Archive for November, 2011

SQL Server A to Z – Waits

In the world of SQL Server, a process is either running, runnable, or waiting. A running process is, obviously, running; it’s the one getting CPU time. A runnable process has everything it needs to run, it’s just waiting for its turn on the CPU. A process that’s waiting, however, is one that needs some resource [...]

November 28, 2011  Tags: ,   Posted in: Troubleshooting  No Comments

Optimizing Backup Performance

If your environment is anything like mine, backups are usually not allocated the speediest disk. Generally speaking, those disks are reserved for data, logs, and tempdb. So it’s up to us squeeze every last bit of performance out of our backup jobs.В  If you’re using maintenance plans to do your backups, chances are you’re not [...]

November 22, 2011  Tags: , ,   Posted in: Maintenance  No Comments

SQL Server A to Z – Views

Happy Wednesday folks! Hope everyone’s having a great week. This episode of SQL Server A to Z is brought to you by the letter V, and V stands for vacation views! What is a view? A view is a “virtual table” that contains columns from one or more tables. Although you can query it like [...]

November 16, 2011  Tags: ,   Posted in: General, T-SQL  No Comments

Creating a Transaction Log Full Alert

When I was a kid, my mom had an old cookie-tin in which she kept her sewing supplies. On the lid was a sticker like this. I thought that was so clever. Anyway, we all have a list of things we say we’ll take care of when we get “a round tuit” (some longer than [...]

November 10, 2011  Tags: , ,   Posted in: Maintenance  One Comment

SQL Server A to Z – User-Defined Functions

The alphabet is quickly winding down (so sad).В  We’re up to the letter U and that stands for User-defined functions. What is a user-defined function (UDF)? A function is a unit of code that can accept parameters, perform some action or calculation, and then return the result of that action or calculation. A user-defined function, [...]

November 7, 2011  Tags: , ,   Posted in: T-SQL  One Comment