SQL Saturday #111 Pre-Conference Sessions

SQL Saturday is coming back to Atlanta on April 14, and once again, we’ve managed to schedule 3 awesome pre-con sessions for the Friday before (April 13). They will cover a broad spectrum of topics: Performance Tuning, SSIS, and SSRS. Registration is limited, so go take a look and see if you or someone from your company can benefit from this great training opportunity.

Also don’t forget that we will have an absolutely amazing lineup of presenters for Saturday! We’ll be announcing the final schedule for SQL Saturday #111 by Monday, February 13th. Registration is open, and we’re already halfway to capacity, so head out to SQLSaturday.com to reserve your seat.

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Andy Leonard and Matt Masson– A Day of SSIS – http://dayofssis.eventbrite.com/

A Day of SSIS was developed by Andy Leonard to train technology professionals in the fine art of using SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) to build data integration and Extract-Transform-Load (ETL) solutions. The training is focused around lectures and emphasizes a practical approach. The target audience for this training is database professionals, application developers, and business intelligence practitioners interested in acquiring or expanding their existing SSIS skill set. No experience with SQL Server or SQL Server Integration Services is required before attending this training. It is helpful (but not required) that students possess some knowledge of and experience with relational databases. SQL Server knowledge / experience will be more helpful than experience and knowledge with other technologies.

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Adam Machanic – No More Guessing! An Enlightened Approach to Performance Troubleshooting – http://nomoreguessing.eventbrite.com/

Scratching your head, you stare at the screen. Should you rebuild an index? Create a new one? Reboot the server? Why is this query so slow?!? Figuring out performance problems can sometimes feel like fumbling your way through a dark room. Maybe you’ll get lucky and find the right solution―or maybe you’ll stub your toe. Either way, it’s a slow, potentially painful process. Yet finding the root cause of most performance issues is a simple exercise, once you understand where to look and when. In this full day seminar, you will learn a proven methodology that can be used to approach virtually any performance problem. Created and refined by Adam Machanic over several years, this strategy leverages core SQL Server performance tools (including dynamic management views, Extended Events, and WMI counters), applying them to various performance troubleshooting techniques (such as waits and queues analysis, baselining, and real-time activity monitoring). Each of these tools and techniques has a unique role, and you will learn to use them cooperatively to quickly and adaptively find the actual cause of performance issues. All of this will be illustrated through complete demonstrations that will teach you how to drill from high-level problem detection all the way to specific spot in a query plan or deeper―pinpointing the exact problem and helping you to quickly solve it. Attend this seminar to take full control of your databases—and never again stumble blindly through the dimly lit world of performance troubleshooting.

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Jessica Moss – Learn SSRS in a Day – http://ssrsinaday.eventbrite.com/

SQL Server MVP, Jessica M. Moss, presents an exciting, introductory, full day training session on SQL Server Reporting Services 2008 R2. In the three-part class, Jessica will teach you how to build reports from the ground up. In Part 1, learn the basics of report development, including picking a report development tool and creating your first report. Part 2 delves into visualizations, groupings, and drill-down functionality. Finally, Part 3 highlights core administration tasks in Reporting Services. In addition, Jessica will point out industry-wide best practices for report development and show numerous live demos using a variety of data sources.

Friday, April 13, 2012

Georgia State University – Alpharetta
3775 Brookside Pkwy
Alpharetta, GA

Register for pre-conference sessions by March 15 for $99!
($109 after March 15)

For registration to the Saturday Event and more information visit http://www.sqlsaturday.com/111/eventhome.aspx.

I received multiple requests to post the scripts I used before I even had a chance to sit down so here they are.

If you were in the class and would like to use these and don’t even know where to start with PowerShell have a look at my “Resources for my SQL Server PowerShell Extensions webcast” post.

If you ever get a chance to attend one of their classes and present in front of Paul and Kim TAKE IT!   Even if it’s just about your SSMS tips or how to work around a problem you encountered.  The feedback you get is *more* than worth it!

PowerShell has taken the Pole for the DBA division at SQLRally!  Come see why the organizers have chosen this session to lead the pack to the Green Flag.

We will be covering new ground, not rehashing last year’s PASS Summit presentation.  I have developed several new examples for leveraging PowerShell in your everyday DBA role since then.  I am promising 6 new scripts for everyone but if I get on a role that number might be closer to 10 when they drop the green flag on this year’s event. 

If you’ve never used PowerShell before don’t worry. We will spend a few minutes on a ‘get up to speed lap’ so everyone is going at the same pace when we step on the gas with all this new material.  All scripts will be made available for you to download during the session and access later on from pit-row.

After my session here’s what I’ll be checking out:

What sessions I'll be checking out during SQLRally

PowerShell Grab Bag

Wednesday December 15, 2010, 12 Noon Eastern Time (GMT -5)
Speaker:  Me
Live Meeting Information Join the meeting

In this short grab bag session we’ll go over a bunch of new scripts that I’ve built over the last few weeks.  Things like:

• checking free space on mount points,
• checking SQL agent for failed jobs,
• polling instances to make sure they’re available,
• checking the status of log shipping across multiple targets,
• emailing result sets and
• scheduling all these with SQL Agent. 
• Checking remote registries (including why on earth you would ever want to do that?!).
• Zipping files, even better, we’ll go over how to not zip files that have already been zipped. 
• The final grab from this session:  for all the Summit attendees out there, I’ll share with you my script to download all the session videos from the 2010 Summit

Understanding Join Operators

SQL Server implements three different physical operators to perform joins. In this session, we will examine how each of these operators works, including its advantages and challenges. Using real life examples, we will better understand the logic behind the optimizer’s decisions on which operator to use for various joins. Finally, we will learn how to avoid some common join related pitfalls and how to get better performance from our queries.

Ami Levin
Ami is a Microsoft SQL Server MVP, with over 20 years of experience in the IT industry. For the past 12 years, he has been consulting, teaching and speaking on SQL Server worldwide. He manages the Israeli SQL Server user group, leads the local support forum, and is a regular speaker at Microsoft conferences. Ami is the CTO and co-founder of DBSophic, a company that develops workload tuning solutions for SQL Server applications.

How do I attend?  Live Meeting link

SQL Server 2005 introduced Dynamic Management Views (DMVs) that allow you to see exactly what is happening inside your SQL Server instances and databases with much more detail than ever before. SQL Server 2008 R2 adds even more capability in this area. You can discover your top wait types, most CPU intensive stored procedures, find missing indexes, and identify unused indexes, to name just a few examples. This session (which is applicable to both 2005, 2008 and 2008 R2), presents and explains over thirty DMV queries that you can quickly and easily use to detect and diagnose performance issues in your environment.

Glenn Berry

Glenn works as a Database Architect at NewsGator Technologies in Denver, CO. He is a SQL Server MVP, and he has a whole collection of Microsoft certifications, including MCITP, MCDBA, MCSE, MCSD, MCAD, and MCTS, which proves that he likes to take tests. His expertise includes DMVs, high availability, full text search, and SQL Azure.

How do I attend?  Live Meeting link

In complex Predictive Analytics (PA) scenarios where it is being applied to a complex system or the players involved are actually trying to undermine the predictions (ex: credit card fraud), the sophistication of the PA must be taken up a notch or two. In this Webcast I will describe techniques for building sophisticated PA systems on the Microsoft BI Stack by using OLAP to:
• Analyze, validate, and optimize PA models.
• Manage and Monitor the performance of the PA models in a Performance Management style.
• Surface PA results to end users in a manner that allows them to work through the ambiguity that remains around predictions.

Eugene Asahara
Eugene specializes in high-end Analysis Services implementation and performance tuning, predictive analytics, and overall BI architecture. He has thirteen years of experience on the Microsoft BI stack; including one year on the SSAS product team and seven years as a Lead DB/BI Architect at Microsoft Consulting Services. Aside from consulting on BI engagements by day Eugene develops bleeding-edge BI software by night. Many of his thoughts around BI and that bleeding-edge space can be found at www.softcodedlogic.com.

How do I attend?  Live Meeting link

Resources:
I mentioned during the session that my code and slides were available in yesterday’s blog post.
I also pointed out the posts that Chad Miller, myself, and Sean McCown put together last week on the Hey Scripting Guy blog. Here are a list all 5 of those posts and also the link to the SQLPSX project.
Oh, and please take a look at the PowerShell Virtual Chapter of PASS.

Use PowerShell to Collect Server Data and Write to SQL
Posted Mon, Nov 1 2010

Use PowerShell to obtain SQL Server database sizes
Posted Tue, Nov 2 2010

Use PowerShell to Change SQL Server Service Accounts
Posted Wed, Nov 3 2010

Use PowerShell to Script SQL Database Objects
Posted Thu, Nov 4 2010

Using PowerShell to Add a Group of Users to a SQL Database
Posted Fri, Nov 5 2010

You can read about the options here and if you’d like to go the the sessions that Max and I are putting together please vote for them here.  Please only cast your vote for which ones you’d be willing to pay up to $199 to attend.  Voting is open until 8 AM PST November 2, 2011. The winning sessions will be announced at the 2010 PASS Summit in two weeks.

The details about my session are in the link but in short I plan to take Data Professionals from knowing nothing about PowerShell to being able to use it to simplify their lives in just 4 hours.  I will go over a few techniques that I use and then I will be showing a lot of different code examples.  If you’ve never worked with PowerShell before I’m sure you’ll be blown away by how little code is needed to build most of these practical everyday examples.

Applied MDX
Refactoring SQL Applications
Implementing SQL Server in a utility model
WIT Monthly Conference-Call
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Applied MDX
Monday October 25th 12 pm EDT (GMT-4)
Kevin Geoff

Learning the basics of MDX is one thing – learning how to incorporate MDX into custom OLAP applications is another.  In this presentation, I’ll show several examples of MDX inside SSRS reports, PerformancePoint Services dashboards, and even inside of Excel.   We’ll also look at using MDX inside of OLAP calculated members and data-driven KPIs.  The attendee will come away with different perspectives on how MDX is necessary to create flexible OLAP reporting.

Kevin Geoff
Kevin is a 2010 SQL Server MVP ,2005-2008 .NET/C# MVP ,SQL Server/Business Intelligence senior instructor and courseware author – SetFocus, LLC ,Columnist for CoDe Magazine (Baker’s Dozen Productivity Series), and a Developer/consultant in the industry since 1987

How do I attend? Live Meeting link

_____________________________________________________________Refactoring Refactoring SQL Applications
Tuesday October 26th 12 pm EDT (GMT-4)
Jeremiah Peschka

Refactoring SQL is not like refactoring application code. This talk will demonstrate proven SQL refactoring techniques that will help you identify where performance gains can be made, apply quick fixes, improve readability, and help you quickly locate places to make sweeping performance improvements. Jeremiah Peschka has years of hands on experience tuning SQL applications for performance, throughput, and concurrency.

Jeremiah is involved in the Professional Association for SQL Server. When he is not volunteering with the development community, Jeremiah can be found blogging about data storage, relational databases, and software development at http://facility9.com. He can also be found on Twitter as @peschkaj.

How do I attend? Live Meeting link

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Implementing SQL Server in a utility model
Wednesday October 27th 12 pm EDT (GMT-4)
Jason Massie

A SQL Server as a Service(SQLaaS) in a utility computing model can be a robust platform providing self service provisioning, better utilization of hardware and power, lower administrative overhead and chargeback capabilities. It can allow your internal and external customers to forget about the database and focus on developing and deploying apps that add value to your core business. In this session, we will cover key benefits of offering the DB in a utility computing model which could be part of your larger SOA strategy. Next, we will look at some key considerations from the DBA and IT decision maker’s perspective that will drive the infrastructure design. Several different architectures will be discussed along with their business driven considerations. We will look at SQL Server 2008 r2 features that are well suited for a utility model as well as SQL Server vNext and 3rd party tools. Lastly, we will look at areas that may require custom development to meet your specific needs.

Jason Massie
Jason has 10 years experience as a DBA and currently manages the Oracle and SQL Server DBA teams for Terremark. He is a SQL Server MVP. Jason has spoken at the Professional Association of SQL Server Conference, the North Texas SQL Server Users Group, SQL Connections and TechED. You can read more about him at http://jasonmassie.com and contact him at jmassie at terremark.com

How do I attend? Live Meeting link

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Women In Technology Conference Call
Wednesday October 27th 3pm CDT/1pm PDT (GMT-5/GMT-7)

Please email Wendy Pastrick ( email | twitter ) for dial in information

• This will be our final call before the PASS Summit.
• Final planning for our PASS presence: Welcome Reception,  WIT Luncheon, Chapter Lunch
• Discussion about roles in the chapter
• At the end of the meeting, we offer Open Mic time for people to share news or ask open ended questions

What will the new PowerShell Virtual Chapter do?  Our primary mission is holding Live Meetings every month featuring free training from around the world.  We plan to archive the presentations for you to watch on demand and highlight articles and blogs that will interest our members.  This Virtual Chapter is headed up by top professionals from around the US: Ben Miller ( blog | twitter ), Chad Miller [no relation that I’m aware of] ( blog | twitter ), Lars Rasmussen ( blog | twitter ), Peter Schott ( blog | twitter ), and Aaron Nelson ( blog | twitter ).

 We will start things off next Wednesday with our first presentation. Here is the schedule through the end of the year.   We are currently looking for speakers for next year.

Wednesday October 20th 12 pm EDT (GMT-4) – Presenter Chad Miller
Wednesday November 17th 1 pm EST (GMT -5) – Presenter Aaron Nelson
Wednesday December 15th 1 pm EST (GMT -5) – Presenter Peter Schott

Chad Miller will get us started with an introduction to PowerShell as a command line for one-off tasks or automation in the DBA world. Basic PS principles and syntax will be covered. Get your proverbial DBA feet wet with a tool that can make your database and sysadmin life better than it was before! Bigger, stronger, faster. (Cue Bionic Man theme)

Chad Miller
Chad hails from the land of rocket launches, oranges, and alligators where he started the Tampa PowerShell User Group. Chad is the DBA for SQL Server and Manager of Database Administration for a shop supporting SQL Server, Oracle, and Informix, acts as coordinator for the SQL Server PowerShell Extensions CodePlex project, and maintains an active blog at http://sev17.com/author/chad-miller/ .

How do I attend? Registration for the event is now open.
*When you register you’ll get a calendar reminder for the event.

Topic: Database Virtualization
We’ll be looking into the pros and cons of moving SQL Servers into a virtual server environment.  Specifically we’ll be looking into when it’s a good idea and when it’s probably not a good idea.  Like all problems in the database world there are no hard set answers as to if virtualization is a good idea, but there are some times when virtualizing a SQL Server is a good idea, and can save you some money.  There are some other times when you will be shooting yourself in the foot and shouldn’t.  We’ll be focusing on when how to make this decision, and how to gather the metrics that you need in order to come to this decision.

About Denny:
Denny Cherry has over a decade of experience managing SQL Server, including MySpace.com’s over 175 million user installation, one of the largest in the world. Denny’s areas of technical expertise include system architecture, performance tuning, replication and troubleshooting.  Denny currently holds several Microsoft Certifications related to SQL Server as well as being a Microsoft MVP.  Denny is a longtime member of PASS and Quest Software’s Association of SQL Server Experts and has written numerous technical articles on SQL Server management.

When:
Monday 10/11/2010 6:30 PM

Where:
1125 Sanctuary Pkwy., Suite 300, Alpharetta, GA 30004

I’ll be speaking at SQL Saturday #48 this weekend and I am happy to announce I will be unveiling my more advanced PowerShell session to help people customize scripts for their own environment.  I will be showing off several new scripts that I built for my session at the PASS Summit this year.  Please be ready to give plenty of brutal feedback on these scripts so that I can incorporate that feedback in the final versions that I take to the Summit.

Besides my two sessions I will be joined by Eric Humphrey ( blog | twitter ) and Microsoft Scripting Guy Ed Wilson ( blog | twitter ) who will also be speaking about PowerShell.  Eric totally stole the idea for his session from me but hey I guess ‘Great Minds Think Alike’   Just a quick glance at the schedule shows experts descending on Columbia from Richmond, Tampa, Orlando & Alabama just to name a few so don’t even think of coming up with some lame excuse that it’s too far to drive.  We’ll also be joined by a bunch of SQL Experts from Microsoft’s Charlotte campus so it’s definitely work the trip and I hope to hear you heckle me there!

Take a look at the schedule and you’ll see that it’s packed with SQL Server experts so come on out and join
 us, the football hasn’t gotten all that good yet so you’ve got no reason not to.  Also, I have a new demo that Lee Holmes helped me get working that if you love to hate extracting data from Excel, this will make your life much simpler. 

Introduction to SQL Server Statistics
September 7th 12:00 PM EDT (GMT -4)
Presenter: Andy Warren

This beginner to intermediate level session will introduce you to statistics, including how to create, manage, troubleshoot, and more! Statistics are a key part of getting solid and repeatable performance and is easily just as important as having indexes. Whether you’re a DBA or trying to get by without one, this session will give you the information you need to know.

Andy Warren

Andy Warren is a SQL trainer focusing on basic administration and performance tuning, he runs the free SQLShare.com training site, is currently a SQL Server MVP, blogs daily at SQLAndy.com, started the SQLSaturday franchise, is co-President of the Orlando SQL Server Users Group, serves as a member of the Board of Directors of PASS, and was a founding partner in SQLServerCentral.com. In his remaining free time he’s working on a book for first time managers.

Live Meeting Link: https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/usergroups/join?id=2CHB5C&role=attend&pw=W%5Dw5%22K45B

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Designing High Performance I/O for SQL Server
September 8th 12:00 PM EDT (GMT -6)
Presenter: Jimmy May

This session attempts to describe the “full story” of SQL Server I/O.  We will start at the hardware level working our way up the stack through Windows and into the SQL Server storage engine.  I aim to provide in depth information about all aspects related to the fundamentals of high performance storage design for SQL Server and best practices on this complex subject.

Jimmy May

Jimmy is a Sr. Program Manager for the SQL Server Customer Advisory Team.  He is the manager of the SQL Server Customer Lab where customers from around the world bring the biggest, fastest, & most interesting SQL Server apps for tuning.  He is a founder of both the Indiana Windows User Group (http://www.iwug.net) and Indianapolis Professional Association for SQL Server (http://www.indypass.org).  Jimmy recently moved to Redmond from Indianapolis, Indiana with his lovely bride, Phyllis, and Fannie May the Wonder Dog.  Subscribe to and read his SQL Server performance and personal productivity blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/jimmymay.  Contact him at jimmymay@microsoft.com or aspiringgeek@live.com.  Jimmy is also part of the rich & robust SQL Server community on Twitter:  www.twitter.com/aspiringgeek.

Live Meeting Link: https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/8000181573/join?id=S29G25&role=attend
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Data Mining with PowerPivot 2010
September 8th 12:00 PM EDT (GMT -4)
Presenter: Mark Tabladillo

Excel provides a compelling and ubiquitous interface for Microsoft Data Mining. With new features available through PowerPivot, business users can apply the technology through a well-designed infrastructure of Microsoft technologies. This presentation will welcome any newcomers to data mining, and provide interactive demos which highlight data mining through these technologies.

Mark Tabladillo

Mark provides consulting and training for data mining with Solid Quality Mentors. He has taught statistics at Georgia Tech and for the graduate business school of the University of Phoenix. In addition to his Microsoft certifications (MCAD .NET and MCT), Mark has years of deep experience with the SAS System, and has presented at many local, regional, and national technical conferences.  Mark produces a data mining resource and blog at http://www.marktab.net

Live Meeting Link: https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/usergroups/join?id=2J4ZPD&role=attend&pw=8QN%40qdzgQ

I’ve recently learned that if you only have PowerPoint 2007 you’ll need to download this viewer because I built the slides in PowerPoint 2010. Here are the scripts for Columbus and Edmonton.

I think both events went really well and got a lot of people saying: ‘Hey, this PowerShell stuff could work in my environment’. I really hope they catch the fever! I’d love to speak to each of these groups next year and see what questions they come up with and see how much they’re using it. I’ve got a more advanced session that I will be debuting a little later this year so hopefully I’ll get to share it with them too.

Huge thanks to Jonathan Boulineau ( twitter ) and Colin Stasiuk ( blog | twitter ) for all they do for their groups all year long.

Here are all the vital details for you:

Topic: Self-service B/I with PowerPivot
Date: Monday, August 23, 2010
Speaker: Teo Lachev

Meeting Agenda
6:30 – 6:45 – Networking, Announcements
6:45 – 7:15 – Sponsor Presentation(s)
7:15 – 8:15 – Main Presentation(s)
8:15 – 8:30 – Q&A, Discussion

Meeting Place
Matrix Resources
115 Perimeter Center Place
Suite 250 (South Terraces Building)
Atlanta, GA 30346

Directions and parking information

I’ll be speaking at SQL Saturday #51 about PowerShell just before Allen White and our sessions cover completely different content so please come to both!  As soon as I’m done with my session I’m headed straight out the door and to the “World’s Fastest Half Mile”.  That’s right, I’m taking a 230 mile detour on my way to the night race.  There is going to be a freaking amazing amount of great speakers at this event and if you live within a 6 hour drive of Music City I Highly recommend you don’t miss one of the best lineups since SQL Saturday#33 in Charlotte. 

As always, there will be something new that I’ve never showed off before, most likely just a failed script from my Atlanta session but hey, they didn’t get to see it yet.    I’ve also been asked to include some sys-admin type stuff so I will do a walk through of Implicit Remoting and probably some important tips on working with Services.  There will also be an XML demo if there are any developers that want to check it out.

Details:

• The meeting will be held at the Columbus Library
• Date: 8/24/2010
• Time: 6:00 PM – 7:30 PM
• 3000 Macon Rd, Columbus, GA 31906

As promised, here are the scripts and slides I used.

Resources:
I mentioned several different resources last night and here are the ones I remember (just comment if you’re looking for one I forgot about):

• I did a week-long blog series on PowerShell with SQL Server for SQL University.
• Here’s the CodePlex project so that you can edit PowerShell in Visual Studio 2010 (You also need to install the free version of PowerGUI for this)
• The cheap software to build desktop gadgets with charts and maps is called Power Gadgets.
• A few weeks back I did a post on the top Learning Resources I use to learn PowerShell.
• and of course I can’t finish without saying: If you need some help getting started from scratch using PowerShell with SQL Server check out my video on MSDN’s geekSpeak.

Details:

• Please register so we know how much pizza to order.
• Date: 8/9/2010
• Time: 6:30 PM – 9:00 PM
• Place: Microsoft 1125 Sanctuary Pkwy., Suite 300, Alpharetta, GA
• Speaker: Me.

Max Trinidad ( blog | twitter ) has put together an entire day of PowerShell training for this event and I get to be one of the speakers!  I’ll be doing my PowerShell for Data Professionals session.  Which I am very proud to say I will be presenting  a longer and more in depth version of this session at this year’s PASS Summit, so come cathch the preview!  I’ve got a new trick to show the fine folks of South Florida and I can’t wait to get their feedback.

Besides myself the three other PowerShell speakers are going to be: Ronald Dameron ( blog | twitter ), David Corrales from Sapien, and of course Maximo Trinidad.

Here’s what that PowerShell track is going to look like:

Ronald Dameron Why SQL Server DBAs should learn PowerShell

Ronald Dameron Automate ID Administration w/ PowerShell & SQLPSX

Aaron Nelson PowerShell for the Data Professional

David Corrales Sneak Preview: SAPIEN’s Visual PowerShell 2011

Maximo Trinidad Working with SQL Server – SQLPS

Maximo Trinidad Using PowerShell with SQL Server Agent

That’s right in just 10 months over 10,000 IT Professionals from around the world are going to descend on Atlanta for a week.  I was really surprised to hear this since they were not that far away in New Orleans this year but who cares this is awesome news!

Why is Microsoft bringing TechEd to Atlanta?  Well they sure didn’t check with me but my first guess would be that it has something to do with the fact that:

• The Georgia World Congress Center is accessible to 80 percent of the American population in two hours or less (via car, train or the World’s Busiest Airport).
• Or maybe that it’s easier to fly direct to Atlanta than any other place on earth.

Although instead of focusing on being open and accessible to as many people as possible Microsoft could have just been looking out for peoples wallets.  The over 12,000 hotel rooms located in close proximity to the Georgia World Congress Center are probably the cheapest of any of the 10 largest cities in America.  (I think only Dallas can come close.)

So how on earth can over 10,000 IT Pros fit into a single convention center here in Atlanta and it not be cramped?  Pretty easily actually because:

• The Congress Center’s Building B exhibit halls are more than twice as long as Atlanta’s highest skyscraper is high (which happens to be the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere outside of New York and Chicago).  From one end of these halls to the other, the earth curves 3/4 inch.
• As many as 125,000 people have attended a single event at the GWCC.
  • For relevance sake: that’s approx. 50x larger than the PASS Summit
  • Or… Larger than every PASS Summit and every SQL Saturday ever held, COMBINED.
• The lobby of Building C alone is large enough to hold the Titanic.
  • Building C: entrance lobby is over 1,000 feet long, 80 feet wide and over 90 feet high
  • Titanic: 882 feet long, 92 feet 6 inches wide, and 60 feet 6 inches from the waterline to the main deck.
• Heck there’s over 90 acres or 3.9 million square feet throughout the GWCC

The local users groups here in Atlanta are busy working on ideas to capitalize on this great opportunity and you can look forward to me blabbing all about what we’re up to sometime in the near future. 

* Facts obtained from http://www.gwcc.com/about/Fun_Facts.aspx, http://www.atlanta-airport.com/Airport/ATL/ATL_FactSheet.aspx, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_of_America_Plaza_%28Atlanta%29

I just wanted to take a quick moment to let everyone know that yesterday I received the great news that I will be speaking about PowerShell at the 2010 PASS Summit!    Here’s what my session will be:

The Dirty Dozen: PowerShell Scripts for the Busy DBA

You’ve heard it said, “If you have to do it twice, automate it.” That’s great advice and PowerShell provides a simple but extremely powerful way to do it. PowerShell is the future of Windows scripting. Cut the learning curve and get a real handle on this powerful automation tool. This session walks you through a dozen scripts to simplify and easily automate time-consuming and tedious elements of your day to day job. This isn’t stuff you’ll use SOMEDAY, these are scripts you can use when you get home tonight.  Harness the power of PowerShell to easily find Servers short on space. Script out tables and constraints across all of your databases at once. Backup databases and restore them to a different environment. These tricks and many others will allow PowerShell to simplify your job like no other tool.

Speaker:

Aaron Nelson
Senior Database Administrator

I owe a huge thanks to everyone who helped me make this a reality and I’ll write a post thanking many of them when I get some time.

Thanks to everyone who took time out of their Friday to come by and see it.  I got a lot of great comments from people in the hallway after my session.  Some of them really liked the different approach I took to presenting it.  As promised here are all of the Sildes and Scritps that I used during the session.

Oh and thanks to all the sponsors!

Thanks to everyone who took time out of their Friday to come by and see it.  I got a lot of great comments from people in the hallway after my session.  Some of them really liked the different approach I took to presenting it.  As promised here are all of the Sildes and Scritps that I used during the session.

Oh and thanks to all the sponsors!

What are Providers? Providers in PowerShell are a hierarchical namespace way flattening out an infrastructure to make it accessible and traverse-able just like a directory structure hard drive. Why do you need them? Well you quite possibly may not ‘need’ them per-say but they sure do make things easier to work with from time to time. In case you don’t already know, you can traverse your SQL Server [2008] as if it were just another drive in either SSMS 2008 or in the PowerShell ISE if you add the Provider Snapin.

To make sure that you have this snapin installed on your machine see yesterday’s post but this time we are going to add the ProviderSnapin instead of the CmdletSnapin.

To do that just run

add-pssnapin SqlServerProviderSnapin100

and poof you can traverse SQL Server. Let’s take a look at what we might see. Run

get-psdrive

and you should see a list of drives including SQL Server. Now if you have more that one instance you will be able to access all of them through this one “SQLServer:\” PSDrive that you now have. In a lot cases what we find inside of these drives will be similar to what we see in the Object Explorer view in SSMS but almost always have something extra too. Let’s take a look at that here by changing directories down to our databases

cd SQLSERVER:\sql\YourComputerName\YourInstanceName\

cd SQLSERVER:\sql\WIN7\KILIMANJARO\

Now let’s go ahead and run the good old “Dir” command and we should get back something like this

dir

As I mentioned before, we got back more than we see if we expand our SQL Server node in the Object Explorer window of SSMS, now if we CD to Databases and do another dir we will see not just more than what we see in SSMS, we see what at first glace to a SQL person is just garbage (but it’s not).

cd Databases
dir

What you’re seeing here is the Methods and Properties of the databases in your instance. What are Methods and Properties? Well if you’re like I was 6 months ago you have no idea what Methods and Properties are. Methods are the Verbs of what you can do to your database (Create, Rename, Drop, Shrink) and Properties and the Adjectives that describe your database (Collation, CreateDate, Compatibility Level, Owner, AutoShrink Enabled). To get just the list of the names of your databases you’re going to have to run this:

dir | select-object name

Ok so now we can see a list of databases that our Provider made available to us. So what? Well I’m going to dive a little deeper tomorrow but for now let’s just go with one final example on scripting out tables (more on that here). Run this: cd AdventureWorks\Tables Then this:

foreach ($tbl in dir )

{
$k="C:\Temp\" + $($tbl.name) + "_table.SQL"
$tbl.Script() > $k
}

I really hope you have temp directory on your C:\ drive. If so go have a look what’s there now

So is that it? Almost. While SQL Server 2008 only comes with one provider and it’s for the Relational Engine a few people have taken it upon themselves to create their own Provider for things like Analysis Services, Reporting Services, and event BizTalk up on the codeplex site. I can say that I have tried the Analysis Services project and it does work.

So far we’ve learned how to open up PowerShell and add on to it with some modules; then we learned how to create a variable and populate it with anything from some numbers to an entire table. Today we’re going to quickly look at another way of expanding PowerShell with something called a snapin so that we can get to some cmdlets.

First, what are cmdlets? Cmdlets are similar to DOS commands but have some noteworthy differences. In SQL Server terms you might think of cmdlets as the System Stored Procedures of PowerShell and think of functions as the regular user defined Stored Procedures of PowerShell.

Cmdlets and functions accept parameters just like stored procedures do. Just like stored procedures you can even define default values for these parameters in case the user doesn’t have one to pass in. Unlike stored procedures though there is actually a drive that you can go to and see all of your functions. Just run this and you’ll see what I mean dir function:

Snapins are akin to finished product code. They were created for PowerShell 1.0 and were succeeded in PowerShell 2.0 by modules– which are more like the manifest list for deploying a bunch of SSIS packages. If you have SSMS 2008 installed you’ve got yourself two extra snapins already. And if you have Idera’s SQL Diagnostic Manager installed you may be in for a real surprise when you retrieve your list of snapins. Run this command to see all of the extra snapins that are available to you:

get-pssnapin –registered

At the very least you should see this:

If you don’t see those two you’ll need to install SSMS 2008. If you don’t have a copy of that handy you can get the free version of it here. The SqlServerCmdletSnapin100 snapin give us the 5 cmdlets that come with SQL Server 2008 and today we’re going to focus on Invoke-SQLcmd which basically just calls out to good old sqlcmd. To load this just run:

add-pssnapin SqlServerCmdletSnapin100

From there we can do a quick query like this:

invoke-sqlcmd -query “sp_databases” -database master -serverinstance YourServerName\YourInstanceName | format-table

invoke-sqlcmd -query "sp_databases" -database master -serverinstance WIN7\Kilimanjaro | format-table

Now the reason that I brought up functions is because they override cmdlets and that’s really important to know. If you run this command get-command invoke-sqlcmd you will only see one thing returned for invoke-sqlcmd. However if we create a new function like:

function invoke-sqlcmd { get-date }

You end up overriding the Invoke-SQLcmd with your new function. Give it a try, run just this invoke-sqlcmd and you should end up seeing something like this:

So how do you know when you’ve done something like that? Just run get-command invoke-sqlcmd again and this time you will see this:

I realize that we kind of rushed through that info but thankfully there is only one more piece to the basics before we can get on to code that you can use on a daily basis

Yesterday we laid the ground work for PowerShell Week.  Today we will learn about Variables in PowerShell. You will notice that PowerShell variables work very differently from SQL Server variables.

The evolution of variables in SQL Server is pretty straight forward. In SQL Server 2000 you had to DECLARE a variable as a specific type in one statement and then SET the value of the variable in another statement, like this: DECLARE @SQLvariable VARCHAR(12) SET @SQLvariable = ‘OldFeature’. By the time SQL 2008 hit the streets we could DECLARE and SET a variable in one statement like this: DECLARE @SQLvariable VARCHAR(12) = ‘NewFeature’ . PowerShell evolves variables to the next logical step.  You no longer need to declare or type your variable. Instead PowerShell uses the value of the variable to infer it’s type. If a variable does not alreayd exist PowerShell simply creates it for you.  In PowerShell our statement looks like this: $SQLvariable = ‘NewFeature’. (Beginer tip: $ identifies variables in PowerShell just like @ identifies them in SQL Server.)

Since it doesn’t work in SQL let’s try it in PowerShell: $SQLvariable = ‘NewFeature’.  OK so we loaded data into a variable, ‘big deal’ right?  How do we know that we actually loaded it and more importantly what datatype is it?  Well in PowerShell you can simply call the variable to get its value. (Another beginer tip: you don’t need to use a keyword like SELECT for this, just the variable name: $SQLvariable.)  What if you just want to determine the datatype?  All you have to do is tack on the .GetType() Method: $SQLvariable.GetType().

$SQLvariable = 'NewFeature'
$SQLvariable
$SQLvariable.GetType()

When you run this here’s what your result will be:

As I alluded to earlier, another feature of PowerShell is that it remembers your variables for you, even between executions.  Basically as long as you don’t end your session the variable, it’s datatype, and its value will persist.  You will see later than you can also set a variable in one script and consume it in another.

Let’s try this again with a new variable and set it to a different value:

$PoShvariable = 123
$PoShvariable
$PoShvariable.GetType()

What happens if once the datatype is set we try to set it to a different, incompatible datatype?  It’s going to explode right?  Nope, you’ll have to throw something more difficult than that at it.  Give this a try:

$PoShvariable.GetType()
$PoShvariable = 'NewFeature'
$PoShvariable
$PoShvariable.GetType()

Since PowerShell relies on .NET a variable could be any datatype in .NET so if you’re sitting inside the AdventureWorks database you can see for yourself, just run this:

$MyTable = get-item TABLESProduction.TransactionHistory
$MyTable.GetType()            

$MyStoredProc = get-item StoredProceduresHumanResources.uspUpdateEmployeePersonalInfo
$MyStoredProc.GetType()

Now earlier I mentioned that PowerShell keeps track of and remembers the variables that you previously declared.  So how do you see what variables are already there?  Just run this command and you can see every variable you have running in the session, even the internal ones.

Variable

In the list of items that get returned you’ll see one called Error that holds the last error message that occurred in your session.  This handy feature can help you when you have to debug your own work.

Is that all there is to know about variables in PowerShell?  Not hardly, but I think that’s a good stopping point for this post.  More on variables later.

When I began blogging about PowerShell there were some complications based on your operating system. There were so many people blogging about these issues that I didn’t address it initially. Since this is an introductory course I decided to go ahead and spin up a brand new Windows 7 VM so that I can walk you through these small but vital details. If you don’t have Windows 7 this would be a great time to upgrade. If you can’t upgrade then download PowerShell for you operating system from this link. Now, onto getting started:

Disclaimer:
PowerShell opens in a protected state as a security measure. To enjoy the full power of PowerShell (and run scripts you downloaded off of the internet) you need to run without these safeguards. In today’s lesson we are simply launching PowerShell and priming it for the scripts and work we will interact with in the next several lessons.

To get started with PowerShell just click the Start button and type in ISE to locate the Integrated Script Editor in your program listing. Right click and launch PowerShell in Run as Adminsitrator mode:

Enter Get-ExecutionPolicy as a command. If you haven’t used PowerShell yet you will most likely see that the Execution Policy is set to “Restricted”. You’ll need to run the command Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned to be able to run the scripts and follow along with the lesson. You’ll also get a popup that you’ll have to say yes to.

Your output should look very non-informative like this:

Now that we have that set let’s go to SQLPSX.CodePlex.com and and download the SQLPSX project. It’s currently in version 2.2.1 and consists of 9 modules containing 133 advanced functions, only 2 cmdlets and 7 scripts. It’s for working with ADO.NET, SMO, SQL Agent, RMO, SSIS, SQL script files and using the PowerShell ISE as a SQL query tool:

NOTE: Update at bottom with workaround:

During the installation we will run it without modifying the profile (just yet).

Once you’ve installed it successfully you should now have a WindowsPowerShell directory under your My Documents if you didn’t have one already (which is really important):

After it’s installed we should be able to open up the ISE again and run this command :

Get-Module -ListAvailable

And finally we’re going to get to the step where we load something up. Run import-module SQLServer to load up the main SQL Server module. After you run that command it won’t give you any output telling you that it successfully loaded so you can run this command write-host -foregroundcolor DarkGreen “Modules Loaded: $(get-module)” to have it tell you what Modules it currently has loaded.

Alright that pretty much wraps it up for today. I know we didn’t do a lot with PowerShell and SQL Server yet but this gets some important ground work out of the way so that hopefully everyone is able to script along for the rest of the week. (If you’re dying to read ahead have a look at this post: Basic Querying From PowerShell)

If you run into any issues please leave a comment and I’ll be glad to lend any help that I can. See all you back here tomorrow for the next post in this series Post 1.

UPDATE:

There seems to be an issue with loading the SQLServer Module as I had described. I have found this to be a work-around: Go to \\~\My Documents\WindowsPowerShell\Modules\SQLIse\Modules\ and copy everything except for the SQLISE folder, then go to the \\~\My Documents\WindowsPowerShell\Modules\ folder and paste all of those items. At this point you should now be able to run the command and get it to load up properly.

I will post more when I found out other alternatives.

If you don’t remember which script it was that you were interested in, here’s the recording of the session that I did for geekSpeak.

Enjoy!

Oh, and don’t forget Buck Woody’s disclaimer about running scripts you find on the internet: