATE "Ask the Expert" section.

On the other hand I am preparing to compete in the "Speaker Idol 2007" competition and if I won then next year i would be able to speak in TechEd 2008 Barcelona, Spain. Well I am trying my level best and with the hope that with full concentration and dedication I will place myself atleast in the runners up;

May Allah helps me to get a better mark in any one of the positions.

Bandagi!

11/3/2007 9:28:24 PM UTC  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [0]  | 
 Friday, November 02, 2007

Buenos Dias
"Good Morning"

its 6:00 AM. The first thing i did was jumped out of my bed and opened the window - breeze of cold wind entered, thanks GOD this time cold no more hot weather.

I heard some noise started coming nearby gurrr! errr! ;-) ohhh its coming from my stomach not from outside the second thing i did was ordered some light breakfast :-D

It's 11:00 I am ready to go out; my plan was to go to downtown and start walking towards the public spots and streets. Like other European cities Barcelona is also crowded but if you come to residential areas you'll be surprise - everything is calm and quite. My first plan failed - to reach downtown its necessary to take the public bus. Same time I am happy as by reaching the downtown using the public bus was an oppertunity to see so not all but few streets and residential areas.

Its Plaze Espana - you can see the this is a main junction where many roads are joining - nice view, especially during morning hours and on top if its cold. From I decided to take tourist bus, "Turistic Bus" as its easy to see the city once with the help of guided tour and rest details on your own. "Turistic Bus" was an excellent choice as I roamed nearly every place in Barcelona. Now i am a lot confident about the roads in Barcelona, the next step is to visit common places including markets, public meeting points but this i am keeping for tomorrow.

It's too late and I think its better to sleep - tomorrow I will wake up early and will continue my mission Barcelona :-D

Bandagi!

 

11/2/2007 9:50:05 PM UTC  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [0]  | 

I woke up found the plane fighting with the outside wind, I prayed to GOD and slept again "sleeping was the best option to not to feel the swinging effect". A voice came to me we are ready to move to the airport - oeeeee!!! I am in Barcelona - with the spirit of reaching and sleeping for longer hours I forced myself to move towards the arrivals. The airport is quite and constructed like an old place but in reality it was an art to built and to give similar look - as if we are standing in a old spain. After claiming my baggage i move towards the exit - surprising no Immigration process. For everyone's information "If you are already STAMPed in a SHANGAN country then IMMIGRATION process is not required again" - means once you are cleared then you can move on in any other SHANGAN state.

Reaching the exit was very difficult, its a cold night with freezing temperature of 10 degrees, coooool! I decided to take a cab - as it was cold, i am sleepy and hungry. My hotel is very near to the airport "Renaissance Airport Hotel - Barcelona, Spain" so it took 5 minutes to reach.

Check-inn was verrrrrrry easy as I already had a booking. Now I am in my room and trying to sleep.

Please keep privacy - as i am going to sleep ;-)

Bandagi!

11/2/2007 9:53:19 AM UTC  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [0]  | 
 Thursday, November 01, 2007

"Hey Hitler!" - I am in Germany :-D 

I am here to solute him not because I have some feelings for him but because I love this place, because of the people, the hard working and because of the cold weather. Getting out of German airport for the first time is not easy - I went through Police (Polize) investigation for an hour, thought definitly I can loose my flight to Barcelona. Crossing the terminal building and reaching the departure lounge was another hurdle. Inter-connected train "Skyline" gave some hope to reach departure lounge a little fast. When I reached I found another long queue for people waiting for their turn on the ticketing counters. Finally it was my turn - I ran towards the boarding gate but found flight is 45 minutes late - woof "thanks" I got chance to rest my breathe. The boarding announcement was exactly at 21:45 without further delay we reached the base with shuttle - temperature around 8 degree celcius :D with a little fear of getting freezed i jumped out of the shuttle.

Will write more.

Bandagi!

11/1/2007 9:49:14 AM UTC  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [0]  |