CREATE BLOG dbo.SqlServer

Free SQL Server Training Videos

2009-09-02T14:13:00.002-05:00

Over at LearnItFirst.com, we have over two hours worth of free SQL Server training videos. If you need free SQL Server 2008 training videos, we have 'em! Check it out:

http://www.learnitfirst.com/Free/SQL-Server-Training.aspx

Learn SQL Server with Online Training Videos

2009-06-30T08:47:00.000-05:00

Are you new to the world that is SQL Server and in dire need of affordable, online SQL Server training? Or maybe you just need to brush up on your SQL Server programming skills. Whatever the case may be, I have found a great site that offers computer based training for SQL Server - LearnItFirst.com.

These aren't your run-of-the-mill training videos either. The videos from LearnItFirst.com are recorded by expert instructors and can be downloaded and watched anytime, anywhere. LearnItFirst.com also offers online training videos for Windows Server, Exchange Server and SharePoint Services, so check them out today!

SQL Server Training Videos from LearnItFirst.com

2009-06-05T09:45:00.003-05:00

In case you're looking for a great group of SQL Server videos, check out LearnItFirst's SQL Server training videos. They have videos on SQL 2005, SQL 2008, SSIS, SSRS, and much more.

LearnItFirst 2.0

2009-06-01T15:57:00.007-05:00

Just wanted to put a link in here to the new LearnItFirst - check it out: http://www.learnitfirst.com/Course/AllCourses.aspx. You'll find great training videos on SQL Server, SharePoint training courses, and much, much more.

http://www.learnitfirst.com/Course/AllCourses.aspx

My Kingston Flash Drive Just Survived the Washing Machine & the Dryer!

2008-11-21T09:31:00.001-06:00

Just a quick note: if you're looking for a high quality, durable USB Flash Drive, let me suggest the Kingston DTI series flash drives. I just bought it last week and was wondering where it went to yesterday... My wife handed it to me last night as she was doing the laundry - it had been through both a wash and a dry and it still works great! Thanks, Kingston :)

Buy it at amazon or newegg (my two favorite places to shop online for tech stuff)

How to Install Windows Live Writer on Windows Server 2008

2008-11-21T09:08:00.001-06:00

So you're annoyed, right? You use Windows Server 2008 as a workstation and now Windows Live Writer won't install. I'm annoyed too - can anyone even think of the logical reason this was not allowed? I doubt it. I assume that it's just some lazy coding.

How to get Windows Live Writer to Install on Windows 2008

Step 1: Install Windows Live Writer on a Windows XP or Windows Vista machine
Step 2: On that same machine, copy c:\Program Files\Windows Live\Writer folder to your the same location on your Windows Server 2008 machine
Step 3: Create the necessary shortcuts to the executable.

That's it!

Why does it work?

Windows Live Writer is built using .NET and, like many .NET applications, it can use xcopy deployment - which means the installer's main function is just to extract the files and create the shortcuts.

I tested this on Windows Server 2008 in November of 2008. I can't support it so, if it doesn't work for you, all I can say is "Works for me!"

No More Vista for Me!

2008-02-13T06:06:00.001-06:00

So this morning, I am at least two things: (1) angry, and (2) fed up. I record my videos on Vista because I want the videos to have the new and fresh look and feel but that's it - I'm going back to Windows XP (and not for the first time). This morning when I logged into my recording machine, it tells me that I might be the victim of software counterfeiting! Oh noes!

LearnItFirst.com is a Microsoft Certified Partner so we have licenses to spare but, since they only give us one key, it gets used on multiple machines - this is common for licensing and not the problem. The problem is that, over the past two years, I've installed Vista on probably ten different machines - virtual machines or "real" machines - and then wiped Vista away because it was awful. Vista has only stayed on two actual machines. So now, the MSFT licensing system thinks I'm a pirate arrrrrr...

I have the same licensing issue with Office 2007 now as well. I've installed Vista, used the product key (and activated it), and then had to uninstall for whatever reason. Of course I installed and activated Office 2007 as well...

Would Microsoft give me my licenses back if I called them? Probably. But from now on I'll have to call in and enter - not kidding - a 45-character provided key and then receive a 45-character product key in return (make no typos!).

No thanks - I just don't need Vista or its headaches that bad. Arrrggh - I'm so fed up with the licensing schemes. I buy a new computer for $1200 and it includes a Windows Vista Home license. I immediately throw that away by installing Vista Ultimate on top of it - one license (Home version) paid for and dumped. Since I've actually bought three PCs, I've purchased three Windows Vista Home version licenses and would up not using them in favor of trying Windows Vista Ultimate. When that doesn't work, I've now burned through (apparently) ten Windows Vista Ultimate licenses.

Back to Windows XP. I have plenty, plenty of licenses and less hassle.

Arrrrrrrrrrr - I'm no pirate but MSFT makes me appreciate the pirates for sure!

Thank you, Ken

2008-01-30T07:58:00.001-06:00

Wow - I read some very sad news this morning: the great Ken Henderson passed away this past Sunday. Ken Henderson was the author of the famous "The Guru's Guide" series and honestly, if it wasn't Ken's insights and his ability to "simplify the complicated", I would not have had such a rewarding career. Ken was truly an inspiration for me and the world will definitely not be a better place without him. I never was fortunate enough to meet Ken in person but he sure came across as a nice person in his blog and his books.

Looks like the news outlets are slow to pick this up as well - Google News only has one article as of this writing (http://news.google.com/news?q=%22ken+henderson%22) - although the blogging world is mourning his loss.

Thank you, Ken.

I'm Using a New CAPTCHA Engine

2008-01-14T16:34:00.001-06:00

I've been using Captcha Control by Jeff Atwood (the brilliant mind behind from CodingHorror.com) for a little over a year now on my sites and I've been very happy with it. In case you don't know what a captcha is, a captcha is an acronym (often seen CAPTCHA) which stands for "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart". People like me use captchas on signup/etc pages to stop automated scripts/bots from submitting information (such as spam on a forum).

Like I said, I've used Jeff Atwood's freely available Captcha Control (get it here) for a while here on our sites and been happy with it. It is solvable so it isn't 100% foolproof (judging by the automated signups I get) but it probably stops 99.9% of the spam. But it has one recognized problem - if you are visually impaired, it stops you more effectively than it does the spammers. Yikes - not what I wanted :( You see, Captcha Control doesn't feature an audio-only version of the captcha; if you can't read the already-hard-to-read letters, you can't register (or, in my case, download a free video since I use captchas to protect our bandwidth). I've gotten a few comments/emails/phone calls in the past month from people who wanted to download a free video but they were unable to solve the captcha and thus weren't able to download. So I began the hunt for a new captcha engine.

First question I had to solve is the, "Is it better to buy/use third party or build it myself?" Easy - buy. Building and maintaining a captcha engine is tough and requires insane algorithm knowledge - I had no intention of building. Next question - who to use? I ultimately settled on reCAPTCHA (get it here) which is FREE, thus making it quite attractive :)

What I like about reCAPTCHA (other than the cost) is that it is sooooooo easy to use both as a developer and as a user. It has tougher-than-average captchas to solve, it features audio captchas, and lastly it is a community effort - solving captchas with reCAPTCHA actually goes to a good cause. From their website:

About 60 million CAPTCHAs are solved by humans around the world every day. In each case, roughly ten seconds of human time are being spent. Individually, that's not a lot of time, but in aggregate these little puzzles consume more than 150,000 hours of work each day. What if we could make positive use of this human effort? reCAPTCHA does exactly that by channeling the effort spent solving CAPTCHAs online into "reading" books...
... how does the system know the correct answer to the puzzle? Here's how: Each new word that cannot be read correctly by OCR is given to a user in conjunction with another word for which the answer is already known. The user is then asked to read both words. If they solve the one for which the answer is known, the system assumes their answer is correct for the new one. The system then gives the new image to a number of other people to determine, with higher confidence, whether the original answer was correct.

Very cool - we all want to help out, right?

Tomorrow I'll record a series of videos on how to add captchas - both Jeff Atwood's control and reCAPTCHA - to your ASP.NET applications but, in case anyone is paying attention, I wanted to give you a heads-up and let you play with the captchas on the sites. If you want to try them out, just append "/FreeVideos/" onto the end of any of our domain names like this:

    * http://www.learnsqlserver.com/FreeVideos/
    * http://www.learnsharepoint.com/FreeVideos/
    * http://www.learnexchange.com/FreeVideos/
    * etc....

Let me know how you like it by dropping me a line through our Contact Us page here!

What? FeedDemon is now FREE!

2008-01-11T08:54:00.001-06:00

If you've watched my videos and/or read some of my other posts, you'll likely remember that I'm an RSS junkie - can't live without it. My feed reader of choice is Newsgator's FeedDemon - and they just announced that it is now FREE. I paid about $30 for it 3-4 years ago (back when Nick Bradbury was sole owner) and it was money well spent. Now that it's free, I hope more folks will learn of the goodness that is RSS :)

Download it here - http://nick.typepad.com/blog/2008/01/free-demon-yes.html

Here's a few of my favorite feeds to get you started:

General Tech:

SQL Based

.NET Based

Here's How I "Do" RSS

RSS, to me, is a lot like data mining - unless you have a lot of data to work with, it's not that useful. What I like to do is to collect tons and tons of feeds (organized into categories) and I have FeedDemon set to update all of my feeds every 5-10 minutes. I have about 1,600 feeds right now in my OPML file that I am monitoring every 5-10 minutes - yikes! That means that, every time any one of the 1,600 feeds posts a new entry, FeedDemon downloads it and I can view it inside FeedDemon - without having to go to that website.

But that's too much info to be useful, isn't it?

Yes. Sometimes I forget to open FeedDemon and, if it goes 2-3 days without launching, I'll have 1,500-2,000 new articles to read. Forget that - you'll never care about or read 1,500-2,000 articles 2-3 days.

So what do you do?

Watches Are the Key to Using FeedDemon Effectively (IMO)

Here's what I do:

I go collect a ton of RSS feeds about a particular topic (Audio Visual - TVs and Stereos, for example)
Create a watch that looks for certain keywords

Sharp Aquos
1080p
free dvd

Sync the feeds every 10 minutes
Configure FeedDemon to notify me via a popup whenever someone has been added to the watch

The better your watches, the better you'll enjoy FeedDemon. The more feeds you have, the more you'll likely enjoy FeedDemon. One word of caution: some sites are duplicates and post duplicate stories. This can lead to duplicates showing up in your watches. So look for that and prune your feed list periodically.

Go download FeedDemon and get started with it - it's awesome!

http://nick.typepad.com/blog/2008/01/free-demon-yes.html

VISTA SP1 with SQL Server Integration Services and Office Interop Problems?

2008-01-10T10:46:00.001-06:00

So, in an effort to improve my Vista experience, I downloaded the RC1 for Vista Service Pack 1 and installed it (in less than two hours). However, now all of my Microsoft.Office.Interop DLLs that referenced in my SSIS packages are no longer "visible" by SSIS :(

That's right - installing Vista SP1 somehow made a change that made it difficult (if not impossible - problem is still not solved) to use the primary interop assemblies in Vista with SSIS. Believe me - it worked before installing Vista SP1 RC1 but it doesn't work after. When I go into the SSIS Script Designer, it shows me that the Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel assembly (for example) is referenced properly (on the left side of the screenshot below) but you can also see that VSA doesn't recognize Excel.Application, Excel.Workbook, or Excel.Worksheet ("Excel" is aliased to Imports Excel = Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel).

Now, when I right click on the Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel reference and select Properties, you get misinformation:

The next logical step was to remove the reference and add it back. Fine - tried that... But the Microsoft.Office.* assemblies do not show up in the list of available assemblies :( I've done the obvious - I've verified that the Interop DLLs are in the "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\90\DTS\Binn" folder and that they are in the GAC. See?

I need some help - I'll be sure to post back here with the resolution and/or change required. In the meantime, if you know of the reason for this, please let me know in the comments.

Get Ready for .NET 3.5 with the .NET 3.5 Framework Posters

2007-11-30T13:33:00.001-06:00

Check it out - MSFT has given us the latest posters for the .NET Framework (available here). If you plan on getting ready/migrating to .NET 3.5 and Visual Studio 2008, you'll want to get in on this while available.

Link: .NET 3.5 Framework Posters

Spambayes with Outlook 2007 - How to Configure Spambayes to Work on Windows XP/2003 and Outlook 2007

2007-11-29T07:15:00.001-06:00

I did it! I'm sooooo happy :) No more of the crap Outlook 2007 junk mail and I don't have to deal with how crappy my ISP's spam filter is anymore - I *finally* configured SpamBayes successfully for Outlook 2007 (running on Windows XP and Windows 2003).

If you're tried to use Spambayes in Outlook 2007, you've likely gotten the "Cannot load Spambayes add-in" error:

There was an error initializing the SpamBayes addin. Please restart Outlook and try again
Com add-in load errors
ImportError: DLL load failed
The Spambayes toolbar shows up but doesn't work
Registered: SpamBayes.OutlookAddin Registration complete. (but it doesn't really work)
Outlook experienced a serious problem with the 'spambayes' add-in. (and then disables the Spambayes add-in)

I tried re-installing Outlook 2007, I tried reinstalling Spambayes but nothing worked :( I finally found a couple of places on the web that point to solutions for Outlook 2003 that, if I applied them to Outlook 2007, they finally worked. Here's what you need to know:

First,you want to visit the Spambayes FAQs and particularly you want to read the one about turning off DEP protection (here)
Second, you'll want to download the latest release of Spambayes - as of this writing, it is 1.1a4 (available from sourceforge here)

To get it to work:

Install Spambayes using a default installation
Before launching Outlook 2007, add Outlook to your DEP protection

On Windows XP/2003, right click on My Computer and select Properties. Click the Advanced tab and then the Settings button under the Performance panel. Click the Data Execution Prevention tab and then add the Outlook executable to the list.
I think this is all you need but, as a precaution, I also added the Spambayes com register exe: \Program Files\Spambayes\bin\outlook_addin_register.exe as well but I don't know if that mattered

Launch Outlook - did it work? It should but, if it doesn't, allow Outlook to disable Spambayes and restart Outlook. Go to Tools -> Trust Center -> Add-Ins and look for "Manage" at the bottom of that page.
Select "Com Add-Ins" in the drop down and hit the Go button
Remove the Spambayes Add-in and add it back (found at \Program Files\Spambayes\bin\outlook_addin.dll)

Did it work? Worked for me and that makes me oh so happy! Boo MSFT for releasing such a crappy junk mail engine with no improvements. Boo Microsoft for making Outlook 2007 actually worse for junk mail than Outlook 2003. Boo Spambayes team for not upgrading/updating the website to work with Outlook 2007. Yay Spambayes team for totally rocking in every other aspect lol.

I hope this helps you - drop a line and let me know if it does or doesn't work for you.

How to Find Encrypted SQL Server Stored Procedures

2007-09-07T07:44:00.001-05:00

Today I was dealing with a database that has encrypted objects - functions and stored procedures - but not all of the objects were encrypted and I needed to be able to quickly identify which objects were encrypted and which weren't. This is a database that needs everything encrypted so I wrote these scripts (below) that help you find all encrypted objects in a SQL Server database. Check it out -

/*
Author: Scott Whigham from http://www.LearnSqlServer.com/

    Description: This SQL script helps you identify the encvrypted and unencrypted objects in your databases. The first query
        allows you to filter to return only encrypted or unencrypted objects and the second query gives you a breakdown
        of how many encrypted SQL Server stored procedures you have, etc. If you want to know how to find encrypted stored
        procedures then use this SQL script.
    Versions: SQL Server 2005
    Creation Date: Sept 7, 2007

For more scripts like this one, visit http://forums.learnsqlserver.com/codesamples.aspx
*/

SELECT SCHEMA_NAME(sp.schema_id) AS [Schema],
    sp.name AS [Name],
    sp.object_id AS [ID],
    sp.create_date AS [CreateDate],
    sp.modify_date AS [DateLastModified],
    CAST(CASE WHEN smsp.definition IS NULL THEN 1 ELSE 0 END AS bit) AS [IsEncrypted]
FROM sys.all_objects sp LEFT JOIN sys.sql_modules smsp
    ON smsp.object_id = sp.object_id
WHERE smsp.definition IS NULL -- This identifies an encrypted object
    AND sp.type IN ('FN', 'IF', 'V', 'TR', 'PC', 'TF', 'P')
    AND sp.is_ms_shipped = 0

SELECT sp.type, sp.type_desc
    , COUNT(smsp.definition) AS UnencryptedObjects -- only non-null or unencrypted objects will be counted
    , COUNT(*)-COUNT(smsp.definition) AS EncryptedObjects
    , COUNT(*) AS Total
FROM sys.all_objects sp LEFT JOIN sys.sql_modules smsp
    ON smsp.object_id = sp.object_id
WHERE sp.type IN ('FN', 'IF', 'V', 'TR', 'PC', 'TF', 'P')
    AND sp.is_ms_shipped = 0
GROUP BY sp.type, sp.type_desc

SQL Server 2008 CTP 4 Released

2007-09-04T13:09:00.001-05:00

I missed this on Friday so I wanted to write about it today. The "latest" beta from MSFT is out: SQL Server 2008 CTP 4 and you can download it here. What's different? Well first off, it starts off all wrong: if you want to play, you must first install Virtual Server 2005 R2! If you do not have Virtual Server installed you can get it free from www.microsoft.com/virtualserver.

But I don't want Virtual Server - I use VMWare. I don't like Virtual Server. Bah!!!!!

This is an odd choice, isn't it? The past CTPs have all been downloadable setup files that we could test on any system, any OS, any configuration, etc but this new CTP is only testable on Microsoft's pre-configured server. I haven't seen/read any blog posts about this decision - hopefully someone can post a comment including what the reason behind this choice is/was.

Review of Project Management Tools for Startups

2007-08-29T11:55:00.001-05:00

Recently here at LearnItFirst.com, due to our growth, I had to decide on a few things: (1) project management software, (2) help desk software, and (3) knowledge base management software. I wanted to post my notes/thoughts on the project management software here so that it can hopefully save someone else some time in the future.

What I Need

As a startup on a budget and with only a single founder with multiple employees, I needed about as simple of a project management tool as possible. For the past year or so, I've used John Wood's Priorganizer for my own use - and I still will since it is just so fast and awesome for a one-person to-do list. It's cheap too - $29.95 one time - and I recommend it as an add-on to Microsoft Outlook (Outlook's Tasks/Events just don't do what I need). So why don't I use Priorganizer for my team? Because it's really not intended to be used for assignment or with teams - it's a personal to-do list manager.

What I Had to Have:

Web-based
Milestones complete with Task Lists and Tasks
- I wanted a hierarchy in the Tasks (hence the Task List)
- Milestones and tasks should be able to have notes/comments
- Tasks should be able to be organized in a hierarchy
Whiteboard/Forum in which we could write articles/posts/comments and have discussions
Great search feature
Emailing capabilities on each item if needed (i.e., If I make a comment, I want the option to check a box to email the members of this or that team)
Reporting about activity and open items
Cheap or free version to try out for 30 days
Pricing information had to be on the website or I left the site
- If I had to give up my email to demo or view pricing, I left the site immediately
Had to be hosted for me or, if I purchased/used it, it had to have the option for unlimited domains/sites
- I don't want to pay $399 for LearnItFirst.com and have to pay another $399 for VideoBooks.com
10MB+ of storage space for documents
Easy to remember URL for my workspace

That's all I really needed - and, since that's such a simple list of requirements, I didn't want to pay much (if anything) for it initially.

What I Would Consider Lagniappe:

Time sheet management and/or hours-worked functionality (replete with reports)
Knowledge base
Easy re-sorting
AJAX-based interface
Windows client for faster adding of tasks
SSL

Deal Killers

Completely free hosted-only options like http://www.OfficeZilla.com/, ClockingIT, and SideJobTrack
- Those sites have their niche but that isn't what I wanted
A site required my email to demo or view prices. Also, if I couldn't find pricing links/info within the first 30 seconds of looking, I figured the product would suffer the same design flaws
Total cost was more than $500 in a two year period for everything I wanted for 5 users
No custom URL

What I Chose

I chose, for the time being, to go with Zoho Projects ("ZP"). It isn't the best interface and it isn't the cheapest but, overall, I felt it gave me the best features for the price. It handled all of my "Have to Have" items and most of my "Would Like to Have" items. ZP also is cheap and gives you good value for your freebie one-project. Once you want more stuff, it's only $5 per month to have 3 projects - no per-user fees and your $5 per month includes 500MB of document storage. Also, Zoho's "Basic Plan" is $12 and that includes SSL, Time-Tracking, and 2GB storage!

Here are the sites that I went through in detail:

Basecamp - rejected due to price and the feature set wasn't exactly what I wanted
Zoho Projects - I choose this one
Joint Contact - My second choice due to the Outlook 2007 integration features
activeCollab - too "new" for me
WhatWhat Status - Too silly of a name to even consider
DevShop - rejected due to price (most expensive of all)
GoPlan - My third choice (would've been my second choice since it has so many features for the price but I liked the Outlook integration of Joint Contact)

There are tons more PM software/site packages (check out this posting on the Basecamp forums for links/reviews of others) and I didn't have time to review them all so I just went with the ones that came up in Google when I searched for "Basecamp alternative".

Anyway, I hope this helps someone else save time and money when researching project management software for startups. Let me know if I missed one too!

How to Maintain Current File Backups for 100+GB of Data for FREE

2007-08-28T05:33:00.001-05:00

If you're a hacker, a consultant, or just a developer/admin enthusiast, one problem likely to be high on your list is, "How can I make backups of all my stuff regularly?" I have about 200GB of data that I want backed up weekly and about 50GB that I need backed up somewhere between hourly and daily - and I'm a single developer on a budget which means tape drives are not attractive to me ATM. DVDs are out (even dual layer) since I want 250GB backed up weekly...

After doing a bit of research, I've found what I think is a good solution for anyone using Windows Vista/XP/Windows 2003/2008 to maintaining current file backups for free using nothing but freeware. I'll tell you about my solution below but one caveat first: this works for me but I don't know whether it work for you so you need to do your due diligence on what other options are available before committing to this solution. Also I'm sure that I've failed to mention some good freeware tools so please don't hesitate to comment on what else works for you.

N.B. Just want to see what tools I use? Click here if you want to skip the preamble and get to the software.

My Three-Fold Backup Problem

Problem #1: Maintaining current backups of development environment

I'm currently developing the videobooks.com website as well as maintaining all of the LearnItFirst.com websites) so it is very important to me to have super-current backups of every file/folder/whatever. What I wanted was two things: (1) a point and click solution that allowed me to take a backup of the entire website project (*everything including supporting files not in the VS2005 project such as documentation, PSDs, databases, etc), and (2) a scheduled backup that took backups at predefined intervals. Why the point and click solution? I like the idea of taking the backup immediately before starting development and immediately after finishing a section of the project - it just seems "clean". All told, the project files are about 5GB currently and will not grow significantly over the next year. One challenge here is that I wanted my point-and-click backups to be fast - very fast. When inspiration strikes, I don't want to have to wait 10 minutes for a backup to complete...

Problem #2: Maintaining current backups of 50GB of data on my laptop

On my laptop - the machine I use for active development - I have another 50GB of stuff that I need backed up; some of it daily and most of it weekly. The challenges here are (1) how to perform incremental backups in Windows XP/Windows 2003 since there's probably only 5GB or less of changes each week, and (2) that this 50GB today will be 100GB within six months. This needs to be a combination of point and click and scheduled backups.

Problem #3: Maintaining current backups of 200GB of data on external drives

External hard drives are the way to go for the one-man team, right? We store everything on them: mp3s, movies, backups, application installation files, etc. I have three that I actively use:

A 180GB hard drive for backups of my laptop, applications, mp3s and backups of other machines ("Drive 1")
A 250GB hard drive to store the LearnItFirst.com and VideoBooks.com videos ("Drive 2")
A 500GB hard drive that is a backup of the first two ("Drive 3")

The challenge here is how to perform incremental backups on Windows XP (which manages the external drives). Drive 2 only changes about 500MB a week but Drive 1 changes anywhere from 1GB to 5GB a week depending on whether I've downloaded new stuff from MSDN or whatever - with that little bit of change, the incremental backup is definitely the way to go. This needs to be scheduled since point and click would take too long.

The Freeware That I Choose to Use for My Backups

SyncToy Is a Great Choice for Point and Click Backups and for Scheduled Backups

My friend, Grant Moyle (author of our Exchange/Windows video books), turned me on to SyncToy in October 2006 when he made a great video extolling it's virtues (titled Using SyncToy to Synchronize Directories/Machines). I'm slow on the uptake though so it took me almost two years before I used it...

Let me first give you an idea of what SyncToy does: SyncToy synchronizes files and folders between "A" and "B" with "A" and "B" being either local folders or remote folders. It does whatever you wish: want to delete all files in B and then copy A over? It can do that. Want to copy over only the changed files? Check. Want to <insert description here> from A/B to B/A? Check. SyncToy also covers both bases: it features both point-and-click backup options as well as the ability to schedule it to run.

So like I said earlier, I'm developing the videobooks.com website project and maintaining the LearnItFirst.com websites. SyncToy uses "Folder Pairs" to determine "A" and "B" so, when you define your synchronization, you define "A" and "B" as local or remote folders. Check out an example screenshot:

The Run button is the point and click option and, as you might be able to see, I've set mine up to perform a differential with the Left Folder (what I'll call "A") being the master and the Right Folder ("B") being the target. This is what SyncToy calls an "Echo". When I click Run after modifying one file at the master, here's what I see:

So, with SyncToy, I've got a great tool that performs all of my point-and-click incremental backups - for free. Next stop: how do I schedule backups with SyncToy? Easy - launch SyncToy and then go to Help-> Learn How to Schedule SyncToy... as shown here:

I'll leave it to you to read the instructions on setting up your scheduled tasks since each OS will have different actions. I will also say that I prefer to write batch files to do this type of thing instead of creating an "action"-based task... It has a super-easy syntax - here's an example batch file that I use called SyncToy.bat that synchronizes all folders:

cd "C:\Documents and Settings\ScottW\Local Settings\Application Data\SyncToy\"
SyncToy.exe -R

That's it - and it could even be simplified to a single line if you wish. Next - just create a scheduled task to execute the batch file and you're done! Note: if you wanted only to synch a single folder pair, change the -R to something like -R"My Folder Pair" (substituting the name of your folder pair of course).

Okay - so with SyncToy I've solved most of my problems - I can do point-and-click backups as well as scheduled incremental backups. For free :)

Download SyncToy or read an article on using it here.

Next Tools: Robocopy and Robocopy GUI

I'll wrap up here since Robocopy has been around forever and will require you to dig into the documentation and figure it out (unlike SyncToy which is super easy). There are also tons of links on the web that you can use to get started (and I'm tired of writing about backups). Here's how I would describe Robocopy: Robocopy synchronizes folders, not files, in every way that you will likely ever need to do so. Simply put, Robocopy does what SyncToy does and a whole lot more (such as continuing after a network outage and even failover). In fact, SyncToy was written as a direct result of user feedback about Robocopy (people wanted a simpler interface).

Robocopy originally shipped with the Windows Server Resource Kit(s) and, for those of you on Windows XP or Windows Server 2003, you can download it here as part of the Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit tools. Robocopy is included in Windows Vista so you do not need a separate download if you are on Vista.

You can do point-and-click backups with Robocopy via batch files/command line or you can schedule it by creating a batch file and scheduling a task. Here's a sample Robocopy command:

ROBOCOPY \\sourceserver\share \\remoteserver\share /MIR

The above command uses a source ("\\sourceserver\share") and a destination (\\remoteserver\share) and, when you use the /MIR switch, it will delete all files in \\remoteserver\share and then copy all files from the source to the destination (making the destination a "mirror"). Here's a good example of how to use Robocopy as a scheduled task to create such a mirror: http://www.simplefailover.com/kb.aspx?kbid=1013

Robocopy GUI was also written in response to the user feedback that requested an easier interface for Robocopy. Robocopy GUI is nothing more than a wrapper around Robocopy.exe, the tool mentioned above (so make sure you download the Windows 2003 Resource Kit and install it otherwise Robocopy GUI won't work). Robocopy GUI's most important feature, in my opinion, is the option to create a batch file featuring your choices/options. Once you have the batch file you can then schedule it as a task!

Robocopy allows for both point and click as well as scheduled backups but, if I had to guess, you'll likely only use it for scheduled backups (otherwise you'll have to memorize all switches at the command line each time you run it).

Summary

Both SyncToy and Robocopy do the same thing but I use SyncToy to synchronize folders for point and click and Robocopy for anything that I schedule. SyncToy's visual options just seem easier for me to use than batch files so I tend to have only a few folder pairs and the rest is managed on a schedule by RoboCopy.

Download Links:

Download SyncToy
Robocopy for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 (included in Vista/2008): Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit tools

SQL Server Will Not Start - Uggghhhh

2007-08-15T08:00:00.001-05:00

I haven't blogged in quite a while - I have been so busy prepping for the launch of VideoBooks.com (launching September 8) that I've just let programming and video production eat my time away hehe. So, this past week when my SQL Server on my laptop started giving me fits, I initially let it slide. Now, it just won't start whenever I boot the computer - so I figured it was time to research the issue (and blog about it!).

Here's the scenario - my HP dv9000 laptop (the replacement - not the original one that HP Support kept for 64 days - more here) is throwing disk errors. You know the kind - "An error was detected on device \Device\Harddisk0 during a paging operation." These tend to generally be warnings of impending doom... time to call HP Support again - oh I just threw up a little bit...

Okay - so back to my boot sequence. Once I noticed the disk errors, I also saw that some of my services began to fail on startup - such as my SQL Server. Here's a dump of my System error log:

The SQL Server (MSSQLSERVER) service terminated with service-specific error 10050 (0x2742).
The SQL Server Agent (MSSQLSERVER) service depends on the SQL Server (MSSQLSERVER) service which failed to start because of the following error:
The service has returned a service-specific error code. (my favorite)

Earlier on (in the boot sequence) the TCP IP driver had failed ("The following boot-start or system-start driver(s) failed to load: Tcpip") and that, seemingly, caused this entire chain of events - everything thing from my antivirus, to SQL Server, to my virtual PC software failed.

The next stop was to review the Application Event Log where I found these gems:

Server failed to listen on 'any' <ipv4> 1433. Error: 0x2742. To proceed, notify your system administrator.
TDSSNIClient initialization failed with error 0x2742, status code 0xa.
TDSSNIClient initialization failed with error 0x2742, status code 0x1.
Could not start the network library because of an internal error in the network library. To determine the cause, review the errors immediately preceding this one in the error log.
SQL Server could not spawn FRunCM thread. Check the SQL Server error log and the Windows event logs for information about possible related problems.

Here's the thing - the SQL Server will not start on boot but it starts after boot just fine when I go to the SQL Server Configuration Manager and tell it to start the service.

Now the important error message here, to me, is the "SQL Server could not spawn FRunCM thread" error. Just so you have some background, an "FRunCM thread" is essentially SQL Server trying to generate a self-signed certificate - the kind it uses in connections between clients and services. What is curious is that, in the SQL Server Error Log, it says, "The certificate was successfully loaded for encryption." but is immediately followed by additional errors...

So - the typical fix/cause for this (acccording to posts on blogs/forums) is to disable the VIA protocol. But I don't have VIA protocol enabled...

Oh well - nothing for me to do but to get a new hard drive and see if it keeps doing the same thing...

SQL Server 2005 BPA (Best Practices Analyzer) Is Here

2007-07-05T06:20:00.001-05:00

I have to say - for all the bugs and problems running SQL 2005 that I've experienced (and that have frustrated me and you), Microsoft has just been amazing about putting these helpful tools together for the system and making them available for free.I remember back 6-7 years ago when we had no tools or any special downloads and we had to write the tools ourselves (which led to lucrative consulting projects though) but today, I can save the time and just help the client with the built-in tools from MSFT.

The SQL Server 2005 Best Practices Analyzer (July 2007 edition) is the SQL 2005 version of the BPA (Best Practices Analyzer). Microsoft, IIRC, originally started using the BPAs with SQL Server back in SQL 2000 and has since expanded them to the ASP.NET BPA, the Exchange BPA and more (click here for a full list).

Thoughts on Running the SQL 2005 BPA:

This isn't just an extension of the old SQL 2000 BPA; this new implementation takes full advantage of SQL Server 2005's features by scanning for (and making suggestions for correcting/amending) SSIS implementations and more. On my machine (which has SQL 2005, SSIS and SSRS), it made no suggestions for improving SSRS but it did make a few SSIS-based suggestions. Check out the screenshot below for an example of the report listing:

There are a few interesting bits:

"Unexpected System Failures on Host" - I don't really remember this happening but this is MSFT's way of telling me that my server has had an expected shutdown. If you read the "Tell me more about this setting", it says I should move my SQL Server to a more stable system lol
"Authentication Mode Violation" - This is a fear-mongering way of saying that MSFT thinks I should be running my SQL Server in Windows Authentication mode instead of Mixed Mode...
"SQL Login Password Policy Violation by login [sa]" - I don't have the password policy option checked for my sa account...
"Sysdtslog90 Table in [msdb]" - See? This is what I mean when I say that the new BPA is integrated tightly with SSIS. If you read the docs, MSFT says, "Integration Services package logging can generate a large volume of verbose log entries. You may experience decreased performance if you log to a system database such as master or msdb. A good practice is to create a separate database for Integration Services logging."

One thing: there is no legend regarding the icons on the Report page. Does a blue circle with an exclamation generally imply danger? No - but it's the way the BPA shows you a recommended Best Practice. The yellow triangle with the exclamation is pretty standard - it's a Warning - so you will want to review anything that comes back with a yellow exclamation. The BPA uses Exception-Based reporting so you won't see a nice green circle with a checkmark if you've done something right; you only get notified if you've screwed up. Here's the legend of icons in the report as best I can tell (based on the icons I saw in my reports):

Best Practices: Blue circle with exclamation
Warnings: Yellow triangle with exclamation

I looked in the help file for a full listing of the icons but saw nothing. There's a page called "Types of Output Information" that lists all of the options but no icons. Here's the list:

Best Practice
Warning
Error
Non-Default Configuration
Recent Change
Baseline Mismatch (requires a baseline scan to be run first)
Information

Also included in the download is a .chm (a help file) that is packed with great suggestions, explanations of the settings, and good insider info about SQL Server 2005.

Recommendations For Using the SQL Server 2005 Best Practices Analyzer:

Do:

Take recent backups and run DBCC CHECKDB on all databases before running the BPA otherwise you get cluttered reports

If you aren't running CHECKDB periodically, it will tell you. To quickly set this up, just use either a Database Maintenance plan (the Check Integrity Task) or SSIS and schedule once every week or two weeks (or whatever)

Run this on a test server first just to get used to the output and understand everything
Run this on your test and development servers as well as your production systems. You'd be surprised at how often DBAs focus on the production server and don't secure/maintain the dev servers nearly as much.
Schedule periodic BPA scans and compare to your baseline

Don't:

Don't run this on a production machine in the middle of the work day - run it at off-peak times. Be aware that monitoring/running the Best Practices Analyzer will have an effect on performance. In the docs, MSFT says that the BPA will use 50 to 75 percent CPU capacity while the instance of SQL Server is being scanned. I didn't see nearly this much on my servers (more like 10%-15%) but since they say it, I'm concerned about running it in the middle of the day.
Don't run this at the same time that system maintenance jobs are being run. You don't want the BPA and your DBCC CHECKDB job to compete for system resources.

System Requirements:

Modern day OS
SQL Server 2005 Client Tools must be installed
They list that the .NET Framework is a requirement but they were a requirement to install the SQL 2005 tools so it's a bit redundant...

SQL DMVStats - Cool Free Tool for SQL 2005

2007-07-03T09:44:00.000-05:00

Like Reporting Services? Like SQL Server? Want to view a whole bunch of your SQL Server performance data with Reporting Services-style reports? Then you'll want to check out SQL DMVStats, a 1.0-generation open source project up on CodePlex that was just released a few days ago by Tom Davidson & Sanjay Mishra from the SQL Server Customer Advisory Best Practices Team.

I've been playing with it for about a day and I dig it. It reminds me of the SQL Server 2005 Performance Dashboard reports that I'm so fond of (link here) but there are some signficant differences. For one, the Performance Dashboard reports is more of a pull-based reporting; i.e., you must request the report and then you can view the data afterwards. With the SQL DMVStats reporting, they use a series of jobs to track system performance and a database to store this information therefore trend analysis and time-based analysis are easy to accomplish. I think of the Performance Dashboard reports as for ad-hoc reporting and I might think of the SQL DMVStats as trend analysis; sort of along the lines of the SQL Server Health and History tool (the SQLH2).

So what can you use SQL DMVStats for? Well, here's the introduction text:

Microsoft SQL Server 2005 provides Dynamic Management Views (DMVs) to expose valuable information that you can use for performance analysis. DMVstats 1.0 is an application can collect, analyze and report on SQL Server 2005 DMV performance data. DMVstats does not support Microsoft SQL Server 2000 and earlier versions.

In the docs, it is listed as a "Performance DataWarehouse"

You do have to be aware that:

This is first generation stuff here so, if you install it and it crashes your machine, tough cookies...
The default sample rate is 20 seconds therefore there is some overhead associated with running it.
The default snapshot interval is every five minutes

I could write out much more here but really I'd be just reproducing the really, really good documentation they included. Go ahead - check it out (on a test server): SQL DMVStats. Tip for first time CodePlex users: to download the file, you need to visit a particular release's page. Look at the top right corner of the page for version 1.0...

BTW, I've had a few issues here and there that I haven't worked out (such as "@object_id is not a parameter for procedure sp_GetDatabaseObjectIndexes." when I'm trying to view the index info) but I suspect it's due to my installing and playing rather than RTFM'ing!

Thanks for the cool tool :)

Updated Version of SQL Server 2005 Books Online Available - Already?!

2007-06-13T17:18:00.001-05:00

I missed this last month but just caught it: there's an updated version of SQL Server 2005 Books Online out now. You can Google the page if you want but here's the download link:

Download updated Books Online here - careful: this is a 135MB download

You might be thinking to yourself, "Wait a minute - didn't we *just* get an updated version 90 days prior?" Well, yes, we did but you shouldn't pay that close attention to this sort of thing... lol

Thoughts on Running the New SQL Server 2008 CTP

2007-06-12T10:42:00.001-05:00

So I've been playing around with SQL Server 2008 (nee Katmai) for about 3-4 days now and I wanted to just write about some of the new features and what the overall feel of Katmai is. I've already posted about some of the new features in SQL Server 2008 so I won't cover them all, just the ones that I played with.

First, let's dismiss with the formalities: SQL Server 2008 feels like nothing more than a renamed SQL Server 2005 SP2 with one or two new features. There's no huge feature list and the tools feel the exact same. In fact, given the several-year-old trend of putting new features in every Service Pack, Microsoft makes this really feel like SQL Server 2005 SP3 if not SQL Server 2005 SP2b. It is so close to SQL Server 2005, to me, that it doesn't even feel like a .5 version! In case that didn't make sense, we had SQL Server 6.0, then 6.5, right? Well this feels like SQL Server 2005.3; it doesn't even warrant a full .5 :)

Feature Rundown:

This version just totally and absolutely feels like SQL Server 2005. In fact, without the version number at the top, you'd be hard pressed to know, visually-speaking, that you are on SQL 2008:
- SSIS seems no different
- SSMS seems no different except that it now has a "Policy Management" folder underneath "Management"
  - SSMS is faster for me although I have read other posts from bloggers saying that it was terribly slow (like the 2005 betas were). It runs circles around the SQL 2005 version of SSMS on my machines
- Profiler seems no different
  - The Profiler GUI is much faster to load and execute on my machine now
- Books Online seems no different
- sqlcmd seems no different
- SQL Server Configuration Manager seems no different

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There's still no *&*%ing Intellisense in the Query Window

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No new data types and no new terms to learn regarding security (again, except for policies)

Again - no Date and no Time data type...

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There don't appear to be any new database options except what was added in SQL Server 2005 SP2 (again, this feels like SP2b)

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it's a lot easier to setup and manage peer-to-peer replication today as well as to add new members (no longer do you have to resynch every member)

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We still have the security option to "Enable Common Criteria Compliance" which is a server-level option that was added in SQL Server 2005 SP2 and we still have C2 Auditing

Enabling Common Criteria Compliance effectively logs all login options, makes changes to how SQL Server manages memory, and a few other changes.
Links:

Common Criteria Certification page on microsoft.com
Official website of the Common Criteria Project
Here's a good breakdown from my friend Alex/Haidong Ji about C2 and Common Criteria Compliance and SQL Server

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I tried, tried, tried to get policies to work but I struck out (or, rather, SSMS struck out since it threw one unhandled exception after another).
- They look neat though... You can schedule your policies to execute at various times and have them target very specific items like whether or not a backup file name meets whatever criteria you want.

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I tried to find new settings, new options, new security features (non-policy based) but, after quick inspections of the various screens/tools, there just aren't any visually available

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They still think they are fooling us by giving us a tool called the SQL Server Business Intelligence Development Studio (in case you're new, the "SQL Server Business Intelligence Development Studio" is really just a renamed shortcut to Visual Studio 2005). No news on whether the RTM will include Visual Studio 2008's shell instead of the currently-installed VS2005 IDE.

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I looked for the Resource Governor, a feature mentioned in the pre-release press materials, but couldn't find anything, anywhere...

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I tried to find information on how "Geographic data will be more easily stored" (more pre-release marketing info) but was unable to locate anything

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Ditto for document management which is supposed to be far easier in 2008

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And ditto for the "comprehensive data auditing" features touted in the marketing materials - dunno where to find this.

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Books Online doesn't really have too much info about the new features which means you learn by hunting-and-pecking in the IDE. Example: If you browse to the "What's New in SQL Server 2008" Books Online entry, it's all "to be filled in later" and errors (or at least it was on my not-connected-to-the-web machine).

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They've still kept the really user-unfriendly SSIS layout, build options, and package saving/editing choices

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No new Reporting Services options that I saw in a quick overview

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After looking over the list of new features in SQL Server 2008, most of the new features are only found once you integrate with other apps (such as Office 200x, SharePoint) which may delay/slow down the adoption (Why upgrade to SQL 2008 if you aren't also upgrading to SharePoint 2009 or Office 2009?).

I couldn't get it to install the workstation components on my machine that already had SQL Server 2005 on it therefore the install sucked. Once I completely removed SQL 2005 from my machine, I was able to install the workstation components thankfully.

Final Thoughts on This First Beta of SQL Server 2008

So maybe Microsoft doesn't call it a beta (technically it's known as a CTP) but come on, it's a beta and we all know it. I get a lot of unhandled exceptions (I do like the next exception markers in the dialog boxes though) but, overall, it's a LOT MORE STABLE than SQL Server 2005's Beta 3 ever was lol.

While I do appreciate the new stability, I must say that I feel duped - duped into thinking that I was going to test/install a NEW version of SQL Server. In my opinion, this is more like a "service pack" and not a new version and so I feel as though I'm testing a new service pack... This seems to be the SQL Server 2005 R2 version that we heard about a few months ago instead of a new version of SQL Server.

Overall, I'm not really that upset that we don't have a ton of new features. Think about it - how likely is it that companies are going to change versions of their database server every 3 years? Maybe 5+ years ago this was an option since we all had fewer Microsoft databases and they were likely much smaller but today? Not likely...

Why does Windows Update want to patch my already-patched SQL Server 2005?

2007-06-05T09:45:00.000-05:00

For two weeks in a row, Windows Update has told me that I need to patch my SQL Server 2005 SP2 installation - with a lower build number than I currently have! I have build 3159 (click here for an explanation of the SP2 silliness) and yet Windows Update tells me that I should let it install build 3150. When it popped up two weeks ago, I told it to not install and to not notify me again of this patch but, hey! Whaddayaknow? It popped up again today asking me to install it. I think that, since it was Tuesday, it felt the need to do *something*...

Oh hell - just as I started trying to find the link to 3159, i noticed that a new hotfix is out dated two days ago: build 3161. It is really annoying at how they have been forced to throw out so many hotfixes post-SP2. Oh well - do you think they've learned their lesson so that we won't have this problem again? No? Me either... We went through this with Service Pack 2 for SQL Server 2000 as well you may remember if you've been around SQL Server for more than a few years.

Anyway, back on topic...

Here's a few helpful links to help you wade through the myriad of hotfixes and keep up-to-date:

Aaron Bertrand has a comprehensive list going of all the hotfixes here
SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 2 (SP2) Re-release and post fixes explained

Download SQL Server 2008 Beta + SQL Server "Katmai" is Now Officially SQL Server 2008

2007-06-04T16:09:00.001-05:00

Want to download the latest CTP of SQL Server 2008 (nee SQL Server "Katmai")? I just did :)

If you want to download this first beta of SQL 2008, check it out here: https://connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer/content/content.aspx?ContentID=5395

It takes a good deal of logic problem solving to figure out this website but, once you do, you're in!

Test Post From the New Windows Live Writer Beta 2

2007-06-01T10:18:00.001-05:00

How does it look? Look good? How about a link - did that look good?

How do the tags work?