SQLServerPedia SQL Server Training (Apple iTunes Video)

Resource Governor Basics

Brent Ozar — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 14:30:31 +0000

In very large databases, ad-hoc user queries can easily run on for minutes or hours. Patient users often kick off long reporting queries and then walk off to get coffee while their queries run on endlessly. We call these queries zombies. Your weapon against the zombies is the Resource Governor, new in SQL 2008. Learn how to use the shovel in this video.

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For more about the Resource Governor and other VLDB tips, check out our Very Large Databases wiki article.

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SQL Server VLDB Partitioning Tutorial

Brent Ozar — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 14:30:56 +0000

Tables with hundreds of millions of rows or billions of rows need a way to manage that data easier. SQL Server 2005 introduced partitioning, and it’s been improved ever since. Learn about how to implement it in this ten-minute training video.

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For more about SQL Server table partitioning and other VLDB tips, check out our Very Large Databases wiki article.

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VLDBs and Instant File Initialization

Brent Ozar — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 14:30:02 +0000

Very Large Databases (VLDBs) come with their own unique set of management challenges. In this podcast, Brent Ozar talks about a simple problem: managing file growth when your files are hundreds of gigabytes or larger.

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For more about Instant File Initialization and other VLDB tips, check out our Very Large Databases wiki article.

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Kevin Kline Tutorial on SQL Server Query Tuning

Brent Ozar — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 14:00:13 +0000

Kevin Kline gave an hour-long presentation to the Nashville PASS Chapter on Query Performance Tuning. He covered tips like NOCOUNT, SHOWPLAN, STATISTICS, and low-hanging fruit to make queries faster.

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Google Reader Tutorial Video

Brent Ozar — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 14:21:49 +0000

Google Reader is an RSS reader tool that helps you stay in touch with more web sites in less time. It consolidates new articles from sites all over the web in one single, easy-to-use interface, and helps you share your favorite articles with your friends. Brent Ozar explains Google Reader this four minute video tutorial.

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In the videos, Brent talks about these sites:

Google Reader – the online RSS reader tool.
Brent’s Shared Google Reader items – if you want to get notified of his favorite SQL Server blog posts.
AideRSS PostRank – the best/great/good filtering plugin for Reader that helps you catch up with the most popular blog entries quickly.
URLFan – find out when other people mention your blog or link to it.
Search.Twitter.com – find out when anyone mentions your name or your site’s name on Twitter.

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Data Mining Basics with Tom LaRock

Brent Ozar — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 15:45:34 +0000

We’ve talked about data mining the StackOverflow database dump before, but today we’re going to start from the very beginning. In this half-hour video, Tom LaRock and Brent Ozar talk about what data mining is, and show some examples using the StackOverflow database.

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For more about importing the StackOverflow database export and working with it, check out our articles on data mining the StackOverflow database dump.

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Roll Your Own Replication – Part 2

Brent Ozar — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 16:30:44 +0000

SQL Server’s built-in replication has its pros and cons, but it’s not perfect for everybody. Brent Ozar discusses some of the basics behind this popular feature, and then talks about one company that needed more than replication could deliver.

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For more about this topic, check out these wiki articles:

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Roll Your Own Replication – Part 1

Brent Ozar — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 14:55:49 +0000

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For more about this topic, check out these wiki articles:

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Data Mining the StackOverflow Database

Brent Ozar — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 14:09:19 +0000

StackOverflow released a public dump of their database this morning. Jeff Atwood and the guys believe that if you, the community, are putting the work into this huge body of knowledge, then you should be able to have rights to use it.

This is a great dataset to show off one of my favorite toys from the Microsoft SQL Server Data Mining team. In this fifteen minute video, I’ll walk you through data mining the StackOverflow user list to find out more about the users and see what makes the rockstar high-reputation users different from the worker bees like me.

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Microsoft’s Free Data Mining Tools

For today’s demo, I’m using SQL Server Analysis Services installed on my desktop. Relax – it’s really easy. Literally just install SQL Server 2005 or 2008 Developer Edition, check the box for Analysis Services, and use the defaults. You don’t have to know what you’re doing in order to get it up and running, and it just runs in the background as a service. After you’re done playing around, you can stop the service and set it to manual to prevent it from sapping your system resources. Go into Control Panel, Administrative Tools, double-click on the SQL Server Analysis Services service, and change the startup type to Manual.

Depending on your version of SQL Server, you’ll need one of these free plugins from Microsoft:

If you want to avoid the whole SQL Server Analysis Services thing altogether, you can also use Microsoft’s free SQL Server Data Mining in the Cloud plugin. Be aware that it’s a technical preview, not a fully supported & released product. Their cloud servers can (and do) go down. Also know that your data is going into the cloud, which has its own ramifications as I’ve discussed in my previous cloud data mining tutorial.

What’s Coming Next: SQL Server 2008 R2 with BI in Excel

In the next version of SQL Server, Microsoft will deliver business intelligence to end users through Excel. At the Professional Association for SQL Server Summit last November, Donald Farmer demoed slicing and dicing of huge spreadsheets with real-time analytics that previously would have required some pretty hefty hardware.

Excel 2007 has a million-row limit, but the forthcoming version will not. Some of the StackOverflow export tables like Votes have more than a million rows, so we can’t yet data mine those using Excel as a front end, but we can play with the Users table today.

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SQL Server Management Studio Express

Brent Ozar — Fri, 29 May 2009 20:07:57 +0000

Get started managing your SQL Server Express Edition and developing T-SQL with Microsoft’s free SQL Server Management Studio Express Edition. Learn how from Brent Ozar and Jeremiah Peschka.

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For more about this topic, check out:

The SQL Server Express Edition wiki article
Jeremiah Peschka’s article on Row-Based Security
Jeremiah Peschka’s blog at Facility9 – where he blogs about SQL Server from a developer’s point of view
Microsoft SQL Server Express Edition – the product page at Microsoft.

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