The Rambling DBA: Jonathan Kehayias : SQL Server 2008

Parsing the sqlserver.sql_text Action in Extended Events by Offsets

Jonathan Kehayias — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 02:05:43 GMT

A couple of weeks back I received an email from a member of the community who was reading the XEvent a Day blog series and had a couple of interesting questions about Extended Events. This person had created an Event Session that captured the sqlserver.sql_statement_completed...(read more)

An XEvent a Day (31 of 31) – Event Session DDL Events

Jonathan Kehayias — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 19:00:00 GMT

To close out this month’s series on Extended Events we’ll look at the DDL Events for the Event Session DDL operations, and how those can be used to track changes to Event Sessions and determine all of the possible outputs that could exist from an Extended...(read more)

An XEvent a Day (30 of 31) – Tracking Session and Statement Level Waits

Jonathan Kehayias — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 02:00:00 GMT

While attending PASS Summit this year, I got the opportunity to hang out with Brent Ozar ( Blog | Twitter ) one afternoon while he did some work for Yanni Robel ( Blog | Twitter ). After looking at the wait stats information, Brent pointed out some...(read more)

An XEvent a Day (29 of 31) – The Future – Looking at Database Startup in Denali

Jonathan Kehayias — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 02:30:00 GMT

As I have said previously in this series, one of my favorite aspects of Extended Events is that it allows you to look at what is going on under the covers in SQL Server, at a level that has never previously been possible. SQL Server Denali CTP1 includes...(read more)

An XEvent a Day (28 of 31) – Tracking Page Compression Operations

Jonathan Kehayias — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 02:00:00 GMT

The Database Compression feature in SQL Server 2008 Enterprise Edition can provide some significant reductions in storage requirements for SQL Server databases, and in the right implementations and scenarios performance improvements as well. There...(read more)

An XEvent a Day (27 of 31) – The Future - Tracking Page Splits in SQL Server Denali CTP1

Jonathan Kehayias — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 02:00:00 GMT

Nearly two years ago Kalen Delaney blogged about Splitting a page into multiple pages , showing how page splits occur inside of SQL Server. Following her blog post, Michael Zilberstein wrote a post, Monitoring Page Splits with Extended Events ,...(read more)

An XEvent a Day (26 of 31) – Configuring Session Options

Jonathan Kehayias — Mon, 27 Dec 2010 02:00:00 GMT

There are 7 Session level options that can be configured in Extended Events that affect the way an Event Session operates. These options can impact performance and should be considered when configuring an Event Session. I have made use of...(read more)

An XEvent a Day (25 of 31) – The Twelve Days of Christmas

Jonathan Kehayias — Sat, 25 Dec 2010 14:00:00 GMT

Correction: I mistakenly stated that Tim Mitchel had blogged the 12 days of SQL Christmas, and was informed that Tim Ford is who wrote that blog post. My sincerest apologies to Tim and Tim for the mix up. The post has been corrected below. In the spirit...(read more)

An XEvent a Day (24 of 31) – What is the package0.callstack Action?

Jonathan Kehayias — Sat, 25 Dec 2010 02:00:00 GMT

One of the actions inside of Extended Events is the package0.callstack and the only description provided by sys.dm_xe_objects for the object is 16-frame call stack. If you look back at The system_health Session blog post, you’ll notice that the package0.callstack...(read more)

An XEvent a Day (23 of 31) – How it Works – Multiple Transaction Log Files

Jonathan Kehayias — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 19:48:54 GMT

While working on yesterday’s blog post The Future – fn_dblog() No More? Tracking Transaction Log Activity in Denali I did a quick Google search to find a specific blog post by Paul Randal to use it as a reference, and in the results returned another blog...(read more)

An XEvent a Day (22 of 31) – The Future – fn_dblog() No More? Tracking Transaction Log Activity in Denali

Jonathan Kehayias — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 15:00:00 GMT

I bet that made you look didn’t it? Worry not, fn_dblog() still exists in SQL Server Denali, and I plan on using it to validate the information being returned by a new Event in SQL Server Denali CTP1, sqlerver.transaction_log, which brings with...(read more)

An XEvent a Day (21 of 31) – The Future – Tracking Blocking in Denali

Jonathan Kehayias — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 02:52:54 GMT

One of my favorite features that was added to SQL Server 2005 has been the Blocked Process Report trace event which collects an XML report whenever a process is blocked inside of the database engine longer than the user configurable threshold. I...(read more)

An XEvent a Day (20 of 31) – Mapping Extended Events to SQL Trace

Jonathan Kehayias — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 21:24:00 GMT

One of the biggest problems that I had with getting into Extended Events was mapping the Events available in Extended Events to the Events that I knew from SQL Trace. With so many Events to choose from in Extended Events, and a different organization...(read more)

An XEvent a Day (19 of 31) – Using Customizable Fields

Jonathan Kehayias — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 02:15:00 GMT

Today’s post will be somewhat short, but we’ll look at Customizable Fields on Events in Extended Events and how they are used to collect additional information. Customizable Fields generally represent information of potential interest that may be...(read more)

An XEvent a Day (18 of 31) – A Look at Backup Internals and How to Track Backup and Restore Throughput (Part 2)

Jonathan Kehayias — Sun, 19 Dec 2010 02:15:00 GMT

In yesterday’s blog post A Look at Backup Internals and How to Track Backup and Restore Throughput (Part 1) , we looked at what happens when we Backup a database in SQL Server. Today, we are going to use the information we captured to perform some analysis...(read more)