January 2010 - Posts

• SQL Server Enterprise Edition and Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7

  I’ve seen this a couple of times now online so it’s worth blogging about.  The Enterprise Edition of SQL Server is not supported on client OS's like Vista, XP, or Windows 7. Developer Edition is supported on the client OS's and allow you to develop Read More... Posted Thursday, January 28, 2010 8:00 AM by Jonathan Kehayias | 4 Comments Filed under: SQL Server 2008, Did You Know

• Question: Is NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM a sysadmin in your SQL Server and Why?

  I asked this on twitter and now I am going to ask it on here to see what kind of responses I get.  If your SQL Server services run under a domain user account, is NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM (Local System) a sysadmin in your SQL Server and if so, why? I Read More... Posted Wednesday, January 27, 2010 10:10 PM by Jonathan Kehayias | 11 Comments Filed under: Database Administration, Security

• DYK: Restoring a Database Retains Index Fragmentation

  I am not sure where the “myth” that restoring a database removes the index fragmentation, or that restoring a database causes a database to become fragmented came from recently, but twice in the last few days I have seen questions asked about the impact Read More... Posted Wednesday, January 27, 2010 9:43 PM by Jonathan Kehayias | 9 Comments Filed under: Database Administration, Did You Know

• Setting up Database Mail to use Gmail account for Presentations

  This past weekend’s SQL Saturday #31 in Tampa, FL I had the need to send email from one of my Virtual Machines while doing my presentation on Event Notifications in SQL Server 2005/2008.  Generally speaking, I don’t need to send email from the virtual Read More... Posted Monday, January 25, 2010 8:44 AM by Jonathan Kehayias | 4 Comments Filed under: Presentations, Database Administration

• Tuning ‘cost threshold for parallelism’ from the Plan Cache

  A good while ago I was asked if it was possible to consistently produce a parallel plan by Tom LaRock( blog / twitter ), and I recalled from reading Grant Fritchey’s( blog / twitter ) book on Execution Plans that it was possible to do this by adjusting Read More... Posted Tuesday, January 19, 2010 1:19 AM by Jonathan Kehayias | 7 Comments Filed under: Database Administration, Plan Cache

• PASS Session Evaluations

  Tonight I got my session evaluations back from PASS for the first large presentation I have ever done.  I am somewhat surprised by the results, they are actually much better than I expected.  I definitely have a number of things to work on as Read More... Posted Wednesday, January 13, 2010 3:12 AM by Jonathan Kehayias | 0 Comments Filed under: Presentations, PASS

• TSQL2sday: Using sys.dm_exec_sql_text() to get the calling statement

  This week I have two posts for TSQL2sday .  Initially I wrote my first blog post , but as luck would have it, today a second topic for TSQL2sday popped up through the comments on my recent SQL Server Central Article, Using a Certificate Signed Stored Read More... Posted Tuesday, January 12, 2010 12:26 AM by Jonathan Kehayias | 4 Comments Filed under: TSQL2sday

• Downgrading from SQL 2008 to 2005

  Every couple of weeks on one of the forums someone will ask a question about how to restore a backup from SQL 2008 to SQL 2005.  The answer to the question is always, you can’t restore a backup to a lower version of SQL  Server.  If you Read More... Posted Monday, January 11, 2010 11:51 PM by Jonathan Kehayias | 7 Comments Filed under: TSQL2sday

• Finding Implicit Column Conversions in the Plan Cache

  Last year Tibor Karaszi posted a blog post titled Match Those Types that talked about implicit data type conversions associated with mismatched data types between filter criteria and table column data types.  His blog post does a good job of covering Read More... Posted Friday, January 08, 2010 1:54 PM by Jonathan Kehayias | 15 Comments Filed under: Database Administration, Plan Cache

• Closing out 2009 – Goals in Review

  This year I set quite a few goals for myself both personally and professionally, and I blogged about them on my blog post Goals for 2009.   Looking back at them, I did really good accomplishing my primary goals for the year, dedicating a block of Read More... Posted Friday, January 01, 2010 12:53 AM by Jonathan Kehayias | 0 Comments Filed under: Goals