MSSQL and MySQL KB Articles

Change Setting for Recently Used Files in SSMS

2011-04-08T04:34:00.000-07:00

Check it out on http://www.mssqltips.com/tip.asp?tip=2331

Again Awarded as SQL Server MVP

2011-04-05T23:51:00.000-07:00

Dear All,

I am again awarded as SQL Server MVP. Keep reading!!! Post Comments!! and give me your suggestion.

Thanks,

Jugal Shah

How to be DBA?

2011-04-05T04:02:00.000-07:00

Dear Readers,

I have added a new page to SQLDBPool.com which will guide you for your DBA career.

You can post your comments or DBA Career related question on that page.

Thanks, Jugal Shah

What is .TUF file in Log Shipping?

2011-04-04T09:55:00.000-07:00

TUF file is a Microsoft SQL Server Transaction Undo file. .TUF File contains the information regarding any modifications that were made as part of incomplete transactions at the time the backup was performed.

A transaction undo(.TUF) file is required if a database is loaded in read-only state. In this state, further transaction log backups may be applied.

How to be SQL DBA?

2011-04-04T00:36:00.000-07:00

India Won ICC Cricket World Cup Trophy

2011-04-02T11:08:00.000-07:00

Script to Monitor the progress of ALTER, Backup, Restore, DBCC, Rollback and TDE commands

2011-03-29T05:24:00.000-07:00

We can monitor the progress of below commands in percentage by executing the query agianst sys.dm_exec_requests DMV. For that you must have view server state permission.

ALTER INDEX REORGANIZE
AUTO_SHRINK option with ALTER DATABASE
BACKUP DATABASE
DBCC CHECKDB
DBCC CHECKFILEGROUP
DBCC CHECKTABLE
DBCC INDEXDEFRAG
DBCC SHRINKDATABASE
DBCC SHRINKFILE
RECOVERY
RESTORE DATABASE,
ROLLBACK
TDE ENCRYPTION
SELECT dmr.session_id,
       dmr.status,
       dmr.start_time,
       dmr.command,
       dmt.TEXT,
       dmr.percent_complete
FROM sys.dm_exec_requests dmr  CROSS APPLY sys.Dm_exec_sql_text(dmr.sql_handle) dmt WHERE dmr.command IN ('ALTER', 'Backup', 'Restore', 'DBCC', 'Rollback',  'TDE')

How to Check When SQL Server was installed?

2011-03-28T07:47:00.000-07:00

NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM login gets created when we install SQL Server. By querying sys.syslogins, we would get an idea of the SQL Server Installation date time.

SELECT createdate AS sql_server_install_date FROM sys.syslogins WHERE sid = 0x010100000000000512000000

SELECT * FROM sys.syslogins WHERE sid = 0x010100000000000512000000

Dos Command to Check System Properties and Server Reboot time

2011-03-28T07:38:00.000-07:00

Many times we would like to check OS information and boot time. We can check the operating system properties and reboot time by executing systeminfo command from dos prompt.

C:\>systeminfo

Script to Update Statistics by passing database name

2011-03-26T11:48:00.000-07:00

You can use below script to update the statistics with the FULL Scan. You can pass the database name in below script, I have given JShah as database name.

EXEC Sp_msforeachdb
@command1='IF ''#'' IN (''JShah'') BEGIN PRINT ''#'';
EXEC #.dbo.sp_msForEachTable ''UPDATE STATISTICS ? WITH FULLSCAN'', @command2=''PRINT CONVERT(VARCHAR, GETDATE(), 9) + '''' - ? Stats Updated'''''' END'
,@replaceChar = '#'

You can use below script to update the statistics with the SAMPLE Percent agrument. You can pass the database name in below script, I have given JShah as database name.

EXEC Sp_msforeachdb
@command1='IF ''#'' IN (''JShah'') BEGIN PRINT ''#'';
EXEC #.dbo.sp_msForEachTable ''UPDATE STATISTICS ? WITH SAMPLE 50 PERCENT'', @command2=''PRINT CONVERT(VARCHAR, GETDATE(), 9) + '''' - ? Stats Updated'''''' END'
,@replaceChar = '#'

Resolving could not open a connection to SQL Server errors

2011-03-21T03:03:00.000-07:00

Problem

Sometimes you may have issues connecting to SQL Server and you may get messages such as the following:

ERROR: (provider: Named Pipes Provider, error: 40 – Could not open a connection to SQL Server) (Microsoft SQL Server, Error:) An error has occurred while establishing a connection to the server. (provider: Named Pipes Provider, error: 40 – Could not open a connection to SQL Server) (Microsoft SQL Server, Error: 5)

An error has occurred while establishing a connection to the server. When connecting to SQL Server 2005, this failure may be caused by the fact that under the default settings SQL Server does not allow remote connections. (provider: Named Pipes Provider, error: 40 – Could not open a connection to SQL Server) (Microsoft SQL Server, Error: 1326)

A network-related error or instance-specific error occurred while establishing a connection to SQL Server. The server was not found or was not accessible. Verify that the instance name is correct and that SQL Server is configured to allow remote connections. (provider: TCP Provider, error: 0 – No such host is known.) (Microsoft SQL Server, Error: 11001)

http://www.mssqltips.com/tip.asp?tip=2340

Click Me for Solution

Msg 15009, Level 16, State 1, Procedure sp_help, sp_helptext or object_definition()

2011-03-18T07:35:00.000-07:00

Whenever user has in-sufficient permission and he is executing sp_help, sp_helptext or the object_definition function, user will get the below error message. This error occurs because user doesn’t have have permissions to the see the object metadata.

EXEC sp_helptext sp_indexdefrag
Msg 15009, Level 16, State 1, Procedure sp_helptext

To fix the issue we have to grant the VIEW DEFINITION permission to user.
We can turn on the View Definition permission on all databases for all the users having public role using below code.

USE master
GO
GRANT VIEW ANY DEFINITION TO PUBLIC

We can turn on the View Definition permission on all databases for the user Jugal using below query.

USE master
GO
GRANT VIEW ANY DEFINITION TO Jugal

We can turn on the View Definition permission on SQLDBPOOL for the user Jugal using below query.

USE SQLDBPOOL
GO
GRANT VIEW DEFINITION TO Jugal

Replication Error Message Number and Description

2011-03-15T04:11:00.000-07:00

Check out http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc645609.aspx for replication error message.

Doing a lot of SQL coding - Try SQL Complete

2011-03-14T08:27:00.000-07:00

Are you doing a lot of SQL coding every day and looking devouringly at every tool offering replacement of the native SSMS IntelliSense available only for SQL Server 2008? Then don't miss Devart dbForge SQL Complete while you are seeking an assistant to do the boring part of your work that should have been automated and simplified long ago.

General Information
The tool is available in two editions:
Express - a free edition providing basic functionality to complete and format SQL code.
Standard - fully-featured edition providing all necessary functionality for completing and formatting T-SQL code.

30-day trial period available for Standard Edition should be enough for anyone to test all product features and check if it meets one's requirements.

During evaluation and usage, you can submit requests and suggestions to the tool's support team. Besides, you can take part in creating its development roadmap at UserVoice.

Features

Context-based prompt of different object types

Context-based prompt of keywords

Context-based prompt of function parameters

Word autocompletion

Automatic filtering of object in the suggestion list

Context-based sorting of suggestions in the list

Determining a current database or schema

Supporting queries to various databases

Automatic displaying suggestions while typing

Two ways to insert a suggested word into a query

Usage of syntax highlight settings for the suggestions list

Query formatting

Support of various query types

Semi-transparent view of the suggestion box

Inserting columns list on pressing Tab

Suggesting methods for columns and variables

Suggesting conditions for JOIN statement

Automatic alias generation in SELECT statements

Sorting keywords by relevance

Quick object info

Expanding INSERT statements

Export/Import settings wizard

Review

I chose to install trial of SQL Complete Standard Edition. The installation took several seconds, and the tool and all its options are ready to use and easy to access from the SQL Server Management Studio main menu:

OK, but we will peep into the options later, when we see how the tool actually works and be sure that it's worth spending time on learning different advanced settings. Now we want to type any query we think of first. This can be as simple as SELECT * FROM:

What can we see? The tool filtered available suggestions depending on the probability of their usage. This saved me from tedious selecting of the needed word in a list sorted alphabetically (imagine it was the last one in it!) or typing almost the whole word

Now I'd like to exclude some columns from the table I am working with in this statement. Unfortunately, the “*” symbol is rarely replaced with the columns list by code author. But I found a way to do this quickly and effortlessly using the tool – just pressed Tab, as was written in the hint, and it was all:

Surely, you often have to join tables in queries just as I do. Quite simply, these statements allow combining data in multiple tables to quickly and efficiently process large quantities of data, but often they take too much time to write. There is a feature declaring SQL Complete capability to do such a trick painlessly for the one who is writing code:

I can say these were positive impressions, and the tool is really worth spending more time for testing. I decided on using some more complicated unformatted query, as the vendor puts emphasis on the tool's advanced formatting capabilities. Here's what we've got:

Before:

After:

My query was successfully formatted and is readable now.

Being able to access essential information on a database object is pretty useful and saves some efforts on looking it up:

The tool offers quite a lot of formatting options and a wizard for importing and exporting settings – this should be useful for large companies where some standardized T-SQL code formatting is necessary:

Summary

SQL Complete can be used by professionals, amateurs, and everybody who has something to do with writing SQL code. Besides, the price of the fully-featured edition (less than $50.00), availability of the free edition, effective product support provided by its development team make it worth testing seriously when choosing a tool from a number of alternatives offering similar functionality.

Steps to change default value of SELECT (Top 1000) or EDIT(Top 200) rows in SSMS 2008

2011-03-11T04:51:00.000-08:00

As we all aware about the new feature of SQL server 2008, by right clicking any table we can see Select Top 1000 Rows and Edit Top 200 Rows. This feature will give us flexibility to SELECT 1000 rows and EDIT 200 rows just by right click.

Steps to change top Rows:
Step1 : Go to Tools -- Options --> SQL Server Object Explorer --> Commands

Table and View Options:
Value for Edit Top Rows command specifies number of columns to be edited. Default value is 200.

Value for Select Top Rows command specifies number of columns to be selected. Default value is 1000.

Step 2: Change Value for Edit Top Rows Command and Value for Select Rows Command per you requirement.

Step 3: Verify above changes have been made by again right clicking the table.

sys.dm_clr_properties

2011-03-09T21:49:00.000-08:00

sys.dm_clr_properties: Returns a row for each property related to SQL Server common language runtime (CLR) integration, including the version and state of the hosted CLR.

Enabling CLR using SP_Configure doesn't gurantee that it is initialized. To initialize CLR, you have to execute ASSEMBLY statements, CLR Routine Type or Trigger.

See below image for the output of this DMV.

Below are the different state of CLR.

Mscoree is not loaded.

Mscoree is loaded.

Locked CLR version with mscoree.

CLR is initialized.

CLR initialization permanently failed.

CLR is stopped

Check http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms174983.aspx link for different CLR state description.

Steps to clear the server list in SQL Server Management Studio

2011-03-06T21:32:00.000-08:00

Check out my new article

Steps to clear the server list in SQL Server Management Studio on MSSQLTIPS.com.

http://mssqltips.com/tip.asp?tip=2319

SQL Server 2011 AKA Denali Step By Step Installation

2011-03-03T22:14:00.000-08:00

SQL Server 2011 AKA Denali
As we all aware about that, Microsoft has released SQL Server 2011 CTP1. CTP stands for Community Technology Preview and it is a beta version of upcoming release.

Minimum Software and Hardware Requirement

We can install Denali on both the file system formats (FAT32 and NTFS) but the Microsoft recommends NTFS file format.

Your Operating system must have "no-reboot" package installed prior to installing SQL Server 2011. By default it is included in Windows 7 SP1 and Windows Server 2008 R2. For the other OS you can download No Reboot package from http://support.microsoft.com/kb/982526 link.

.NET Framework 4.0

Virtualization is supported using Microsoft's Hyper-V technology.

At least 3.4GB free disk space

At least 2GB RAM

Windows PowerShell 2.0 is a pre-requisite

SQL Server 2011 AKA Denali Installation Steps
[caption id="attachment_1115" align="aligncenter" width="614" caption="Step 1 : Go to Setup folder and click on Setup.exe"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_1116" align="aligncenter" width="614" caption="Step 2: Go to Installation Page and Select Stand Alone Installation"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_1117" align="aligncenter" width="614" caption="Step 3: Setup will validate the the OS for minimut requirement. You must have noReboot Package installed."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_1118" align="aligncenter" width="614" caption="Step 4: Setup will again the check the rules for example Power Shell, Firewall, .Net Framework Security etc"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_1119" align="aligncenter" width="614" caption="Step 5: Give you an option of new installation or add features to existing instance."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_1120" align="aligncenter" width="614" caption="Step 6: Give you an option to Select edition"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_1121" align="aligncenter" width="614" caption="Step 7: Accept Agreement Screen"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_1122" align="aligncenter" width="614" caption="Step 8: Give you an option to select required feature"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_1123" align="aligncenter" width="614" caption="Step 9: Give you an option to select the instance level features"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_1124" align="aligncenter" width="614" caption="Step 10: Again validate the server for the selected features"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_1125" align="aligncenter" width="614" caption="Step 11: Gives you an option to select the named instance/default instance"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_1126" align="aligncenter" width="614" caption="Step 12: Will show your the disk space required for the selected features"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_1127" align="aligncenter" width="614" caption="Step 13: Specify the service accounts"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_1128" align="aligncenter" width="614" caption="Step 14: Specify the collation"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_1129" align="aligncenter" width="614" caption="Step 15: Specify the Authentication Mode, Data Directories and File Stream"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_1130" align="aligncenter" width="614" caption="Step 16: Data Directories Configuration"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_1133" align="aligncenter" width="614" caption="Step 17: Click on Install and Installation will proceed."][/caption]

Policy Based Management in SQL Server 2008

2011-02-26T23:49:00.000-08:00

Policy-base Management is a new feature in SQL Server 2008 that helps SQL Server administration. It allows us to define and enforce policies for configuring and managing SQL Server across the enterprise. The policy-based framework implements the policies behind the scene with a Policy Engine, SQL Server Agent jobs, SQLCLR, DDL triggers and Service Broker. Policies can be applied or evaluated against a single server or a group of servers.

To understand PBM we have to understand the below terms.
Target - an entity that is managed by PBM (i.e. database, table, index, etc.)
Facet - a predefined set of properties that can be managed
Condition - a property expression that evaluates to facets on target and returns True or False;
Policy - a condition to be checked and/or enforced

Expand the Management Node to use the PBM.

Expand the facets node to checkout the facets.

To Check out facets properties double click on facets. I have clicked on Login Facets. These facet properties are used to specify a condition

Undocumented Server Property ErrorLogFileName

2011-02-26T19:57:00.000-08:00

You can use Server Property errorlogfilename to get the error log file path.

SELECT SERVERPROPERTY('ErrorLogFileName')

How to Hide System Objects in Object Explorer?

2011-02-26T19:48:00.000-08:00

Open SSMS -> GO TO Tools -> Option and Check the below highlighted check box and restart the Management Studio. It will hide all the system objects in Object Explorer.

Step By Step Log-Shipping Configuration for SQL Server

2011-02-22T20:50:00.000-08:00

Setting up Log Shipping for SQL Server is not that difficult, but having a step by step process is helpful if this is the first time you have setup Log Shipping. In this tip we walk through the steps to setup Log Shipping.

To read the step by step Log-Shipping steps CLICK ME to read it.

Or Open http://mssqltips.com/tip.asp?tip=2301 link

Surface Area Configuration in SQL Server 2008

2011-02-17T21:56:00.000-08:00

I got an email from one of my reader and He is asking me that where is SAC in SQL Server 2008. Microsoft has removed the Surface Area Configuration tool that was shipped in SQL Server 2005. The Services and Connections which were previously managed using Surface Area Configuration tool is now managed using the SQL Server Configuration Manager.

To manage the database engine features you have to use Policy Based Management. For that you have to use Surface Area Configuration facet.

You can follow below steps to configure the Database Engine features.

Right Click on Server Name and Select Facets from pop up windows

Select “Surface Area Configuration” from facets windows and do the appropriate desired settings

SSMS Startup Options

2011-02-17T21:04:00.000-08:00

You can configure SSMS to startup with the below options. Default one is Open Object Explorer.

Go Tools --> Options -->Environment(page)-->General.

Options are self explanatory.

SQLWB.exe (SQL2k5) and SSMS.exe(SQL2K8)

2011-02-10T22:57:00.000-08:00

SQLWB (sqlwb.exe) /SSMS(SSMS.exe) is the executable file that launches SQL Server Management Studio. I am usually using it to launch the SQL Server management studio instead of navigating through Start -> All Programs -> SQL Server 2005 -> SQL Server Management Studio.

Above command will launch the SQL Server 2005 Management Studio. You can launch the SQL2k8 management studio using SSMS.exe

You can also pass below list of argument with it, I am executing below command to see the list of parameters.

c:\sqlwb.exe -?