Storing Hierarchical Data - An Early Solution

SQL Server 2008 can with a new data type to handle hierarchical data – hierarchyid.

How to handle hierarchical data in the previous editions?

Even though it is not supported natively, there are different methods we could employ to handle hierarchical data. Some of them are rely cool and perform as fast as SQL Server 2008.

I have written an article on this:
Storing Hierarchical Data - An Early Solution
 
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Building a good Team

All my efforts of building a strong DBA team in my office seems to get into a good turn now. Finally, the third DBA of our three DBA team started writing articles to SQL related sites and they are publishing it. Even though I expect some room for improvement from this novice writer, it is a good start to have articles and question of the day from a well recognized site like SQL ServerCentral.com

Susantha is a Senior DBA from eCollege Lanka where we maintain 1 TB + database server system. Susantha’s hard work not only on office issues, but also on gaining and sharing technical knowledge is something to be recognized, and I am proud to have him in my team.

I hope to see him as a speaker in the Sri Lankan SQL Server user group meeting too.

BTW, I almost forgot to mention another achievement of the other DBA from our team. He recently published another short note on resolving issue: Unable to create TempDB. It was published at www.sswug.org. Additionally, he will be a speaker at Sri Lankan SQL Server User group meeting too. Come and see him on Wednesday the 16th July 2008.

My recent Talk

My recent talk on Performance optimization of stored procedures happened at SQL Server user group meeting at Microsoft Colombo. This time I was concentrating only on how to optimize the stored procedures. As usual I took quite a bit of time, and couldn’t complete the example thoroughly. My entire presentation was intended to complete

The presentation and samples are available at SQL Server Universe.

Moving to the new company

Finally one of the long awaited move is happening. eCollege has its branch in Sri Lanka now. I am leaving the current company (virtusa) and joining eCollege as a Database Lead. Still there is some confusion whether my designation should be Lead - Database Administration, Lead - Database Technologies or simply as Database Lead but the roles and responsibilies will be the same.
With this move my virtusa email address will cease to exist. Please contact me on other email addresses.

Table Partitioning - Again

I wrote some time back about changing the identity property of an existing table.
http://preethiviraj.blogspot.com/2007/09/table-partitioning.html

The author of Inside SQL Server, Kalen Delaney wrote about it recently. As I used to read her blogs, I wrote a reply to that.
http://sqlblog.com/blogs/kalen_delaney/archive/2007/07/13/did-you-know-it-s-in-the-books-online.aspx

Interestingly, my friend and co worker Jude Pieries too wrote about the same feature in his article
http://sqlserveruniverse.com/content/DEVL0400101022007SwitchingFromNonIDENTITY.aspx


PLEASE HAVE A LOOK!

Recovering database using proper Backup/Restore Strategy

Again I was asked to speak at the Sri Lankan SQL Server User group Meeting. This time it is on Recovering database using proper Backup/Restore Strategy.
It happened on January 16 2008. I was supposed to be the first speaker. Due to some technical difficulties I took the second slot.

The slides and examples will be published at http://sqlserveruniverse.com/ shortly.

Index /Clustered Index SCAN When Top 1 Is Used

One of my recent articles is published at SQL Server Worldwide User Group.

Even a simple statement which SELECTs the last (or first) row of a table may cause clustered index scan or index scan. But there are ways to make it a seek.

Interested?? Have a look at http://www.sswug.org/see/37061

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MCITP Certification

Finally after a long time last month I decided to do MCITP certification. Even though I had the confidence that I have the knowledge and experience in the areas covered, I was lazy to make my mind towards this exam.
However, as December is usually a low work period as many take their annual leave during this period, I decided to do this exam and also to encourage other DBAs in my department to do the same.
As I was able to get MCTS certification in 2006, it is only a matter of two exams. I did the first exam (70-443) on December 26, 2006 and the next one (70-444) today. The exams were not difficult but it expects the candidates to have wide knowledge and experience on the topics covered. With this exam Microsoft will declare me as a Microsoft Certified Information Technology Professional : Database Administrator.

70-443 had case studies and questions on case studies. It takes some level of concentration.
When compared to 70-443, 70-444 is a piece of cake. :)