Posts Tagged ‘Internals’

DBTA: What’s the Fuss about Data Deduplication?

Tuesday, November 16th, 2010

Listen to a group of database professionals talk for awhile and someone will eventually bring up the topic of data deduplication. Data deduplication is a means  to eliminate redundant data, either through hardware or software technologies.  To illustrate, imagine you’ve drafted a new project plan and sent it to five teammates asking for input.  That single file has now been reproduced, in identical bits and bytes, on a total of six computers. If everyone’s email inbox is backed up every night, that’s another six copies backed up on the email backup server.  Through data deduplication technology, only a single instance of your project plan would be backed up, and all other instances of the identical file would simply be tiny on-disk pointers to the original.

[READ MORE]

Posted Dec 14, 2009

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TN Summit 2010 – Surviving the Data Avalanche

Tuesday, November 9th, 2010

Here’s the link to my revamped presentation on Surviving the Data Avalanche

The Abstract for this presentation is here.

The slides for this presentation are here.

Video: SQL Performance Optimization

Thursday, November 4th, 2010

Gain insight into best practices for SQL Server optimization and ways to alleviate many root causes that can impact performance of your SQL Server database. Kevin also will discuss how to manage for planned and unplanned changes, speed time to implementation of your applications and ensure that your databases are running as they should.

You will learn how to:
* Identify the root cause of bottlenecks that hinder performance of your SQL Server environment
* Diagnose and fix T-SQL errors in development before code goes into production
* Learn new best practices for project planning and formatting your code
* Ensure that your code is scalable, optimized and validated
* Resolve 60-80% of the performance bottlenecks attributed to poorly written SQL

Posted December 19, 2006.

DBTA: The Big Keep Getting Bigger

Tuesday, November 2nd, 2010

In this season of recession and financial meltdowns, a common question seems to be, “How big is ‘too big to fail’?” Titans of the financial industry made big bets with lots of risk and, when they didn’t pan out, American society overall has to pay the price.  But, that aside, the very scale of our financial system, by just about every metric, has reached amazing heights, be that number of financial transactions per second, number of traders, number of funds traded, amount of money changing hands—you name it. [READ MORE]

Videos: Strategies for Addressing Common SQL Server Challenges

Thursday, October 28th, 2010

As a busy SQL Server DBA you face an increasing number of daily challenges:

  • Managing fast growing data volumes and database environments
  • Diagnosing and resolving performance issues
  • Effective backup and recovery
  • Monitoring and tracking database changes
  • Balancing current resources against future capacity needs

Inefficiencies in any of these areas can lead to performance degradation, unauthorized database changes, and unplanned, extended downtime.

Webcast originally presented by renowned SQL Server expert Kevin Kline and learn valuable strategies for addressing these challenges and more.

Posted April 04, 2007.

Video: SQL Server Disk Optimization

Thursday, October 21st, 2010

Since the release of SQL Server 2005, companies have been investing heavily in SQL Server for their business-critical applications. DBAs are now challenged with supporting ever-growing datasets and making efficient use of allocated disk space in both production and enterprise storage environments. Yet DBAs seldom have a clear picture of their data storage and therefore cannot determine whether they are getting a worthwhile return on their storage investment or if an out-of-disk situation is looming.

In this presentation, Kevin will address these challenges and explore methodologies to help you efficiently use allocated disk space for enterprise storage and production environments.

Two Free Training Webcasts Open for Registration

Monday, May 24th, 2010

We’ve got two sessions that you (the “we” meaning the fine folks at Quest Software) need to sign up for right away.  The upcoming webcast for Oracle-oriented folks has huge registration numbers.  And I’m sure you’ll learn more than you expected thanks to my fine co-presenters.  Get in while you still can before we hit the limit of what LiveMeeting can handle!

Pain of the Week: SQL Server for the Oracle DBA

Webcast: SQL Server for the Oracle DBA
Date: Thursday, May 27, 2010 (Just a couple days hence!)
Time: 8 a.m. Pacific / 11 a.m. Eastern / 4 p.m. United Kingdom / 5 p.m. Central Europe
Duration: 45-60 minutes
Cost: FREE

In enterprise IT, database professionals face a mixed-bag of platforms within their environments — and the overlapping duties that go along with them. Whether you like it or not, you get asked to support Microsoft SQL Server operations even though you’re an Oracle DBA.

In this instructive webcast, experts from Microsoft and Quest with years of experience in both platforms will discuss the biggest issues and areas of interest for Oracle DBAs who need to work on Microsoft SQL Server. You’ll learn their tips and tricks for efficiency and gain a deeper understanding of SQL Server to help you add more value than ever to your organization.

Presenters:
Kevin Kline, SQL Server MVP, Quest Software
Buck Woody, Senior Technology Specialist, SQL Server, Microsoft


Pain of the Week: Easy Ways to Fix Hard SQL Server Problems – Without a Guru

Webcast: Easy Ways to Fix Hard SQL Server Problems – Without a Guru
Date: Thursday, June 17, 2010
Time: 8 a.m. Pacific / 11 a.m. Eastern / 4 p.m. United Kingdom / 5 p.m. Central Europe
Duration: 45-60 minutes
Cost: FREE
In this instructive webcast, you’ll learn straightforward methods for troubleshooting and resolving common poorly performing stored procedures and queries in SQL Server 2008. The presenters will show you how to easily:

  • Read query execution plans and identify bottlenecks in performance
  • Record system performance metrics for trend analysis
  • Design databases and write Transact–SQL code to avoid common problems
  • Understand what an index is, what it does, and how to build one
  • Use industry-accepted best practices and develop your own to arrive at optimal database performance

Much of the webcast is based on Grant’s book, “SQL Server 2008 Query Performance Tuning Distilled.

Don’t miss this chance to get practical advice from working experts instead of just theories from academics!
Presenters:
Kevin Kline, SQL Server MVP, Quest Software
Grant Fritchey, “Scary” DBA from FM Global

New Webcast – SQL Server Internals & Architecture

Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010

Join me tomorrow for the PASS DBA Virtual Chapter meeting SQL Server Internals & Architecture. It’s the most fun you’ll ever have learning about the inner workings of a relational database – I promise!

Click here to register.

You don’t have to register to attend.  But if you register today, you’ll be entered into the drawing to win one two copies of my bestselling reference SQL in a Nutshell, covering the ANSI standard plus Oracle 11, SQL Server 2008, MySQL 5.2, and PostgreSQL 8.3.

This is NOT the Chameleon in the Bud-Wise-ER commercials. At least I think it's not.

I’ve put the slide deck up in my Slides area of the website.  However, because it contains a lot of big images, I had to publish it as a PDF file to meet my size limits.  That means that all of the animations in the slide deck are shot – and this presentation relies heavily on animation.