Database Administration SIG

The goal of the DBA SIG is to provide a PASS community for the DBA. It provides a forum for open discussion and education on issues that face SQL Server database administrators. The DBA SIG holds a monthly live meeting event on the fourth Wednesday of every month at noon, eastern time. These 1 - 1¼ hour presentations include slides, demos and a time for questions and answers. The meetings are recorded and archived.

You’ll find the following information on this page: DBA SIG Live Meeting details, DBA SIG Opportunities, Recordings of past DBA Sig Live Meetings.

Next Live Meeting event takes place on December 3, 2008 at noon EDT

Jason Massie will present Social computing for the DBA.

Meeting Abstract
This month, we will talk on a "Professional Development" topic after all of the hardcore tech goodness of the PASS Summit. Less face it. DBA's are conservative by nature and this is a good thing. However, this can lead to slow adoption of new services that could help you do your job and interact with other DBA's. In a Web 2.0 world, you have more than NNTP newsgroups, mailing lists and web forums that community is built around. In this session, we will look at these services as they apply to the DBA so we can see how we can best leverage them on the job and professionally. The brave may even want to tie some of these services into the data tier. We will talk about good and bad of doing that. We will also take a look at some up and coming services that we should keep an eye on.

Presenter Bio
Jason has 10 years experience as a DBA and has specialized in performance tuning for the last five. He was recognized by Microsoft as a SQL Server MVP. Jason has spoken at the Professional Association of SQL Server Conference, the North Texas SQL Server Users Group, SQL Connections and TechED. He has worked at Terremark (formerly Data Return) for nearly a decade.

You can contact him at jason@statisticsio.com.

Meeting Details
Meeting URL: www.livemeeting.com/cc/usergroups
Meeting ID: DBA SIG 20081203
Meeting Key: <not required for attendees>
Audio Conferencing (Toll-free): 1 (866) 231-6479
Participant Code: 304968
Please mute your line once you dial-in to the audio portion of the meeting.

FIRST TIME USERS: To save time before the meeting, check your system to make sure it is compatible with Microsoft Office Live Meeting at www112.livemeeting.com/cc/usergroups

Future Presentations:

Wednesday, January 28th, 2009 Introducing Resource Governor by Steve Wright

Wednesday, February 25th, 2009 End-to-End Performance Tuning by Kevin Kline

DBA SIG Volunteer Opportunities

Short-term commitments

Write an article on a DBA-related topic for our web site
Give a live meeting presentation

Long-term commitments

Recruit presenters and content generators
Manage content review and posting to the web site
General web-site maintenance (Dot-Net-Nuke)
Facilitate live meeting event logistics

Please contact Sharon Dooley at DBAvolunteer@sqlpass.org if you’re interested in any of these volunteer opportunities.

Live Meeting Recordings

Automating Common DBA Tasks
Presenter: Jonathan Kehayias
Date: October 22, 2008
View Meeting:Automating_Common_DBA_Tasks.wmv
Download Meeting:

Description: Database Administrators often spend hours each day doing the same repetitive tasks; checking Error Logs, Backups, Drive Space, Agent History, Job Logs, and other common “checklist” items. Learn how to easily automate these common tasks in SQL Server 2000, 2005 and 2008 using the tools that are already available in the Operating System and SQL Server.

SQL Server 2008 Data Collection
Presenter: Gregory A. Larsen
Date: September 24, 2008
View Meeting: SQL2008DataCollectionLiveMeeting.wmv
Download Meeting: sigs.sqlpass.org/portals/0/dba/SQL2008DataCollectionLiveMeeting.zip

Description: This live meeting discusses the new Data Collection component of SQL Server 2008. This presentation covers how the Data Collection feature can be used to gather, monitor and provide trend analysis for key performance indicators in your SQL Server 2008 environment. This session discusses the architecture of the Data Collection component, how to configure it to collect statistics, and will review some of the standard reports available. Also discussed was how you can extend the data collection process by defining your own data collection routines.

New DBA Toys in SQL Server 2008 Part 1
Presenter: Sharon Dooley
Date: June 25, 2008
View Meeting: New DBA Toys in SQL Server.wmv
Download Meeting: sigs.sqlpass.org/portals/0/dba/New DBA Toys in SQL Server.zip

Description: SQL Server 2008 introduces four major new capabilities: policy-based management, the Resource Governor, Performance Data Warehouse and auditing. This talk focuses on the first two. Part 2, which will be presented at a later date, covers the last two. Policy-based management allows you to enforce rules for how things should be on one or more servers. The terminology is complex, and the capabilities are immense. The Resource Governor allows you to define workloads and specify the resources, including cpu, memory and i/o bandwidth, a specific workload should have. In this demo-rich presentation, you'll get an introduction to the capabilities of both of these new features and learn how you can make them work for you. This presentation assumes a solid knowledge of Transact-SQL, a good understanding of SQL Server database engine features, as well as an understanding of the performance requirements of different types of queries.

Query Processing - Someone Else's Idea and Some of My Own
Presenter: Tjay Belt
Date: April 23, 2008
View Meeting: mms://wms.media.upstreamnetworks.com/16408-39076/Query Processing - Someone else-s ideas and some of my own.wmv

Description: The first noticeable aspect of SQL that is different from other programming languages is the order in which the code is processed. In most programming languages, the code is processed in the order in which it is written. In SQL, the first clause that is processed is the FROM clause, while the SELECT clause, which appears first, is processed almost last. The presentation will be a brief description of the different logical steps applied in both SQL Server 2000 and SQL Server 2005. You'll also see a demonstration of SQL code written by Itzik Ben-Gan from his book Inside Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2005 T-SQL Querying.

Notes: Suggest jumping 8 minutes and 30 seconds into recording to start the presentation

SQL Server 2008
Presenter: Greg Lowe
Date: November 28, 2007
View Meeting: mms://wms.media.upstreamnetworks.com/16408-39076/SQL Server 2008 Features Overview.wmv
Download Meeting:sigs.sqlpass.org/portals/0/dba/SQL Server 2008 Features Overview.zip

Description: "An Early Look At SQL Server 2008". In this session, Greg will provide a rapid introduction to the highlights of SQL Server 2008. He will cover the messaging regarding the product, drill into the four pillars of the product with demos from each and then cover the way the CTP model for SQL Server has been implemented.

Notes: This session doesn’t have sound

Introduction to Scripting and Automation with SQLCMD
Presenter: Haidong “Alex” Ji
Date: October 27, 2008
View Meeting: mms://wms.media.upstreamnetworks.com/16408-39076/Introduction to scripting and automation with SQLCMD.wmv

Description: This Live Meeting discusses sqlcmd, osql, isql comparison, Batch and Interactive mode, Variable for powerful scripting , Error Handling, and, Sqlcmd customization.

Notes: This session does not have sound

Optimizing Transactional Replication Performance
Presenter: Hilary Cotter
Date: September 26, 2007
View Meeting: mms://wms.media.upstreamnetworks.com/16408-39076/Optimizing Transactional Replication Performance.wmv

Description: This Live Meeting discusses Basics, Monitoring, Architecture, Log Reader Agent, Distribution Agent, Cleanup Task, and, Resources.

Notes: This session doesn’t have sound

Advanced Tips and Techniques for Using SQL Server 2005 Profiler
Presenter: Brad M. McGehee
Date: August 27, 2007
View Meeting: mms://wms.media.upstreamnetworks.com/16408-39076/Advance tips & techniques for using SQL Server 2005 Profiler.wmv
Download Meeting: sigs.sqlpass.org/portals/0/dba/Advance tips & techniques for using SQL Server 2005 Profiler.zip

Description: This Live Meeting discusses How to identify and analyze slowly performing queries, How to identify deadlock issues, How to identify sort warnings, How to identify blocking process, How to identify excessive auto stats activity, How to identify excessive SP compilations, How to identify excessive database file growth/shrinkage, and, How to identify excessive table/index scans.

Notes: This session doesn’t have any sound.

Microsoft SQL Server Outside the Box Scripting and Automation
Presenter: Edward J. Pochinski III
Date: July 25, 2007
View Meeting: mms://wms.media.upstreamnetworks.com/16408-39076/Microsoft SQL Server Out Side the Box Scripting & Automation.wmv

Description: This Live Meeting discusses the following:

Dump the event logs into a custom table which can be used for many different purposes such as alarming and testing a few queries.
Load some performance data
Use a WMI Script to monitor the MSSQL & SQL Agent Services.
View a very simple cmd shell watcher script that views processes in time and monitors block for you.
SA monitor scripts to detect if a SA account has been compromised. Plus dump some of the commands from the input buffer from the offensive SPID.
VB Script that calls up Excel and loads useful data for a few different purposes.

Notes: Suggest jumping 8 minutes and 30 seconds into recording to get to the start of the presentation.

A Review of SQL Server Storage Practices
Presenter: Linchi Shea
Date: June 29, 2007
View Meeting: mms://wms.media.upstreamnetworks.com/16408-39076/A Review of SQL Server Storage Practices.wmv

Description: Disk storage is a critical component in any SQL Server environment. As SQL Server evolves, so do SQL Server storage practices. From time to time, it is useful to stop and review how we manage storage in our SQL Server environments. In this presentation, we'll first highlight the concept of I/O path, and identify the key factors on an I/O path that may have a significant impact on SQL Server performance. We'll then discuss and evaluate various practices, opinions, or folklores with respect to these factors on the I/O path.

Notes: Suggest jumping 7 minutes and 30 seconds into recording to start presentation.

SQL Server Monitoring Strategies
Presenter: Bill Wunder
Date: May 23, 2007
View Meeting: mms://wms.media.upstreamnetworks.com/16408-39076/SQL Serve Monitor Strategies.wmv

Description: This Live Meeting discusses:

Describe the consideration for an effective monitoring strategy
Drill to some of the more interesting monitoring problems
Compare several different real world monitoring strategies

SQL Server 2005 Encryption: A Gentle Introduction
Presenter: Sharon F. Dooley
Date: May 23, 2007
View Meeting: mms://wms.media.upstreamnetworks.com/16408-39076/SQL Server 2005 Encryption A Gentle Introduction.wmv
Download Meeting: sigs.sqlpass.org/portals/0/dba/SQL Server 2005 Encryption A Gentle Introduction.zip

Description: This Live Meeting discusses the following information about encryption: Concepts; Backup and restoring encryption keys; Best practices.

Notes: Suggest jumping 8 minutes and 30 seconds into recording to start the presentation