SQL Azure Database

SQL Azure Database is Microsoft's cloud-based relational database system which is based on Microsoft SQL Server. Earlier it was called SQL Data Services. SQL Azure CTP 2 is now available for MSDN subscribers.


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View Jobs Schedule Information

The code portion given below is useful when you need to get the schedule information of SQL Server jobs. There are several system tables exist in msdb database to retrieve jobs related information. But in this scenario I wanted to see the jobs schedule description which displays in jobs properties UI.

The description is not stored in any system tables as is rather it will do a manipulation by using other values. 


It will use the system SP, sp_get_schedule_description   to prepare description. 



create table #temp_jobschedule
(
job_id uniqueidentifier
,schedule_id int
,schedule_name sysname
,[enabled] int
,freq_type int
,freq_interval int
,freq_subday_type int
,freq_subday_interval int
,freq_relative_interval int
,freq_recurrence_factor int
,active_start_date int
,active_end_date int
,active_start_time int
,active_end_time int
,date_created datetime
,schedule_description nvarchar(4000)
,next_run_date int
,next_run_time int
,schedule_uid uniqueidentifier
,job_count int

)




declare @Job_Id uniqueidentifier
declare @Last_Job_Id uniqueidentifier


select top 1 @Job_Id=J.job_id
from msdb..sysjobs j
where j.enabled=1
and j.category_id not in (10,15,13)
order by J.job_id


select top 1 @Last_Job_Id=J.job_id
from msdb..sysjobs j
where j.enabled=1
and j.category_id not in (10,15,13)
order by J.job_id desc


while @Job_Id is not null
begin


insert into #temp_jobschedule (schedule_id,schedule_name,[enabled],freq_type,freq_interval,freq_subday_type,freq_subday_interval,freq_relative_interval,freq_recurrence_factor
,active_start_date,active_end_date,active_start_time,active_end_time,date_created,schedule_description,next_run_date,next_run_time,schedule_uid,job_count)
exec sp_executesql N'exec msdb..sp_help_jobschedule @job_id=@JOB_ID,@include_description=1',N'@JOB_ID uniqueidentifier', @JOB_ID=@Job_Id

select top 1 @Job_Id=J.job_id
from msdb..sysjobs j
where j.[enabled]=1
and j.category_id not in (10,15,13)
and J.job_id>@Job_Id
order by J.job_id

if @Job_Id=@Last_Job_Id
set @Job_Id=null


end


update #temp_jobschedule set job_id=jsch.job_id
from msdb.dbo.sysjobschedules jsch
where #temp_jobschedule.schedule_id=jsch.schedule_id


select j.name,schedule_description,jsrv.last_run_duration
from #temp_jobschedule jsch
inner join msdb.dbo.sysjobs j
on jsch.job_id=j.job_id
inner join msdb.dbo.sysjobservers jsrv
on jsch.job_id=jsrv.job_id

Undocumented DBCC Commands

I found this article while searching about DBCC commands. This is really interesting one specially for the people who wants to know SQL Server internals. This article applies for SQL Server 7 and 2000 but I have used some DBCC commands in SQL Server 2005 too. (E.g: DBCC IND, DBCC PAGE)


Since these are undocumented onces you have to use at your risk and no support available from Microsoft.


Useful Undocumented DBCC Commands

Using Backslash (“\”) in SSIS Expressions

I wanted build an expression to make a folder name dynamically. (Basically expressions are anyway dynamic in nature)

So I simply used the “\” as end of my expression as stated below;

@[User::Differential_backup_path] + @[User::database_name] + "Differential\"

It gave an error;

Then I tried various methods including CHAR(47) which is an ASCII value for the backslash.

After spending some time on research in google, I found that you need to use two backslashes. (“\\”)

So the correct expression would be;

@[User::Differential_backup_path] + @[User::database_name] + "Differential\\"

Identify out of synch subscriptions

One of the main tasks of DBA is to monitor replication status. There may be situations where subscriptions may out of synch due to various reasons. If this happened, DEV and QA will face issues and they will start communicate with DBAs to verify the replication status. If you’ve not setup proper monitoring mechanism to see replication staus this is the usual story.


However if you have already setup monitoring mechanism the DBAs will identify the issues upfront without making panic on DEVs and QAs.

This blog is on how to identify out of synch subscriptions especially in transactional replication.

Policy-based Management in SQL Server 2008

Policy-base Management is a new feature in SQL Server 2008 that helps SQL Server administration. It allows Database Administrators to manage SQL Server instances by intent through clearly defined policies, thus reducing the potential for administrative errors. The policy-based framework implements the policies behind the scene with a Policy Engine, SQL Server Agent jobs, SQLCLR, DDL triggers and Service Broker. Policies can be applied or evaluated against a single server or a group of servers, thus improving the scalability of monitoring and administration.

I found couple of interesting articles on this subject and I'm posting them here for you're reference. 

ScreenCast 

Dedicated blog for Policy-based Management

Inserting multiple rows in single INSERT

Do you know there is a new T-SQL command in SQL Server 2008 which facilitates you to insert several rows in single INSERT statement? This is really a cool feature to me. As a DBA I want to write many data patches to populate data specially for lookup data. Let me say, you want to insert several records into a table. You will have to write several INSERT statements to accomplish this task in prior versions of SQL Server. Now in SQL Server 2008 it is very easy. So I thought of posting this blog for your reference. Read the full blog to see this cool command. 


I want to write a data patch to populate the table, dbo.CountryRegion.



IF OBJECT_ID('dbo.CountryRegion','U') IS NOT NULL
DROP TABLE dbo.CountryRegion

CREATE TABLE dbo.CountryRegion
(
CountryRegionCode char(2)
,[Name] varchar(100)
)

Tables with no Clustered Index

Most of the time it is a good practice to have a Clustered Index on each table. However I've seen numerous instances where there are tables without Clustered Index. The following code will help 
you to identify the list of tables which do not have Clustered Index.