January 2013 - Posts

• Visualizing Data File Layout III

  This is part three of a blog series illustrating a method to render the file structure of a SQL Server database into a graphic visualization. Previous Installments: Part 1 Part 2 Those that have been reading this series might be be thinking, “Is he going Read More... Posted Monday, January 28, 2013 10:45 PM by merrillaldrich | 5 Comments Filed under: indexes, internals, maintenance, storage

• Visualizing Data File Layout II

  Part 2 of a blog series visually demonstrating the layout of objects on data pages in SQL Server Part 1 In Part 1 of this series, I introduced a little demo app that renders the layout of pages in SQL Server files by object. Today I’ll put that app through Read More... Posted Wednesday, January 23, 2013 4:40 PM by merrillaldrich | 3 Comments Filed under: indexes, internals, maintenance, storage

• Visualizing Data File Layout I

  Part 1 of a blog series visually demonstrating the layout of objects on data pages in SQL Server Some years ago a gentleman called Danny Gould created a free tool called Internals Viewer for SQL Server . I’m a visual sort of guy, and I always thought Read More... Posted Tuesday, January 22, 2013 3:50 PM by merrillaldrich | 7 Comments Filed under: indexes, internals, maintenance, storage

• Update to Rules-Driven Maintenance

  Back in August I posted a first version of a rules-driven solution for backups, index and statistics maintenance and integrity checks. The system in general has been working well, and has saved my team a huge amount of time and effort. We are coming to Read More... Posted Wednesday, January 16, 2013 11:34 AM by merrillaldrich | 0 Comments Filed under: backup, indexes, maintenance, productivity, tools Attachment(s): RulesMaintenanceV1_1.zip

• Updated Warehouse Re-Index Script

  As I talked about in my last post , I just went through a re-indexing project that took the partitioned fact rows from our warehouse and relocated them into new files. There are a lot of tables and indexes involved, so I have a PowerShell “helper” script Read More... Posted Monday, January 14, 2013 5:30 PM by merrillaldrich | 1 Comments Filed under: partitioning, powershell

• Reindexing? Check your DOP.

  I had a long night last night of watching Perfmon counters while I coaxed our data warehouse fact data into new files. I learned something through this little project, perhaps dumb and obvious, but important: don’t assume that your re-indexing work, even Read More... Posted Sunday, January 13, 2013 12:26 PM by merrillaldrich | 5 Comments

• Diversion: Sub-Second SQL Sudoku Solver

  I enjoy Sudoku as a way to relax on occasion but, being an IT guy, I suppose I am predictably meta: solving them is fun, but making a machine to solve them is even more fun. I created a clunky solver once before based on the idea of using as few T-SQL Read More... Posted Sunday, January 06, 2013 12:46 PM by merrillaldrich | 0 Comments Attachment(s): SubSecondSudoku.zip