The Rambling DBA: Jonathan Kehayias

[OT] BabySmash is a Smash!

Jonathan Kehayias — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 03:26:16 GMT

Ok, so completely off topic for this kind of venue but I love this so much, actually my 7 month old loves this so much, that I have to share it. I recently tweeted about my seven month old’s infatuation with my laptop, and the fact that he will...(read more)

What three events?

Jonathan Kehayias — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 04:14:50 GMT

Two weeks ago Paul Randal started a chain blog series on What three events brought you here? He tagged Brent Ozar, who in turn tagged me in his post You may ask yourself, How did I get here? So here’s my own take on this topic. Event #1:...(read more)

SQL Server Enterprise Edition and Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7

Jonathan Kehayias — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 12:00:00 GMT

I’ve seen this a couple of times now online so it’s worth blogging about. The Enterprise Edition of SQL Server is not supported on client OS's like Vista, XP, or Windows 7. Developer Edition is supported on the client OS's and allow you to develop...(read more)

Question: Is NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM a sysadmin in your SQL Server and Why?

Jonathan Kehayias — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 02:10:09 GMT

I asked this on twitter and now I am going to ask it on here to see what kind of responses I get. If your SQL Server services run under a domain user account, is NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM (Local System) a sysadmin in your SQL Server and if so, why? I...(read more)

DYK: Restoring a Database Retains Index Fragmentation

Jonathan Kehayias — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 01:43:31 GMT

I am not sure where the “myth” that restoring a database removes the index fragmentation, or that restoring a database causes a database to become fragmented came from recently, but twice in the last few days I have seen questions asked about the impact...(read more)

Setting up Database Mail to use Gmail account for Presentations

Jonathan Kehayias — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 12:44:00 GMT

This past weekend’s SQL Saturday #31 in Tampa, FL I had the need to send email from one of my Virtual Machines while doing my presentation on Event Notifications in SQL Server 2005/2008. Generally speaking, I don’t need to send email from the virtual...(read more)

Tuning ‘cost threshold for parallelism’ from the Plan Cache

Jonathan Kehayias — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 05:19:53 GMT

A good while ago I was asked if it was possible to consistently produce a parallel plan by Tom LaRock( blog / twitter ), and I recalled from reading Grant Fritchey’s( blog / twitter ) book on Execution Plans that it was possible to do this by adjusting...(read more)

PASS Session Evaluations

Jonathan Kehayias — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 07:12:36 GMT

Tonight I got my session evaluations back from PASS for the first large presentation I have ever done. I am somewhat surprised by the results, they are actually much better than I expected. I definitely have a number of things to work on as...(read more)

TSQL2sday: Using sys.dm_exec_sql_text() to get the calling statement

Jonathan Kehayias — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 04:26:12 GMT

This week I have two posts for TSQL2sday . Initially I wrote my first blog post , but as luck would have it, today a second topic for TSQL2sday popped up through the comments on my recent SQL Server Central Article, Using a Certificate Signed Stored...(read more)

Downgrading from SQL 2008 to 2005

Jonathan Kehayias — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 03:51:11 GMT

Every couple of weeks on one of the forums someone will ask a question about how to restore a backup from SQL 2008 to SQL 2005. The answer to the question is always, you can’t restore a backup to a lower version of SQL Server. If you...(read more)

Finding Implicit Column Conversions in the Plan Cache

Jonathan Kehayias — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 17:54:58 GMT

Last year Tibor Karaszi posted a blog post titled Match Those Types that talked about implicit data type conversions associated with mismatched data types between filter criteria and table column data types. His blog post does a good job of covering...(read more)

Closing out 2009 – Goals in Review

Jonathan Kehayias — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 04:53:01 GMT

This year I set quite a few goals for myself both personally and professionally, and I blogged about them on my blog post Goals for 2009. Looking back at them, I did really good accomplishing my primary goals for the year, dedicating a block of...(read more)

Diskeeper 2010 Update

Jonathan Kehayias — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 18:32:15 GMT

A few weeks ago I blogged about A tale of CHECKDB failures caused by 3rd party file-system drivers that was related to a bug in the latest version of Diskeeper 2010. I received an email from the company that they have released an update that resolves...(read more)

A Major Lesson to Learn from 2009 – Don’t Just Backup, Test Recovery

Jonathan Kehayias — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 05:25:31 GMT

This year is almost over, and its sad and unfortunate that I can write a blog post about this topic, but there have been so many major examples of data loss from missing, damaged, or otherwise unusable backups this year. The year started out with...(read more)

Updates to the Wait Type Repository – PSS Blog

Jonathan Kehayias — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 20:49:41 GMT

At PASS Summit earlier this year, Bob Ward an Escalation Engineer in Microsoft Product Support, vowed to create a Wait Type Repository over on the PSS Blog that does a better job of documenting SQL Server Wait Types to assist the community. He create...(read more)