Something for the Weekend – SQL Server Links 05/11/10

SQL Server Links

• Windows Azure Security Links – Security is one of my own personal big reservations about SQL Azure, and with this excellent resource list from Buck Woody, I’ve got a lot of great material to cover that I am hoping will go some way to putting my concerns to rest. Yeah I’m paranoid, I’m a DBA!
• SQL Server Virtualization: Mo Cores, Mo Problems – Continuing his excellent series of Virtualization themed posts, Brent Ozar looks at NUMA technology considerations.
• Who is Active? v10.00: DMV Monitoring Made Easy – If you don’t know about this incredibly powerful, robust and freely available administrative stored procedure then you are missing out big time! Here’s the latest edition and here’s why you should be using it.
• What are Physical Sockets, Physical Cores, and Logical Cores and Why Does it matter? – The amount of hardware specific knowledge, pertinent to SQL Server, that  I have learnt from Glenn Berry is truly impressive. Put simply, this guy will teach you stuff you don’t already know that will enable you to do your job better!
• Query Hash Statistics, a query cost analysis tool, now available for download – This looks to be a very interesting tool. Played with it already? Let me know how you get on.
• Determine Transactional Replication workload to help resolve data latency – More expert Transactional Replication troubleshooting tips.
• The Well-Dressed DBA – Are you a well dressed DBA with cutting edge fashion sense? Make sure you are up to scratch by following Rob Symonds essential fashion guide.
• When is that Restore Going to Finish? – A T-SQL walk-through that shows how to query the internal column estimated_completion_time.
• Survey: what is the highest wait on your system? – A very interesting survey being conducted by Paul Randal, be sure to take part, not to mention learn from the results.
• Myths and misconceptions: 60-page PDF of blog posts – As if regularly dispelling SQL Server myths in gladiatorial like fashion was not enough, Paul Randal has gone one step further and kindly taken the time to collate the entire series of posts into a freely downloadable PDF for all. Nice one!
• Prof. SQL Server 2008 Internals & Troubleshooting – You probably know already that I am big fan of this title, but don’t take my word for it, check out what Mike Walsh had to say instead.
• Query Performance and multi-statement table valued functions – More customer case study gold from the CSS team.
• How to tell which version of SQL Server data access driver is used by an application client
• Updating Statistics Helps, But Not For The Reasons You Think – A statistical scenario walk-through courtesy of Michael J Swart.
• Upgrading from SQL Server 2000 to 2008 – I’m a big fan of checklists and here’s another great one for the DBA library thanks for the efforts of Mitch Wheat.
• Metadata for table valued parameters – The SQLFool is back with this detailed walk-through. Good stuff.
• A Trio of Table Variables – Myth busting time and in quality fashion too, courtesy of Gail Shaw.
• SQL Server on Power-Saving CPUs? Not So Fast – Going green is not always good, especially if your performance conscious DBA. Brent Ozar shows you why.
• How It Works: Extended Event (sqlos.wait_info*) – Yet another contribution from the CSS team.
• Return of the Index Analysis Report – This series is quite simply brilliant. If you have not been following the work of Jason Strate then you have some catching up to do but it will be totally worth it and your Indexes will thank you.
• TSQL Tuesday – Why DBA skills are important – I try not to highlight the T-SQL Tuesday posts in the weekly round up but Kimberly Tripp raises some really good points here that deserves your attention.
• In defense of transactional replication as an HA technology – Do you consider Transactional Replication as a HA solution? You should do and here’s why according to Paul Randal. There are also some brilliant links in this post to some great White Papers.
• A Brute Force Way to Compress a Database – A T-SQL snippet, although not sure I approve of the practice to compress all objects, no doubt it has it’s uses.
• How To Participate In The PASS Summit When You Can’t Be There – Personally I’m close to tears that I won’t be able to make it to the PASS Summit this year. I plan to at least get a taste of the action and you can too by following Kendal Van Dyke’s great tips. For those of you lucky enough to actually be attending, Kendal also has some great advice on his blog about how to make the most of your time at the PASS Summit.
• How It Works: SQL Parsing of Number(s), Numeric and Float Conversions – A great post from the Microsoft Customer Service and Support (CSS) SQL Support team.
• Writing Case Studies to Document Your Impact – How important is documentation to you? Not been getting much of it done lately? Read this now to understand how you could be selling yourself and your company short.