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So as suspected when I installed the new Security patch released by Microsoft for SQL 2005 sp2 that I mentioned this morning my build number has indeed shot up to 3233.  This places me somewhere between CU6 and CU7. Build 9.00.3228 was CU6 and 9.00.3239 is CU7. So just bear in mind that when you plop on your patch you are actually taking a ...

And so the great run comes to an end... For the full details of this incident please click here. N.B. This also affects Windows. However this is released under a different KB article. For the SQL 2005 sp2 KB article look at this link http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948108 For SQL 2000 GDR and MSDE 2000 KB article look at this one ...

Not a lot more to say about this other than... HURRY.  You only have till the 4th July to get those abstracts written and your sessions submitted. SQLBits is a really great community event and this one is going to be the biggest ever.  We are aiming for 450 delegates this time and expect those sessions to be as wide and varied as ...

This one is a bit surprising. Assume you have a cold SQL Server which you have just re-booted.  The buffer cache is empty and lots of I/O requests are going to be physical. Boo! Hiss!  Down with physical I/O. Well help is at hand (if you are using SQL Server Enterprise Edition). Ramp-up is the process of converting your I/O's from page ...

Are you using multiple files? Are you set up for proportional fill? Is it a warehouse?  Are you concerned about extent fragmentation? You should be.  Extent fragmentation upsets your lovely read-ahead and results in smaller I/O. Let me explain.  When SQL Server allocates - it does so on a one extent at a time.  If multiple ...

I thought it might be fun to do series of posts on features that are exclusive to enterprise edition but that aren't significant enough in their own right to make it on to the big ticket list.  Sometimes people balk at shelling out for SQL Server Enterprise Edition without realising on what they are missing out.  So my objective is to ...

Whilst at SQLBits I heard a rather shocking statement: Over 80% of the worlds SQL Server instances are still using SQL Server 2000.  I say statement because I have had a little trawl round the web and I couldn't find anything to back this number up (or what it included or excluded e.g. MSDE could weigh heavily into this number). However, I ...

I don't care what any of you say, by far the most exciting announcement from today's MIX08 keynote was SQL Server Data Services (SSDS). [OK, I admit I may be in a minority on this one and I strongly suspect my colleagues in Conchango's Interactive Media team will disagree but hey, this is my blog and I'll say what I like :)] I won't go into ...

Saturday March 01 2008 was the second SQLBits conference.  This is not an ordinary conference - it's a community conference created by some of the UK's leading SQL Server practitioners. Tony, Simon, Allan, Darren, Martin & Chris put an amazing amount of effort in to organising the event and I think the result was there for all to ...

Today I ran into a blocker when trying to do this. Having spent a reasonable amount of time taking all of my sql statements out of the OPENQUERY argument and putting them into a string variable I then found it didn't work. The reason (from BOL) it turns out is that, and I quote; "OPENQUERY does not accept variables for its ...