This was the Powershell code I used to create the all the podcasts I’ve ever tweeted about post.

I downloaded the tweets from Twitter itself - I think there was a link somewhere within ‘Settings’

The .csv file looks like this:

So the code is:

$PodTweets = Import-Csv c:temptweets.csv | ? text -like "*podcast*"

$TweetsAsHtml = foreach ($P in $PodTweets)
{
#   write-output $P.timestamp.Substring(0,10)

   # Splitting the tweet text into words to allow for the processing of urls
   $TweetTextAsArray = $P.text.split(" ")

   $TextWithLink=""

   foreach ($Word in $TweetTextAsArray)
   {
        if ($Word -like "http:*")
        {
            # if there is an expanded_url, then use that instead
            if ($P.expanded_urls -ne "")
            {
                $Word = $P.expanded_urls

                # for some reason the expanded url is sometimes repeated in the download
                if ($Word -like "*,*")
                {
                    $Word = $Word.split(",")[0]
                }
            }

            # re-format the URL as a link
            $Word = "`<a href=`"$Word`"`>$Word`<`/a`>"
        }
        $TextWithLink = "$TextWithLink$Word "


    }

    # create an object and output that
    $properties = @{'TweetDate'=$P.timestamp.Substring(0,10);
                    'TweetText'=$TextWithLink}

    $ReformattedTweets = New-Object -Type PSObject -Prop $properties

    write-output $ReformattedTweets

}

$TweetsAsHtml | fl | out-file -encoding ascii -FilePath x.txt -width 1000

This almost speaks for itself…but it might be worth noting that:

• I’m only interrogating the latest file here

• it’s a teeny bit cumbersome - I would probably function-alize it

• the big advantage here compared to the GUI is you can cut-and-paste it really easily

dir sqlserver:sql\the_server_name
$logs.readerrorlog(0) |
  where logdate -gt ([datetime]::ParseExact('25/02/2015 07:27:36',"dd/MM/yyyy HH:mm:ss",$null))  |
  select processinfo, text |
  ft -a -wrap

I hadn’t noticed this before.

If you do a dir listing of the databases for an instance within the Powershell Sqlserver provider, it doesn’t show the system databases

PS C:powershell> dir SQLSERVER:\SQL\my_pcinst2012\databases

Name                 Status          Recovery Model CompatLvl Collation                      Owner
----                 ------          -------------- --------- ---------                      -----
AdventureWorks2012   Normal          Simple               110 SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS   matty
TSQL2012             Normal          Full                 110 Latin1_General_CI_AS           matty

To get a listing for the system databases you can do the following. I would imagine there’s a better way (perhaps some equivalent to ls -a?)…but I can’t think of it at the minute¹

PS C:powershell> foreach ($DB in ("master", "msdb", "model", "tempdb")) {gi SQLSERVER:\SQL\my_pcinst2012\databases\$DB }

Name                 Status          Recovery Model CompatLvl Collation                      Owner
----                 ------          -------------- --------- ---------                      -----
master               Normal          Simple               110 Latin1_General_CI_AS           sa
msdb                 Normal          Simple               110 Latin1_General_CI_AS           sa
model                Normal          Simple               110 Latin1_General_CI_AS           sa
tempdb               Normal          Simple               110 Latin1_General_CI_AS           sa

This is extracted from Adam Pritchard’s Markdown Cheatsheet.

It’s what I would see as the useful bits….but of course my useful bits won’t be the same as your useful bits!

I’m installing sqlserver 2005, and it seemed to hang towards the end of the installation.

The installer hung while it was installing ‘Workstation Components, Books Online’, with the progress message being ‘Removing Backup Files’. As it happened I kicked this off at the end of the day, and it was still hanging the next morning

I checked the installer log but there was nothing very interesting

<Func Name='LaunchFunction'>
Function=Set_CommitFlag
<Func Name='GetCAContext'>
<EndFunc Name='GetCAContext' Return='T' GetLastError='0'>
Doing Action: Set_CommitFlag
PerfTime Start: Set_CommitFlag : Mon Jan 26 16:46:51 2015
<Func Name='Set_CommitFlag'>
Can I commit?
Set_CommitFlag called successfully.Committed
<EndFunc Name='Set_CommitFlag' Return='0' GetLastError='0'>
PerfTime Stop: Set_CommitFlag : Mon Jan 26 16:46:51 2015
<EndFunc Name='LaunchFunction' Return='0' GetLastError='0'>

It turned out to be very much a problem between the chair and the keyboad.

At the start of the install I’d had this warning message:

I wasn’t too worried about it - I’m installing an old version of SQL on a newer OS - but I left the warning message window open…partly so that I could investigate further later.

Anyway…as soon as I shut that warning window down, the install kicked back into life and soon completed.

I’m installing sqlserver 2005, and it seemed to hang towards the end of the installation.

The installer hung while it was installing ‘Workstation Components, Books Online’, with the progress message being ‘Removing Backup Files’. As it happened I kicked this off at the end of the day, and it was still hanging the next morning

I checked the installer log but there was nothing very interesting

<Func Name='LaunchFunction'>
Function=Set_CommitFlag
<Func Name='GetCAContext'>
<EndFunc Name='GetCAContext' Return='T' GetLastError='0'>
Doing Action: Set_CommitFlag
PerfTime Start: Set_CommitFlag : Mon Jan 26 16:46:51 2015
<Func Name='Set_CommitFlag'>
Can I commit?
Set_CommitFlag called successfully.Committed
<EndFunc Name='Set_CommitFlag' Return='0' GetLastError='0'>
PerfTime Stop: Set_CommitFlag : Mon Jan 26 16:46:51 2015
<EndFunc Name='LaunchFunction' Return='0' GetLastError='0'>

It turned out to be very much a problem between the chair and the keyboad.

At the start of the install I’d had this warning message:

I wasn’t too worried about it - I’m installing an old version of SQL on a newer OS - but I left the warning message window open…partly so that I could investigate further later.

Anyway…as soon as I shut that warning window down, the install kicked back into life and soon completed.

This was a bit of a ‘Duh!’ moment.

I use the following to ‘comment out’ chunks of Wordpress pages that I’m still working on

<?php /*
Some old rubbish that I have'nt finished working on yet
*/?>

This seemed to have ‘stopped working’.

The reason was my ‘Exec-PHP’ plugin was de-activated. I don’t remember de-activating it. I guess it’s possible that an automat(t)ic update might have done so, but I don’t know.

I haven’t been able to find a T-sql equivalent of the Oracle ‘set feedback on’, which outputs a line telling you how many rows have been effected by the last sql statement.

The closest thing, I think, is:

select 'Rows updated: ' + CAST(@@ROWCOUNT as varchar(10))

This seems to work:

SELECT
     'disable trigger ' + USER_NAME(trig.schema_id) + '.' +  trig.name +
     ' on ' +
     USER_NAME(tab.schema_id) + '.' + OBJECT_NAME(trig.parent_object_id) +
     char(10) +
     'go'
FROM sys.objects trig
INNER JOIN sys.objects tab
    ON trig.parent_object_id = tab.object_id
WHERE trig.type = 'TR'

It generates sql like this:

disable trigger dbo.tr_AfterUpdate on dbo.BigTable
go
disable trigger dbo.tr_BeforeUpdate on dbo.BigTable
go

This seems to work:

SELECT
     'disable trigger ' + USER_NAME(trig.schema_id) + '.' +  trig.name +
     ' on ' +
     USER_NAME(tab.schema_id) + '.' + OBJECT_NAME(trig.parent_object_id) +
     char(10) +
     'go'
FROM sys.objects trig
INNER JOIN sys.objects tab
    ON trig.parent_object_id = tab.object_id
WHERE trig.type = 'TR'

It generates sql like this:

disable trigger dbo.tr_AfterUpdate on dbo.BigTable
go
disable trigger dbo.tr_BeforeUpdate on dbo.BigTable
go

I’m not great at T-sql, and I know that cursors are unfashionable in Microsoft world, but this gives me the output I want, as below:

drop table #ReportPermissions

create table #ReportPermissions
(Path varchar(100),
 Username varchar(100),
 GrantedPermissions varchar(100))


declare
  UserWithPermissionsCursor cursor for
  select -- ,roles.[RoleID]
      rolename
      -- ,users.[UserID]
      ,username
      -- ,catalog.[PolicyID]
      ,path
  FROM [ReportServerRep01].[dbo].[PolicyUserRole],
       roles,
       users,
       catalog
where policyuserrole.RoleID = roles.roleid
and   policyuserrole.UserID = users.userid
and   policyuserrole.policyid = catalog.PolicyID
order by path, username, rolename

declare @rolename varchar(100)
declare @username varchar(100)
declare @path varchar(100)
declare @PermissionsString varchar(100)
declare @Savedusername varchar(100)
declare @Savedpath varchar(100)


open UserWithPermissionsCursor
FETCH UserWithPermissionsCursor INTO @rolename, @username, @path

WHILE 0 = @@fetch_status
BEGIN
 if (@SavedUserName = @username AND @SavedPath = @path)

    set @PermissionsString = @PermissionsString + ',' + @Rolename

 else
 begin
    -- Output the line
    insert into #ReportPermissions
    (Path,
     Username,
     GrantedPermissions)
    values
    (@SavedPath,
     @SavedUserName,
     @PermissionsString)

    -- Reinitialize variables
    set @SavedPath = @path
    set @SavedUsername = @username
    set @PermissionsString = @rolename

 end

 FETCH UserWithPermissionsCursor INTO @rolename, @username, @path

END
close UserWithPermissionsCursor
deallocate UserWithPermissionsCursor

select * from #ReportPermissions

A quick post on a quick fix.

I installed Sql Server Reporting Services 2008 R2 on the report server, then installed Oracle client 11.2.0.4.

I copied across a valid tnsnames.ora file, and verified connectivity with both sqlplus and tnsping.

However, trying to connect to one of the Oracle databases from within SSRS I got:

System.Data.OracleClient requires Oracle client software version 8.1.7 or greater

…helpfully highlighted in an angry red.

Fix is fairly straightforward - SSRS hadn’t picked up the change to %PATH% done by the Oracle install yet, so the fix was to re-start the SSRS service.

A quick post on a quick fix.

I installed Sql Server Reporting Services 2008 R2 on the report server, then installed Oracle client 11.2.0.4.

I copied across a valid tnsnames.ora file, and verified connectivity with both sqlplus and tnsping.

However, trying to connect to one of the Oracle databases from within SSRS I got:

System.Data.OracleClient requires Oracle client software version 8.1.7 or greater

…helpfully highlighted in an angry red.

Fix is fairly straightforward - SSRS hadn’t picked up the change to %PATH% done by the Oracle install yet, so the fix was to re-start the SSRS service.

I’ve been playing with pattern matching in Powershell.

I was trying to use ‘-match’ to ‘Check if the string is a hexadecimal number’ for the ‘Perl one-liners in Powershell’ page I’ve been working on.

I can’t pretend to entirely understand or explain pattern matching in Powershell, or in linux, but this seems to work.

$X = "21e" ; $Y = $X.length ; $X -match "[0123456789abcde]{$Y}"

This says match the string against ‘any combination of the characters within the square brackets (i.e. the hex digits) to the same length as the original string’.

So, the square brackets contain the allowable characters.

The curly brackets give the number of characters.

I tried just doing:

$X = "21e" ; $X -match "[0123456789abcde]{$X.length}"

…but this didn’t seem to work.

Tests

….although I’m not sure whether this is right or wrong:

$ $X = "" ; $Y = $X.length ; $X -match "[0123456789abcde]{$Y}"
True

This page is a bit of documentation for how I do stuff on the multifarious websites that I’ve perpetrated over the years. These are very much notes for myself but if anybody else should happen upon this page I hope you find it useful :)

On This Day - how it works

These are a couple of vim things I use regularly.

My local history website has a list of stuff that happened on this day' in Salisbury’s history

I maintain the list by adding a page for each event into a Wordpress page structure that looks like this:

• on-this-day
  • month
  • event page, title of which is prefixed by the date

I fill in the event pages' ‘Order’ field (under ‘Page Attributes’) with the day of the month. The months' ‘Order’ field has the ‘number of the month’ (i.e. 1 is January, 2 is February etc). This keeps everything in order.

Then the top level page has this:

    <ul class="sitemap-pages">
    
    

I think I’m going to change this to have a separate wp_list_pages for each month. This will allow me to have a table of contents, although it will slow it down, I guess.

On This Day - reformatting from dynamic list of Wordpress child pages to static list for the weekly post

Anyhoo, I use the top level list to create a weekly post, summarizing that weeks events in Salisbury history.

There are a couple of vim things that help me do that.

When I grab the page source from the top level list, each page looks like this:

<li class="page_item page-item-7354"><a href="/on-this-day/april/28th-april-1948-terry-pratchetts-birthday">28th April 1948 - Terry Pratchett's birthday</a>

which looks like this on the page:

map q /[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9] dw$A (pi).

/ May
cw: 

Problem came up trying to connect to a remote Oracle source:

Started:  12:03:03
Error: 2013-10-09 12:03:03.84
   Code: 0xC0202009
   Source: 
   Description: SSIS Error Code DTS_E_OLEDBERROR.  An OLE DB error has occurred. Error code: 0x800703E6.
An OLE DB record is available.  Source: "Microsoft OLE DB Service Components"  Hresult: 0x800703E6  Description: "Invalid access to memory location.".
End Error
Error: 2013-10-09 12:03:03.84
   Code: 0xC020801C
   Source: Copy Data
   Description: SSIS Error Code DTS_E_CANNOTACQUIRECONNECTIONFROMCONNECTIONMANAGER.  The AcquireConnection method call to the connection manager "xxx" failed with error code 0xC0202009.  There may be error messages posted before this with more information on why the AcquireConnection method call failed.
End Error
Error: 2013-10-09 12:03:03.84
   Code: 0xC0047017
   Source: xxxx
   Description: component "xxx" (1) failed validation and returned error code 0xC020801C.
End Error
DTExec: The package execution returned DTSER_FAILURE (1).

Fix was to go into job step properties, select the ‘Execution options’ tab and click on ‘Use 32-bit runtime’.

I’m wondering whether we had an Oracle 32-bit install, or a 32-bit install that wasn’t entirely removed

Clustering Conundrum - Allan Hirt

Running some HA classes in Europe.

Loose definition - networked servers.

Used in different contexts in sqlserver - clusterered indexes, SETI type stuff, windows clusters, NLB, WSFC

• Windows - network load balance, windows server failover cluster(wsfc)
• Sqlserver - failover cluster instance

Can’t have the latter without the former

Sqlserver built on WSFC

75% of problems tend not to be SS

Resource group - like a folder of resources

Resources are often interdependent

Quorum - what you need to have to be up or down

Has become much easier from 2008 onwards.

Availability Groups - are sql-level

www.sqlha.com/2012/01/0… www.sqlha.com/2013/04/2…

Need to get involved with the Windows very heavily - can’t just do the sql bit. <— big takeaway

DBAs tend to become expert in Windows clustering

Can’t convert a standalone instance to cluster. Has to be new install.

Can do a 2-node cluster at Standard Edition.

2008 needs to be Windows Enterprise. 2012 onwards can be standard or datacenter editions

You get a ‘tranport error’ during failover, but SSMS, at least, automatically failsover.

Got to have AD

Only one default instance per WSFC, but can have multiple instances on one WSFC

Keys to success Learn WSFC Validation can show up problems Need to have test clustered instances Need to be an WSFC expert

www.sql ha.com MS Cluster Team blog KBs: find the slide

Hands-on fundamentals for good SQL programming - Kevin Kline

Test harness needs: dbcc freeproccache dbcc dropcleanbuffers set statistics time set statistics io set showplan text|xml

sys.dm_os_performance counters sys.dm_os_wait_stats

sqlskills.com - Glenn Berry

Scan count - number of scans! Reads - in 8K pages Read-ahead - it dynamically goes multi-page read (i.e. multiblock reads)

set showplan_text on - does the command line style explain plan

clustered index scan is equivalent of an Oracle FTS, because, by default tables are held in clustered indexes

Can set statistics time and i/o from within the toolbar

Worth enabling:

• estimated execution plan and

• actual execution plan

• it shows up differences, which can show problems with statisitcs etc

Sys.dm_os_wait_stats

• shows bottlenecks

Sys.dm_exec_query_stats

• query performance stats

sys.dm_db_index_usage_stats

sys.dm_io_virtual_file_stats

Queries from SQLAgent man ?

Spools are red flags.

As are, scans, parallelism

Kimberly Tripps articles on ‘indexes from every angle’

Window Function Fundamentals - Christina Leo

Stuff like:

SELECT empid, ordermonth, qty, SUM(qty) OVER(PARTITION BY empid ORDER BY ordermonth ROWS BETWEEN UNBOUNDED PRECEDING AND CURRENT ROW) AS runqty FROM Sales.EmpOrders;

Indexing segment and sequence operators in Explain Plan

Index should be POC

• Partition
• Ordering
• Columns

Even if this doesn’t improve the elapsed time of the query it will eat up less memory.

The where clause happens before the select, so the filter happens before the Window function kicks in

christinaleo.net

CTE - the view thing at the top of the query with the WITH

Powerpivot - Susan O'Connell

Free add-in in 2010, native in 2013

Very worthwhile to leeave stuff out of the data model, both for performance and so as to simplify from a user perspective.

There are options to hide stuff from the users anyway.

Needs 8G of RAM on client

Data Internals - Bradley Balls

@sqlballs

Why learn internals - it conveys the idea that you know what you’re talking about!

Byte swapping - swaps hex pairs to protect proprietry data

dbcc ind dbcc page dbcc traceon(3604) -output goes to smss window

Record structure

• Tag bytes
• null bitmap
• fixed length
• null bitmap
• variable offset attay
• variable length columns

forwarding records - only in heaps like chains in Oracle

• only occurs in heaps

Text records

• LOBS > 8000 bytes (or sometimes 4000 bytes)
• 24 byte pointer to LOB

Ghost record

• deleted record left in place for undo optimization
• when in snapshot isolation mode

Versioned Records

• when Version Store os used. e.g. got online index rebuilds

MCM Video Series - especially

Record structure

• Tag bytes
• null bitmap
• fixed length
• null bitmap
• variable offset attay
• variable length columns

In the bitmap, 1 is null, 0 is not null

Record structure

• Tag bytes
• null bitmap
• fixed length
• null bitmap
• variable offset attay
• variable length columns

Pages

Data page header 96 bytes data 8096 bytes Row offest array (aka slot array) at the bottom

Index page leaf non-leaf

Text text tree lob text mox slob

sort

boot page 1:9 in any database dbcc page (‘db name’ , 1, 9, 3) - shows lots of boot info about database <— worth doing

Extents

• grouping of 8 pages

Allocation bitmaps

• free pages and allocated pages

Structure is: page is allocated is mixed allocation page is iam page page has ghosted rows space indicator - 3 bits show whether over 10% full, 30% full etc

IAM page

Storage and Virtualization - Denny Cherry

With Fusion IO, disk i/o is no longer the bottleneck

OLTP systems don’t much use the SAN cache because they don’t tend to use the same data twice. Data warehouses get more value because of pre-fetching.

Implies San cache is more about pre-cacheing than re-use

Force flushing effectively disables the cache until it’s finished. Don’t want to do it Low-water mark should be around 20% - you don’t want to be flushing immediately High-water mark 90% - because force flushes are bad

Power failure - most arrays have internal batteries.

Planned outage - MUST shut down sql server before the cache flushes.

Disk alignment matters

Big Data Visualization for Business Intelligence Professionals - @JenStirrup

Powerview - anti-spiderman. great power, but no responsibility for the data

Powermap -3d excel plugin. Formerly known as geo flow

Hortonworks sandbox- free download with hadoop stuff

Database Design - @DataAudrey

Availabilty Groups - Joe Dantoni

ex-Entergy chap!

Valid DR plan - we can do without system X, but not system Y.

Dilbert Our Disaster Recovery Plan Goes Something Like This <— google this

HA DR

Clustering works well from windows/sql 2008 on, but it’s not a DR solution.

Most cloud providers don’t charge for inbound data.

RPO - recovery point objective. How much data can we afford to lose? RTO - recovery time objective. How long can we do without a system?

Everything should be written down, and executive signed off.

Free Azure capacity with MSDN ? are we DR-ing Reporting Services?

Software as a service - gmail, salesforce.com

Infrastructure as a service - Azure, Amazon

platform as a service - Azure SQL, Amazon Relational Database Service

Sql azure now knwon as Windows Azure Sql Database (WASD).

Security in the Cloud

• are your security standards as good as Microsoft or Amazons

MS compliant with SOX and European regulations

Always On Availability Groups

• doesn’t need shared storage
• can go across IP subnets
• can therfore be a DR solution

Is based on log shipping(?)

Availability Groups is standard only, but there are ways of doing log-shipping. No failover capacity in standard.

Dont quite get why you nedd wsfc

Scalability - Glenn Berry

Common issues:

• overuse of query generators
• ad-hoc sql from the application
• lots of xml columns
• user-defined functions
• too much business logic in the database
• overuse of DML triggers
• overuse of CLR assemblies

Glenn has sql server diagnostic information queries <—-worth downloading

Intel tick-tock release strategy

Servers are like pets - scale up Servers are like cattle - commodity

Trying to change the sql server agent to run as a non-admin user, I couldn’t get Sql Server Agent to work without giving it administrator privileges. I got:

WMI Provider Error
Access is denied. [0x80070005]
OK

You have to grant two privileges - both the Agent User and the MSSQL user.

• SQLServerSQLAgentUser$bigserver$inst01
• SQLServerMSSQLUser$bigserver$inst01

Trying to change the sql server agent to run as a non-admin user, I couldn’t get Sql Server Agent to work without giving it administrator privileges. I got:

---------------------------
WMI Provider Error
---------------------------
Access is denied. [0x80070005]
---------------------------
OK
---------------------------

You have to grant two privileges - both the Agent User and the MSSQL user.

• SQLServerSQLAgentUser$bigserver$inst01
• SQLServerMSSQLUser$bigserver$inst01

This was spectacularly incompetent even by my high standards of incompetence.

It illustrates that if you spell the name of a column incorrectly in Powershell, you don’t get an error, you just get a null column

get-wmiobject -class win32_operatingsystem -computer rdm016 |
select __Server, ServicePackMajorVerstion

And got:

__SERVER                             ServicePackMajorVerstion
--------                             ------------------------
RDM016

I thought that no service packs had been applied. This, as more attentive readers will have spotted, was not the case. The null under ServicePackMajorVerstion is because you don’t spell ‘version’ with a ’t'. Two learnings from this:

• one should test one’s code
• if you put something invalid in a ‘select’ list in Powershell it won’t necessarily error

I’m slowly getting to grips with Powershell.

# -----------------------------------------------------------------
# Script - Catalog-MP3s.ps1 #
# Gets mp3 tags from the mp3 file.
# -----------------------------------------------------------------
# Parameter is either a directory or an individual mp3 Param ( $P_DIR_OR_MP3 )  
# --------------------------
# Function: get-mp3info
# The function gets the tags
# for the specified mp3
# --------------------------
Function get-mp3info ($P_MP3)
{
     # Get the tages into a variable
     $TAGS = [TagLib.File]::Create("$P_MP3")
     $TAGS_OBJECT = @{Filename = $TAGS.Name;

     Bitrate = $TAGS.Properties.AudioBitRate;
     Artist = $TAGS.tag.FirstArtist;
     Title =  $TAGS.tag.Title;
     Genre = $TAGS.tag.FirstGenre;
     LP = $TAGS.tag.Album}

     # Output as an object
     New-Object PSObject -Property $TAGS_OBJECT
}

     # --------------------------
     # Main body
     # --------------------------
     # Store the location of the taglib dll
     $TAGLIB="C:\Users\Matt\Downloads\taglib-sharp-2.1.0.0-windows\taglib-sharp-2.1.0.0-windows\Libraries\tag\lib-sharp.dll"

     # Load the DLL
     [System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadFile($Taglib)

     # Get a list of all the MP3s under the specified folder
     # - exclude anything that's not an mp3
     # - Fullname contains the full path and filename
     $MP3_LIST = gci -recurse Filesystem::$DIR_OR_MP3 |
                     where {$_.Extension -eq '.mp3'} |
                     select FullName

     # Walk through the list, and output the tags
     foreach ($MP3 in $MP3_LIST)
     {
          get-mp3info $MP3.Fullname
     }

The heavily borrows from:

• PowerShell - Automatically organizing your mp3-collection - Speaking of which… - Site Home - MSDN Blogs
• Scripting Mp3 Tags through PowerShell | PowerShell.nu

I set up a Sqlserver Maintenance Cleanup Task, but couldn’t get it to delete the appropriate backup files.

The log looked like this:

Maintenance Cleanup Task ()
Maintenance Cleanup on Local server connection
Cleanup Database Backup files
Age: Older than 5 Weeks
Task start: 2011-11-09T11:45:01.
Task end: 2011-11-09T11:45:01.
Success
Command:EXECUTE master.dbo.xp_delete_file 0,N''F:mssql_backup'',N''.bak'',N''2011-10-05T11:45:01'',1
GO

…which looks reasonable.

It was showing ‘Success’

My mistake was that I had entered .bak rather than just bak as the ‘File extension’. The ‘.’ is not needed. Presumably it was looking for files called ‘whatever..bak’

I spent a couple of lunchtimes going through Sqlserver Management Studio’s ‘Object Explorer’ panel, typing up all the different elements. This might seem like an odd thing to do, but I thought it might be useful for the following reasons:

• as a reference. A searchable list of where everything is
• as the beginnings of a checklist. Making a system wide change it might be handy to scan through this list and consider whether there’s an impact on each element
• to get me blogging again :)

Databases
  System Databases
  Database Snapshots
  User Databases
    Database Diagrams
    Tables
    Views
    Synonyms
    Programmability
      Stored Procedures
      Functions
      Triggers
      Assemblies
      Types
      Rules
      Defaults
      Plan Guides
    Service Broker
      Message Types
      Contracts
      Queues
      Services
      Routes
      Remote ServiceBindings
      Broker Priorities
    Storage
      Full Text Catalogs
      Partition Schenes
      Patition Functions
      Full Text Stoplists
    Security
      Users
      Roles
      Schemas
      Asymmetric Keys
      Certificates
      Symmetric Keys
      Database Audit Specifications
Security
  Logins
  Server Roles
  Credentials
  Cryptographic Providers
  Audits
  Server Audit Specifications
Server Objects
  Backup Devices
  Endpoints
    System Endpoints
      Database Mirroring
      Service Broker
      SOAP
      TSQL
        Dedicated Admin Connection
        TSQL Default TCP
        TSQL Default VIA
        TSQL Local Machine
        TSQL Named Pipes
    Database Mirroring
    Service Broker
    SOAP
    TSQL
  Linked Servers
    Providers
  Triggers
Replication
  Local publications
  Local subscriptions
Management
  Data-tier Applications
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I had to run nid (also known as dbnewid) on a database as part of a test refresh at the weekend. This changes the dbid of the database.

Out of sheer laziness I ran it from with sqlplus by using the ‘!’ host command feature.

Nid, quite understandablly doesn’t really like this - it hangs.

I ctrl-c’d it, exited to the OS and re-ran and it worked fine.

The 10g doc for nid is here: http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B19306_01/server.102/b14215/dbnewid.htm

I’ve never really used the analytic functions in anger, so consequently I don’t really have the skills at my fingertips. By way of re-learning them (using Expert One-on-One Oracle | Thomas Kyte | Apress) I’ve been playing about with a list of English Premiership scorers.

The table is:

SQL> desc goals
Name                                      Null?    Type
----------------------------------------- -------- ------------

DIVISION                                  NOT NULL VARCHAR2(20)
END_DATE                                  NOT NULL DATE
PLAYER                                    NOT NULL VARCHAR2(40)
TEAM                                               VARCHAR2(20)
GOALS                                              NUMBER 

The third highest scorer for each team, should you want to know that bit of information, is given by:

select * 
from (select team, player, goals, 
row_number() over (partition by team order by goals desc) ranking
from goals)
where ranking = 3

Output is:

TEAM             PLAYER                GOALS RANKING
---------------- --------------------- ----- -------
Arsenal          Robin van Persie          7       3
Aston Villa      Ashley Young              5       3
Birmingham       Sebastian Larsson         4       3
Blackburn        Morten Gamst Pedersen     3       3
Bolton           Kevin Davies              5       3
Burnley          David Nugent              6       3
Chelsea          Florent Malouda          11       3
Everton          Mikel Arteta              5       3
Fulham           Damien Duff               6       3
Hull City        Deiberson Geovanni        3       3
Liverpool        Steven Gerrard            7       3
Man Utd          Antonio Valencia          5       3
Manchester City  Craig Bellamy             9       3
Portsmouth       Nadir Belhadj             3       3
Stoke City       Ricardo Fuller            3       3
Sunderland       Fraizer Campbell          4       3
Tottenham        Niko Kranjcar             6       3
West Ham Utd     Guillermo Franco          4       3
Wigan Athletic   Paul Scharner             4       3
Wolves           Matthew Jarvis            3       3

To further develop this query to return a pivot table, you use a decode on the artificial ‘ranking’ field, as follows:

select team,
max(decode(ranking, 1, player, null)) golden_boot,
max(decode(ranking, 2, player, null)) silver_boot,
max(decode(ranking, 3, player, null)) bronze_boot
from
(select team, player, goals, row_number()
over (partition by team order by goals desc) ranking
from goals)
where ranking <= 3 group by team 

This returns:

SQL> /

TEAM             GOLDEN_BOOT         SILVER_BOOT         BRONZE_BOOT
---------------- ------------------- ------------------- -------------------
Arsenal          Francesc Fabregas   Andrey Arshavin     Robin van Persie
Aston Villa      Gabriel Agbonlahor  John Carew          Ashley Young
Birmingham       Cameron Jerome      Lee Bowyer          Sebastian Larsson
Blackburn        David Dunn          Jason Roberts       Morten Gamst Peders
Bolton           Matthew Taylor      Ivan Klasnic        Kevin Davies
Burnley          Steven Fletcher     Graham Alexander    David Nugent
Chelsea          Didier Drogba       Frank Lampard       Florent Malouda
Everton          Louis Saha          Tim Cahill          Mikel Arteta
Fulham           Bobby Zamora        Clinton Dempsey     Damien Duff
Hull City        Stephen Hunt        Jimmy Bullard       Deiberson Geovanni
Liverpool        Fernando Torres     Dirk Kuyt           Steven Gerrard
Man Utd          Wayne Rooney        Dimitar Berbatov    Antonio Valencia
Manchester City  Carlos Tevez        Emmanuel Adebayor   Craig Bellamy
Portsmouth       Aruna Dindane       Frederic Piquionne  Nadir Belhadj
Stoke City       Matthew Etherington Tuncay Sanli        Ricardo Fuller
Sunderland       Darren Bent         Kenwyne Jones       Fraizer Campbell
Tottenham        Jermain Defoe       Peter Crouch        Niko Kranjcar
West Ham Utd     Carlton Cole        Alessandro Diamanti Guillermo Franco
Wigan Athletic   Hugo Rodallega      Charles N'Zogbia    Paul Scharner
Wolves           Kevin Doyle         Jody Craddock       Matthew Jarvis

20 rows selected.