Kalen Delaney : documentation

Did You Know? A New SQL Server 2008 Books Online Update is Available

Kalen Delaney — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 01:45:00 GMT

When I searched for "sql server 2008 books online update", the first non-advertising hit I got was labeled August 2008, and I already have a Books Online download for August.

However, when I clicked on the link I was taken to a page to download a brand new January 2009 Update::

So here's the link:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=765433F7-0983-4D7A-B628-0A98145BCB97&displaylang=en

Have fun!

~Kalen

Did You Know? You can search the web-only Books Online

Kalen Delaney — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 01:22:00 GMT

You might be aware (from other bloggers on this site) that there is a new web-only Books Online for SQL Server 2008 available at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd239407.aspx.

Like Tibor, I prefer a downloadable BOL, partly because I do a lot of research and writing while traveling and I don't always have an internet connection, like at 42,000 ft (~14000m) above the Atlantic Ocean.

However, I need the latest documentation while I am finishing up my book, so I decided to start using it today, now that I am back from my travels to the UK. However, I discovered another reason while I like the desktop copy of BOL better and that is the searching functionality. The web-only BOL only has the search box to search the ENTIRE MSDN site, and it's not nearly as convenient as the search capabilities in the local documentation.

To my delight, I just found out from Alan Brewer, from the SQL Documentation Team, that Microsoft has a nice search macro to help limit your search on MSDN to just SQL Server 2008 topics:

http://search.live.com/macros/sql_server_user_education/sql2008bolsearch/

It's still not as nice as the local searching, but since web-only is all we have for now, for the most recent BOL, it's definitely a good thing.

There is also a 2005 online search macro at:

http://blogs.msdn.com/sqlserverue/archive/2007/10/01/eliminate-extranneous-search-results.aspx

Have fun!

~Kalen

Did You Know: Specifying Checkpoint Duration

Kalen Delaney — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 02:55:00 GMT

I realize probably no one reads Books Online cover to cover, so there are probably lots of little details that easily slip by you. I was introduced to one of the hidden 'features' just last week. Here it is:

CHECKPOINT can take a parameter!

It's right there in BOL:

CHECKPOINT [ checkpoint_duration ]

This parameter allows you to specify how much time (in seconds) SQL Server should take to complete the checkpoint. If you specify a smaller value, SQL Server will apply more resources to completing the checkpoint, and if you specify a larger number, SQL Server will apply fewer resources. At first glance, this seems like a very cool feature. But then I realized there was very little practical use for it, for these reasons at least:

1) There is no way to know how much time a checkpoint should normally take, so giving it a number to use more or fewer resources is just shooting in the dark.

2) This only applies to the manual checkpoint, not SQL Server's automatic checkpoint. So if you're experiencing a slight decline in throughput every minute or so when the automatic checkpoint starts running, you can't just ask SQL Server to slow down and release some of the resources.

Maybe I'm missing something, but this seems like one of those features that was added 'just because they could'. I'd be interested in hearing your ideas regarding the potential usefulness of this capability.

But really, this post was about the fact that I'd never looked at the page for the CHECKPOINT command, and never realized there were any options at all.

~Kalen

Did You Know? It's in the Books Online!

Kalen Delaney — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 02:25:00 GMT

Did you know you can ALTER an existing column to give it the identity property?

If you look up ALTER TABLE in the BOL index, you'll see this:

ALTER TABLE table_name
{ [ ALTER COLUMN column_name
       {DROP DEFAULT |
         SET DEFAULT constant_expression |
         IDENTITY [ ( seed , increment ) ] }

....

I had been telling people for years that you couldn't change the identity property of an existing column, but there is was. And if you can't trust BOL, who can you trust?

Then I looked again.

Oops... this was ALTER TABLE for SQL Server Compact Edition, which has very different syntax in many cases. But the CE entry seems to always come up first whenever I do a search or use the Index. There are some workarounds however.

In the Search Dialog, right under the wide search field, is a drop-list list next to the word "Technology". Click the down-arrow and you'll see a list of checkboxes which allow you pick and choose which elements of Books Online you want to search. You can uncheck SQL Server 2005 Compact Edition. However, that only affects the search operations. If you use the Index, you'll still see CE content. There's good news here too. There is a Filtered by: drop-down list at the top of the index list, and you can choose which content you're interested in. For this list however, the choice is all or one. I can choose just to see SQL Server Database Engine, but I can't choose to see everything BUT Compact Edition.

But wait. I just found out about a really clever trick, from former SQL Server MVP Umachandar Jayachandran, who now works on the SQL team at Microsoft:

You can use the Help Collection Manager in BOL to remove the SQLCE content
entirely. This will filter it from the index too. You can access the Help
Collection Manager from:

ms-help://MS.SQLCC.v9/sqlcc9/html/b06d0f98-ef00-4b03-9f5d-b5c184b8df92.htm
Search for below if you can't use the link above:
Adding and Removing Help Collections

The URL can be entered directly into a browser, or into the URL text box at the top of the main BOL content screen.

Have fun!

~Kalen