SQL Saturday

SQL Saturday in SoCal!

We’ve been working since October to bring the SQL Saturday Event to the Southern California Region. We are now close to the final stage of the process! We are not listed yet on the SQL Saturday Website because we are still working with the location to finalize things. Once we set everything up, then we’re ready to roll! Please stay tuned. Announcements will be made on February 17 or 18, 2010. For Inquiry, please email me – mribunal@verizon.net or send me a DM in Twitter, @MarlonRibunal. Please use hastag #sqlsatsocal @Twitter

DBA Survivor: Name That Caption

So, the original SQL Batman, Tom LaRock ( Blog | Twitter) , has an upcoming book called “DBA Survivor: How To Become A Rockstar DBA“. Also, I’ve been aware of Tom’s “Name That Caption Contest” over at his book’s website but I never thought of joining the contest until I read Jorge Segarra’s entry. Basically, the contest is simple – you just give a caption to the header image of the book’s website. A number of entries have already been submitted; and they are really funny and worthy of the prize – Free copy of the Book! I don’t think I am qualified to be funny enough to win this caption contest. Ok, you don’t really want to fight a battle you can’t win. That being said, I’ll do it differently – how about a serious-toned entry?

I’ve always been a fan of Richard Bach and of his home-made Philosophy. My favorite Bach book is “Running From Safety“. You might probably have guessed it right. My entry has something to do with what Bach wrote. There is this one particular quote from him that I have truly tried to inculcate in my being (oh, that sounds so philosophic!):

If it’s never our fault, we can’t take responsibility for it. If we can’t take responsibility for it, we’ll always be its victim.

That should exactly capture the heart of the “DBA Survivor” book. Let me just tweak it in the best way I can:

If you always blame the developer, you’ll always be the victim.

or

You’ll always be the first casualty of your database failure.

or

Don’t suck! It’s not the database, stupid!

I don’t really expect to win the contest, but, you know, I’m just putting in my two cents. And I’ll buy the book anyway.

SQL Saturday Acquired By PASS

It is published in the Business Intelligence Developer Network (BIDN) today that the Professional Association for SQL Server (PASS) has acquired the SQL Saturday brand. This marriage is a great big news for the SQL Server Community! This is a WIN-WIN for all.

As a SQL Saturday organizer here in the Southern California Region, I think this fusion will greatly help advance the goals of the SQL Saturday Event. This is also great for the PASS organization as it will be enabled to further its reach down to the SQL Server Professional “grassroots”. It is a fact that many cannot afford to attend the annual PASS Summit. This is a great opportunity for everybody to have the chance to experience a glimpse of such a great event.

With PASS’ great pool of resources, I really expect that it will become easier to organize a SQL Saturday Event. I hope the acquisition will enable us, organizers, to have an easy access to all available resources.

Note: I am currently part of a group headed by Andrew Karcher ( Blog | Twitter ) organizing a SQL Saturday Event in the Southern California Region. We are now trying to finalize talks about the location. Stay tuned.

Southern California Code Camp Fullerton

It’s that time of year again. This weekend developers will come together to learn and mingle with co-developers at the Southern California Code Camp. I started attending this code camp a couple of years ago. This is a great event that offers a lot for free.  Southern California Code Camp is being held three times a year – Spring, Summer, and Fall. There is no reason to miss to attend at least one of these events.

Aside from the fact that this event is free, the lineup of speakers (who’s who in socal) and the quality of their presentations are too great to miss. This is also a great opportunity to know what’s new in the development and technology world in general. Top speakers will be present. MVP’s & Experts, some are from out of state, will share valuable knowledge that are readily applicable to the real world. Many attendees will find themselves applying their newly acquired knowledge to their job the next day after the camp.

The Code Camp is also an important opportunity to get connected with other developers. It really takes a community to learn. This event will get everybody’s learning experience to a different level. This particular Code Camp is special to me for a reason. This is my first time to attend the camp as a Volunteer. I am assigned at the registration desk on day #2 (Sunday). The part may not be big but I am just happy to help albeit in small ways. This is a good start at getting involved in the community.  See you there!

DTS To SSIS Migration: Unable To Cast COM Object Issue

I need to migrate the exact package from SQL Server 2000 DTS to SQL Server 2008 SSIS. This particular package is OK to migrate using the “Migrate DTS 2000 Package” Wizard since I don’t have those complicated tasks that won’t simply migrate.

The Issue:

So I right-click the wizard but when I run it I am getting a “Unable to cast COM object…” error. More related errors will show up if you skip that error dialog.

The Solution:

When the issue involves “object” issues, chances are you are missing some needed libraries for the program to run. And that is the case in this particular issue. I am missing the Data Transformation Services 2000 Runtime. Please take note that this service is deprecated (Check info here).

Some forums (ok, fora) suggest that you install the DTS Runtime from the SQL Server 2000 installation files. If you do not have access to the installation files, you can download a feature pack from Microsoft that includes the runtime.  For this case, you particularly need to download the ” Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Backward Compatibility Components”. Although the title mentions the 2005 version, it is also compatible with SQL Server 2008 SSIS. You can download the package from this link.

Events That Brought Me Here: A Vision of Hope

Another great meme has been started by Paul Randal ( Blog | Twitter ) about the three major events that positively contributed to what he is today. I was tagged by K. Brian Kelley ( Blog | Twitter ) in his version of the story. I’ve been tagged a couple of times last year but I never responded back. It is one of my resolutions this 2010 to respond when tagged in a meme.

Collegiate Seminary Life

I finished college inside a catholic seminary with a Bachelor of Arts Degree Majors in Philosophy and Mass Communication. I have truly learned to love Philosophy as a school of thought. I took up Mass Communication as my second major only because I thought I can handle it and “double major” sounded better. If there was one thing I learned from Mass Communication, it is that I have come to appreciate the Mass Media and its significant role in our society.

The seminary has taught me great deal of life-lessons. I have learned to co-exist along other great folks. There I learned the truest meaning of communal life – I lived and breathed ‘community”. This is the reason why I really, really put great importance to the ‘community’. Outside of the community, you are just a lone, mindless being. The seminary has taught me how to deal with life in general.

Post Seminary Life

After I graduated from – and eventually left – that collegiate seminary in 2000, I thought I was prepared to face life. Faced life, yes I did. But I was kind of lost as to what I really wanted career-wise. I spent a couple of years in doing sales job (Philippines). Fast forward – United States. I decided I have to reboot my life. I went back to college to get a degree in medical field (Nursing). I can feel then nursing wasn’t meant for me but I still insisted on it. But I gave it up – not until I lost some money and, oh yes, effort and time. Meanwhile, I was already working in a document and information management company (I have worked as production associate  in a similar company prior to this). Just like the first one, I started in the production floor. Then I met… MS Access. I discovered working around data was fun. Manipulating data to produce meaningful reports that helped managers to deal with the flow of production on a day-to-day basis was even more fun! So the managers thought I can be more productive if they move me to the IT room. “IT” for small companies means everything and all things around its network infrastructure. I discovered that there was a more exciting technology beyond MS Access, and it was its “bigger version” – SQL Server (2000 version at that time). I tried to learn to get up to speed with the technology. I never came close to being expert but I was able to become an asset to the whole department. The beauty of working in a small company is that you are given the opportunity to work in the different aspects of the network – infrastructure, databases, business in general, etc.

Now and Beyond

After few years in that company, I decided it was time to look beyond and set my eyes to the bigger picture – bigger multinational-companies in this context. I was aggressive to move on with my new-found “calling”. In the last few years in that small company, I was pretty much on the speed career-wise. I’ve been learning lots of technology stuff and accumulating great deal of technical know-how’s. So, I was able to get a job in a big, big company. Then reality hit. I am no longer the “new kid rockstar” that I and my boss in that small company thought I was. I’m back to square one. If I made the wrong decision, I will never know. What I intended to do was to move forward. If starting from step one is all it takes to launch into the sky, then be it. This is a slow start, and I am trying to speed it up. And I am willing to pay the price.

In 2008 I started attending the Southern California Code Camp. It was my first taste of community event in the tech-world. That was where I learned about developer/technology user groups – and there exist such communities around where I live. I am trying to get myself involved in these communities. I cannot remain a spectator. I need to give back. This is also my “career theme” for 2010 – “Speed It Up, Get Involved!” The primary goal is contribute to the community in any way I can – this is the end. And I hope to speed up my career as the by-product of this effort.

Note: I am currently working with a group headed by Andrew Karcher ( Blog | Twitter ) to bring SQL Saturday to the Southern California Region.

I am tagging:

Jorge Segarra ( Blog | Twitter )

Jason Massie ( Blog | Twitter )

Ted Krueger ( Blog | Twitter )

Follow me: @MarlonRibunal

SQL Server 2008 Backup Compression

With SQL Server 2008 Enterprise Edition, you can create compressed backups. Compressing your database backups has both its advantages and disadvantages – the tradeoffs. Most of its advantages are tied in with the reduction of the amount of data stored on the disk and with the speed of the backup and restore processes. It may have adverse impact on CPU usage, though. One suggested workaround on the CPU usage problem on backup compression is to run the backup under a user login and limit that login CPU usage by using Resource Governor.

Let’s see how backup compression works in SQL Server 2008.

Native Backup Compression

I have here a 507MB database called “Compression_Test”. What we’re going to do is back it up first without compression and compare the backup file size later with a compressed one.

That 507MB database took about 1.444 seconds to process and gave us about 16MB backup file –  processing about 11MB of data per second.

Now, let’s backup the same database (507MB) with the built-in compression mechanism of SQL Server 2008.

As you can see, it only took about 0.935 seconds – at rate 16.986MB of data processed per second. This also saved us some storage as the the backup file is only about 3MB (compared to 16MB+ without compression).

Let us see if the compressed backup file is “really compressed”.

Third Party Backup Compression Tool

It was announced yesterday at twitter via Brent Ozar ( Blog | Twitter ) that Quest Software LiteSpeed Engine for SQL Server has been released. A trial version is also available if you want to give it a shot.

LiteSpeed Engine for SQL Server is a ” driver based technology that allows database backup administrators to seamlessly take advantage of LiteSpeed’s compression and encryption capabilities without having to modify existing SQL scripts.” You have to configure it after installation to use it as the backup engine for SQL Server 2008 (built-in compression). A video tutorial on configuring and overview of LiteSpeed Engine for SQL Server can be found in this video by Brent Ozar.

I don’t really have a huge database to test except that same 507MB database we’ve used to test compression in the above examples.

The backup process using LiteSpeed Engine for SQL Server shows an improvement if compared to the native backup compression of SQL Server 2008. I was able to backup the 507MB database faster in about 0.886 second which is about 17.926MB/sec. You can just imagine just how much this would make a difference if your backing up terabytes of data.

We’ve seen that, performance-wise, LiteSpeed Engine for SQL Server is more efficient. But the size of the backup file is a little bit different story.

The LiteSpeed Engine for SQL Server processed a backup file that is slightly bigger than that of the native backup compression of SQL Server 2008. Reconfiguring it to compress at Level 2 decreased the backup file size dramatically, even smaller than the native compression.

These tests show that LiteSpeed Engine For SQL Server clearly delivers its promise of “reduced backup times”and has truly a “zero impact to existing backup strategies” (it does not mark the backup file as “compressed”, though).

Summing it all up, the native backup compression of SQL Server 2008 is good enough for backup purposes. But if speed and backup times are critical to your operations, then using third party backup compression tools, such as the LiteSpeed Engine for SQL Server, should be considered.