Search results matching tag 'Video'

Video accompanying my SSDT article is now available

jamiet — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 23:52:07 GMT

A couple of weeks ago in Get to Know SQL Server 2012's SQL Server Data Tools [article published] I stated that an article that I wrote about SSDT had been published and was available for reading online at http://www.devproconnections.com/. The article has since been updated to include a 10-minute video that I recorded demonstrating some of the basic concepts of SSDT so if you want to hear me drone on about SSDT in my dulcet Yorkshire brogue (!!!), click through, settle back and enjoy!

@Jamiet

Learn More About SQL Server IO and Query Tuning in These Webcasts

KKline — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 18:50:00 GMT

I'm doing two new webcasts next week on Wednesday, December 19th, one in the morning and the other after lunch.

SSDs are a Game Changer for SQL Server Storage

No, session is not exclusively about SSDs. But this is my first session on IO and storage tuning that emphasizes SSDs over hard disks. As Bob Dylan said "Times, they are a'changin'". This session on Wednesday, December 19th at 11:30 AM EST, sponsored by Astute Networks, takes you through all of the basics of storage and IO tuning, regardless of the underlying storage technology. I'll show you how SQL Server handles storage structures, how to identify IO activity on Windows and SQL Server, and best practices for minimizing IO bottlenecks. Register now for: Storage IO Best Practices for SQL Server and a New Approach to Solving Application Performance Issues.

Write Better SQL Queries

The next webcast on Wednesday, December 19th at 2 PM EST, is with me, Aaron Bertrand (Twitter | Blog) and SQLCruise Impresario & Microsoft MVP Tim Ford (Twitter | Blog) as we take you through the query tuning process, discussing important DMVs to use during query tuning, as well as demonstrating several essential query tuning techniques that every SQL developer should know. Not only are we presenting an hour of top quality technical content, we’ll also be giving away some cool prizes, including the grand prize of a paid registration for the upcoming SQLCruise Miami, a $1,395 value! Register now for: SQL Server Query Tuning Best Practices, Hosted by Kevin Kline and Aaron Bertrand with special guest Tim Ford

I hope to see you at both of these sessions next week! Best regards,

-Kev

-Follow me on Twitter!

How To Download Free Sessions From PASS

KKline — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 15:02:00 GMT

For all members of the Professional Association for Server (PASS), are you downloading slides and videos from all sorts of great PASS events? If not, what are you waiting for ... an invitation?

Ok, here it is. I invite you to download like a madman! (How a madman downloads, an almost entirely virtual activity, is not the question here, ok?).

For starters, there's the recent 24 Hours of PASS event. I hope you were able to attend all of the sessions you wanted. But even if you didn't get to see any, you can see them now as long as you're a (free) member of PASS. The session recordings are now available for streaming from the 24 Hours of PASS Archive website. Review your favorites or catch up on some of the sessions you missed, by gum! Questions? Contact us at 24hrs@sqlpass.org

Next on the list for downloads are the PASS Summit 2012 highlights. The navigation is a little weird. But all you have to do is simply click on the keynote that you're interested in. And may I recommend, as always, the excellent session from Dr. David Dewitt. Again, you need to be a PASS member, but it's free. And I'd be remiss not to mention the SQLPASS YouTube Channel.

During and immediately after each PASS Summit, attendees are able to buy the event records for around $175. That's over 150 hours of training, over three weeks of training I say, for under $200!!! I hear that this year, instead of a massive DVD set, we'll be getting a slim 32- or 64Gb thumbdrive. Yeah! But did you know you can also watch sessions from earlier years, free for members, at http://www.sqlpass.org/LearningCenter/SessionRecordings.aspx? That's right, brothers and sisters, if you didn't get to go to older events and didn't buy the DVDs, you don't have to bribe that scruffy mangy dog of a DBA to get your own look at the sessions. And since SQL Server versions don't change enormously from one year to the next, most of the content remains valuable and worthwhile for several years. For example, most recommendations and sessions from the PASS Summit 2008 event are still valuable even if you've upgraded to SQL Server 2012.

Take Another Look at PASS Virtual Chapters

Don’t have a local PASS Chapter near you? Want to learn from your desk? Or are you simply looking for more opportunities for free SQL Server training and learning every month with fellow IT pros from around the world? Virtual Chapters (VCs) are a great way to get involved in the PASS community from your own home or office. Virtual chapters are targeted, online monthly webcasts from top-rated speakers with related subject matter from one month to the next, such as database design, performance, virtualization, etc. Here’s how. But wait - there's more. All of the VC sessions are also recorded and posted online for later viewing, usually within a month of the initial broadcast.

Enjoy!

-Kevin

Follow me on Twitter!

Two New Slide Decks. Plus, the Week in Colorado.

KKline — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 15:03:00 GMT

I had the honor of traveling the great state of Colorado last week, speaking at the PASS chapters in Boulder, Colorado Springs, and Denver. At all three events, we had a stellar attendance and, at least in Denver, broke all the records in recent memory both in terms of overall attendance and in first-timers. Denver, in fact, was standing room only and had nearly 30 first time attendees. Great news! I also want to give a special shout-out of thanks and appreciation to Chris Shaw (Twitter | Blog) whose hard work and tenacity ensured that all of Colorado got to see me speak. From left to right, Gabriel Villa (Twitter), me, Chris Shaw, and Rebecca Mitchell (Twitter). If it weren't for Chris, I wouldn't have been there. Thanks for putting in the time, amigo!

New Slide Decks!

During the 3-day jaunt, I presented two of my more popular sessions. These are updated slide decks, in case you want to download them here:

UG - End-to-End Troubleshooting

and

UG - Top 10 SQL Server Administration Mistakes

Be sure to check in the Slides area of the website, if you want to see the links for SpeakerRate, and in the case of several of my presentations, white papers, video recordings, etc. It's the People that Matter

A Blast from the SQLPASS Past!

I've always tried to maintain the relationships I built with the founding members of the PASS board of directors. After their time on the PASS board, almost all of them have moved on from SQL Server to other adventures. Pam Smith, the first president of the organization, is now a professor. Guy Brown, the second president, is now the director of IT at his same employer, rather than just SQL Server as when he was on the PASS board. A few, such as Kurt Windisch, a former VP of PASS, and my good friend Joe Webb (Twitter | Blog), are still active in the SQL Server space. One relationship that I've enjoyed over the years is with PASS' original Microsoft liaison and now a Denver-area software entrepreneur Steve Murchie (at right) running his own healthcare IT outfit. Steve has been a source of inspiration to me and also of great advice for all things startup-related. It was great to connect with Steve and catch up on his latest doings.

I also got to enjoy an evening out with the local attendees after the Denver user group meeting. It was great to hang out with folks there. I got to meet Kevin Cox (twitter), a member of Microsoft's incredibly talented SQLCAT group, and for whom I was a technical editor on a SQL Server v6.5 book back in the Neanderthal era. That shows just how old both Kevin and I actually are. Other cool folks that I got to meet included Steve Wake, Mike Fal, Marc Beacom, Jason Kassay, Jason Horner and my ol' buddy, Kelly the Greeley Geek.

On top of that, long-time SQL Server MVP and all-around awesome guy Steve Jones (Twitter | Blog) visited. I kept him out way too late that night which, to be honest, isn't usually my style. But the good conversation propelled us on past midnight.

The Good Folks at SQL Server Professional and Windows IT Professional Magazines

I've written for SQL Server Professional (formerly the artist known as "SQLMag") in some form or another starting from my first cover article for them way back in the mid 1990's. My Tool Time column has been going strong there since, oh, around 2006 iirc. For most of the time I've known the folks at SQLMag, they were located in Loveland, CO but they were able to move to some incredibly nice digs just up the road in Fort Collins. In all the many years, I've written for them, I'd never been to their offices - until now. It was great to visit and break bread with Megan (to my right), Blair (across), and Jaylee (across and to my right)!

I've always supported SQLMag and encourage you to subscribe. On top of the goodness already in the digital magazine, there are some neat developments coming down the pipeline with SQLMag which I think we'll all enjoy. Be sure to subscribe today! (You can click the badge on the left or simply go to http://www.sqlmag.com).

What's Next?

My current travel schedule is pinned up on this blog post HERE. However, I also know of a couple on-line appearances and probably a trip between the long gap between now and my next in-person appearance at the Orlando SQL Saturday at the end of September, where I'll also be teaching a pre-conference seminar (register HERE for the seminar).

SSWUG

The first on-line event to note is my a presentation by SSWUG of my Leadership Skills for IT Professionals video series, starting on August 24th. Sign up using the hyperlink (note that a video plays immediately upon loading the webpage, in case you want to be ready to pause or stop it). You can also buy a DVD set of the 14 hours of leadership training content.

24HOP - The 24 Hours of PASS Event

I'll also be speaking on the topic of influence in the next 24 Hours of PASS coming up on September 20th and 21st. Registration for the twenty-four hours of around the clock presentations is completely free and well worth your time. Check the schedule for the event and register! Even if you can only watch one or two sessions (or even zero sessions), be sure to register so that you'll automatically be notified when the sessions become available as streaming media.

Enjoy!

-Kev

-Follow me on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook

Come See Me. I'll Probably Be Just Down the Street Soon!

KKline — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 15:02:00 GMT

Even though I've recently changed jobs, I'll still be speaking at a lot of SQL events across the country and internationally. There are still a few trips that I've yet to finalize, in particular with the fine folks in Houston, run by my friend Nancy Hidy (blog | twitter), and my friends in San Francisco and Silicon Valley, run by my friend Mark Ginnebaugh (blog | twitter). Also, do to some missed deadlines, it looks like I won't be speaking at the Nordic SQL Rally this fall. My bad! On the other hand, you can see when checking my roster, that I hardly have time to catch my breath with this travel schedule.

I'll also be doing several on-line events with the PASS Professional Development Virtual Chapter, run by Mark Caldwell (blog | twitter), through out the year.

Here's what's on the docket up through the start of the holiday season:

New York City

SQL Saturday 158, August 4

The Colorado User Group Tour

Boulder PASS user group meeting, August 14

Colorado Springs PASS user group meeting, August 15 (Register here for Colorado Springs PASS user group meeting).

Denver PASS user group meeting, August 16

Comatose, August 17 (Not an actual city in CO).

Orlando

SQL Saturday Performance Tuning Pre-Con, September 28

SQL Saturday 151, September 29

Online

SSWUG 2012 Fall vConference, Oct 2-4, (Please register using code 'VCKEVIN'. I will personally hug you, virtually.)

Lincoln

SQL Saturday Performance Tuning Pre-Con, October 5

SQL Saturday 165, October 6

Cedar Rapids

East Iowa PASS user group meeting, Oct 8 TBD

Quad City PASS user group meeting, Oct 9 TBD

Nashville (Go Titans!)

SQL Saturday Leadership Skills for IT Pros Pre-Con, October 12

SQL Saturday 145, October 13

Seattle

SQL Connections, Las Vegas, Nov 1-4

PASS Summit 2012, Seattle, Nov 6-9

Let me know if you're nearby and if you're coming to any of these events. I'd enjoy seeing you personally and getting a chance to shake your hand!

Hope to see you soon,

-Kevin

-Follow me on Twitter!

-More content at http://KevinEKline.com

Recorded Webcast Available: Extend SCOM to Optimize SQL Server Performance Management

KKline — Thu, 28 Jun 2012 11:37:00 GMT

Join me and Eric Brown, Quest Software senior product manager for SQL Server monitoring tools, as we discuss the server health-check capabilities of Systems Center Operations Manager (SCOM) in this previously recorded webcast. We delve into techniques to maximize your SCOM investment as well as ways to complement it with deeper monitoring and diagnostics.

You’ll walk away from this educational session with the skills to:

Take full advantage of SCOM’s value for day-to-day SQL Server monitoring
Extend the capabilities of SCOM to proactively manage SQL Server performance
Troubleshoot issues in real time and historically
Drill into database health to quickly find the root cause of issues and make corrections

Watch the recorded webcast: HERE

Introducing SSIS Reporting Pack for SQL Server code-named Denali

jamiet — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 23:25:00 GMT

In recent blog posts I have introduced the new SSIS Catalog that is forthcoming in SQL Server Code-named Denali:

The SSIS Catalog is responsible for executing SSIS packages and also for capturing the metadata from those executions. However, at the time of writing there is no mechanism provided to view analyse and drill into that metadata and that is the reason that I am, in this blog post, introducing a suite of SSIS Catalog reports called the SSIS Reporting Pack ~~which you can download from my SkyDrive at http://bit.ly/ez55g4.~~ The latest version of the reports can be gotten from http://ssisreportingpack.codeplex.com/releases/.

In this first release the SSIS Reporting Pack includes five reports:

Catalog – A high-level summary of all activity in the Catalog
Folders – A summary of activity in each Catalog Folder
Folder – Project-level activity per single Folder
Executions – A visualisation of all executions per Folder/Project/Package/Environment or subset thereof
Execution – Information about an individual execution

Here is a screenshot of the Executions report:

Notice that the SSIS Reporting Pack provides a visual overview of all executions in the Catalog. Each execution is represented as a bar on the bar chart, the success or otherwise of each execution is indicated by the colour of the bar and the execution time is indicated by the bar height.

I have recorded a video that gives an overview of the SSIS Reporting which I have embedded below. If you are having any trouble viewing the video go see it at http://vimeo.com/17617974

I must stress that this is a very early version of the SSIS Reporting Pack and I am expecting it to change a lot over the coming year. I am very keen to get some feedback about this, specifically:

let me know if anything does not work as you expect
give me your feature requests

The easiest way to get hold of of me for now is within the comments section of this blog post.

That’s all for now. I hope the SSIS Reporting Pack proves useful and I look forward to hearing your feedback. Lastly, that download link again: ~~http://bit.ly/ez55g4~~. http://ssisreportingpack.codeplex.com/releases/.

@jamiet

SSIS gotcha: Beware of multiple outputs from a synchronous script component

jamiet — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 20:43:12 GMT

A few days ago I was alerted to a peculiarity of SSIS’s Script Component that I believe people need to be aware of. Its a peculiarity that can rear its head when your script component is synchronous and has multiple outputs. Here’s an example of a dataflow that contains such a component:

Some things to note about this dataflow that you can’t tell from this screenshot:

The source component will create a 1-row,1-column dataset with the value “1” in it
Even though it has three outputs “SCR Send data to multiple outputs” is still a synchronous component*

*If you don’t understand how a synchronous component can have multiple outputs and/or have never heard of an Exclusion Group then you should go and read my blog post from 2005 Multiple outputs from a synchronous script transform – the blog post you’re reading right now won’t make much sense without it! If you have ever used the Multicast component then it shouldn’t surprise you that a synchronous component can have multiple outputs – because that’s a pretty good definition of what the Multicast component does!

Here’s the important code inside “SCR Send data to multiple outputs”:

The code:

increments the incoming value and puts it into Output0
increments the value again and puts it into Output1
increments the value again and puts it into Output2

Given that out starting value is “1” you might expect that our three outputs would contain the values “2”, “3” & “4” respectively but in fact that is not the case. Here is what we actually see in those three outputs when we execute the dataflow:

Each of our outputs has the same value “4”. Why is that? The trick is in understanding something fundamental about synchronous components, they only ever output the same number of rows as are input. The fact that in the data flow above it appears as though three rows have been output is simply an illusion that is best explained by former SSIS Development Manager Kirk Haselden who left the following comment on my blog post that I linked to earlier:

The additional or duplicate rows are an illusion. The Dataflow Task actually tracks what buffer columns and rows are visible to the downstream transforms, but doesn't copy any buffers or rows. It simply "exposes" them with row and column views.
Truly, the synchronous outputs only send the same number of columns* as they receive on their inputs.
- Kirk Haselden, 15th March 2006
*This is a typo. Kirk meant to say “rows” not “columns”

In our case the script component has simply incremented the same value three times and we are looking at that same incremented value of “4” in each of our outputs.

I have produced a short video that demonstrates this behaviour using the dataflow pictured above. Embedding videos here on SQLBlog is however a fiddly experience so for ease I’ll just direct you to view it on Vimeo at Multiple Outputs from a synchronous script component.

Hope this helps. Any questions please put them in the comments.

@JamieT

Inequality joins, Asynchronous transformations and Lookups : SSIS

jamiet — Fri, 14 May 2010 21:13:00 GMT

It is pretty much accepted by SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) developers that synchronous transformations are generally quicker than asynchronous transformations (for a description of synchronous and asynchronous transformations go read Asynchronous and synchronous data flow components). Notice I said “generally” and not “always”; there are circumstances where using asynchronous transformations can be beneficial and in this blog post I’ll demonstrate such a scenario, one that is pretty common when building data warehouses.

Imagine I have a [Customer] dimension table that manages information about all of my customers as a slowly-changing dimension. If that is a type 2 slowly changing dimension then you will likely have multiple rows per customer in that table. Furthermore you might also have datetime fields that indicate the effective time period of each member record.

Here is such a table that contains data for four dimension members {Terry, Max, Henry, Horace}:

Notice that we have multiple records per customer and that the [SCDStartDate] of a record is equivalent to the [SCDEndDate] of the record that preceded it (if there was one). (Note that I am on record as saying I am not a fan of this technique of storing an [SCDEndDate] but for the purposes of clarity I have included it here.)

Anyway, the idea here is that we will have some incoming data containing [CustomerName] & [EffectiveDate] and we need to use those values to lookup [Customer].[CustomerId]. The logic will be:

Lookup a [CustomerId] WHERE [CustomerName]=[CustomerName] AND [SCDStartDate] <= [EffectiveDate] AND [EffectiveDate] <= [SCDEndDate]

The conventional approach to this would be to use a full cached lookup but that isn’t an option here because we are using inequality conditions. The obvious next step then is to use a non-cached lookup which enables us to change the SQL statement to use inequality operators:

Let’s take a look at the dataflow:

Notice these are all synchronous components. This approach works just fine however it does have the limitation that it has to issue a SQL statement against your lookup set for every row thus we can expect the execution time of our dataflow to increase linearly in line with the number of rows in our dataflow; that’s not good.

OK, that’s the obvious method. Let’s now look at a different way of achieving this using an asynchronous Merge Join transform coupled with a Conditional Split. I’ve shown it post-execution so that I can include the row counts which help to illustrate what is going on here:

Notice that there are more rows output from our Merge Join component than on the input. That is because we are joining on [CustomerName] and, as we know, we have multiple records per [CustomerName] in our lookup set. Notice also that there are two asynchronous components in here (the Sort and the Merge Join).

I have embedded a video below that compares the execution times for each of these two methods. The video is just over 8minutes long.

View on Vimeo

For those that can’t be bothered watching the video I’ll tell you the results here. The dataflow that used the Lookup transform took 36 seconds whereas the dataflow that used the Merge Join took less than two seconds. An illustration in case it is needed:

Pretty conclusive proof that in some scenarios it may be quicker to use an asynchronous component than a synchronous one. Your mileage may of course vary.

The scenario outlined here is analogous to performance tuning procedural SQL that uses cursors. It is common to eliminate cursors by converting them to set-based operations and that is effectively what we have done here. Our non-cached lookup is performing a discrete operation for every single row of data, exactly like a cursor does. By eliminating this cursor-in-disguise we have dramatically sped up our dataflow.

I hope all of that proves useful. You can download the package that I demonstrated in the video from my SkyDrive at http://cid-550f681dad532637.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/Public/BlogShare/20100514/20100514%20Lookups%20and%20Merge%20Joins.zip

Comments are welcome as always.

@Jamiet

SSIS Prehistory video

jamiet — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 12:45:27 GMT

I’m currently ~~wasting~~ spending my Easter bank holiday putting together my presentation SSIS Dataflow Performance Tuning for the upcoming SQL Bits conference in London and in doing so I’m researching some old material about how the dataflow actually works.

Boring as it is I’ve gotten easily sidelined and have chanced upon an old video on Channel 9 entitled Euan Garden - Tour of SQL Server Team (part I). Euan is a former member of the SQL Server team and in this series of videos he walks the halls of the SQL Server building on Microsoft’s Redmond campus talking to some of the various protagonists and in this one he happens upon the SQL Server Integration Services team.

The video was shot in 2004 so this is a fascinating (to me anyway) glimpse into the development of SSIS from before it was ever shipped and if you’re a geek like me you’ll really enjoy this behind-the-scenes look into how and why the product was architected. The video is also notable for the presence of the cameraman – none other than the now-rather-more-famous-than-he-was-then Robert Scoble.

See it at http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/TheChannel9Team/Euan-Garden-Tour-of-SQL-Server-Team-part-I/ Enjoy!

@Jamiet