Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Moving Heaps to another Filegroup

For large databases on a server with access to multiple physical volumes (more spindles) it is a good practice to move large objects out of the PRIMARY filegroup.

Monday, August 08, 2011

Info and Usage of new COLUMNSTORE indexes

COLUMNSTORE indexes is one of the new features of SQL Denali which is currently in CTP3 and available for public consumption.

COLUMNSTORE indexes are nonclustered indexes store data in a column by itself in its own pages, a strategy to make certain types of access to this data in an isolated environment more efficient.  This cost benefit scales with massive rowcounts.

COLUMNSTORE indexes are intended for data warehouses or dedicated OLTP reporting systems, NOT traditional OLTP applications.  There is staggering limitation in the use of COLUMNSTORE indexes that force your hand when considering where to use them.

COLUMNSTORE indexes make your table read-only

Sunday, August 07, 2011

SQL Server Maintenance Best Practices with DMV's - SQL Saturday 64

First off, big thanks to the 375+ people who showed up for SQL Saturday 64 in Baton Rouge on August 6. It was a fantastic event.

Major thank-you's to Mike Huguet, Laurie Firmin, Thomas LeBlanc, Mark Verret, Stacy Vicknair, Justin Yesso, all our volunteers, and the great sponsors we had both local and nationwide.

A final thank you to our speakers, you were part of one of the biggest and most accomplished lineups of SQL and .net speakers I've ever seen at a SQL Saturday. I don't want to name-drop, but check out the schedule for the all the recognizable faces from the user community at large. WOW.

My employer Sparkhound had a whopping six speakers at the conference: Stacy Vicknair (VS Lightswitch), Justin Yesso (SSRS for .net developers), Ryan Richard (MVVM), Mike Huguet (Open XML), Victor Chataboon (Sharepoint admin) and myself.  This is just a sample of the capable, communicative and competent coworkers I have the pleasure of working with.

Here's the link to download the slidedeck and all sample scripts (including the few that we skipped) from my presentation on SQL Admin Best Practices with DMV's at SQL Saturday #64 yesterday in Baton Rouge:

Download scripts here