Wednesday 18 July 2007

SQL Server 2005 Dynamic Management View Performance Data Warehouse

http://www.codeplex.com/sqldmvstats

Basically a bunch of stored procedures and SQL Agent jobs to gather info and a series of reports to show the data.

Quite interesting is the use of a report as a management interface where you can add/remove databases and disable SQL Agent Jobs. Sort of makes the static report into an application.

Tuesday 17 July 2007

Loving 3G

Recently I moved from Telstra to 3 Mobile. On 3 Mobile I get all the 3G services at pretty much the same price that I was paying on Telstra. This was one of the chief reasons behind my switch.

My old NEC 412i, while being a nice thin and funky phone, used i-mode to provide dynamic content. Many of the i-mode pages were months out of date and I was getting charged $10-$15 a month for this out-dated content.

Now I'm the proud owner of a nifty Sony Ericsson W880i Walkman Phone. This phone gives me all the features you'd expect in a 3G phone (Internet browsing, video calls, video messaging, live TV, etc...) and it's only 9.4mm thick.

For example at the moment I'm using my mobile phone to watch auction at Grays Online to make sure we get the honking server that we want. Sweet!!

Monday 16 July 2007

Sins Of A Solar Empire

No it's not the latest song from the band of the month, or even a catch cry for the local environmentalists.

Sins of a Solar Empire is real time space strategy game from Ironclad Games and published by Stardock Entertainment. Here is a short grab from the blurb on the Ironclad site,

"Sins of a Solar Empire is an innovative real-time strategy game featuring seamless transition between epic strategy and tactical combat modes, initiating what is already becoming known as the RT4X sub-genre."

Beta 2 is available for pre-order until July 31st at the moment (needless to say I had to pre-order it :) ) and I must say it looks very promising. The visuals are stunning and the music is appropriately grand. To top it off game play at this early stage is very enjoyable with a wealth of strategies to devise. Strange how you don't often see those two together often.

The forum is pretty active with a lot of people making some excellent suggestions for improvements. There are also plenty of posts from the developers so it's not as if you're talking to a brick wall.

If this genre grabs you the same way it does me then I urge you to head over to the website and check it out.





Saturday 14 July 2007

Tired of Vista's screen spasms yet ??

For those of you that are tired of your screen going through all sort of spasms when the UAC prompt comes up (for those that still have it on that is). This little trick will turn off the shaded background that causes the problem.

Open "Local Security Policy" from the Administrative Tools

Select "Local Polices" and then "Security Options"

Scroll down to the bottom of the list where the "User Account Control" settings are.

Find the setting titled "User Account Control: Switch to the secure desktop when prompting for elevation" and disable it.

This will leave UAC active so you still get all the prompts, but the gray "secure" background doesn't appear.

Of course many more conscientious users will tell you that you're now susceptible to having a Trojans/worms automatically clicking the "OK" button for you. My take on this is that if you've got a Trojan or worm that's going to do that then your system is already compromised so it doesn't make much difference.

So if your screen has the jitterbugs, give this a go. Before turning off the secure desktop my video driver used to fail on an almost daily basis, that is now a thing of the past.

Wednesday 11 July 2007

SQL Server 2008 Release Date

News is slowly circulating around the web.
 
At the Worldwide Partner Conference Microsoft annouced that the release date for SQL Server 2008 will be February 27, 2008.
 
That's a little over 200 days. Hope everyone that's planning a SQL 2000 -> SQL 2005 migration is happy with this news :)
 
 

Tuesday 10 July 2007

Next User Group Meeting

Next Tuesday 17th of July will be the next SQL Server User Group meeting in Victoria.

It promises to be an interesting and highly sought after topic, "Understanding SQL Server Execution Plans"

Head over to the AUSQLUG website for all the details and make sure you register.

Thursday 5 July 2007

SQL Server 2000 SP3a Support Lifecycle

For those of you that haven’t applied Service Pack 4, or upgraded to SQL Server 2005, support for SQL Server 2000 Service Pack 3a expires on the 10th of July 2007. After this date you’ll need to be on SQL Server 2000 Service Pack 4, or SQL Server 2005 to receive product support from Microsoft.

For product support for each edition of SQL Server 2000 see http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?p1=2852

For detail support for each service pack see http://support.microsoft.com/gp/LifeSupSps#Servers (You’ll need to scroll down to SQL Server)

Tuesday 3 July 2007

Super sp_who for SQL 2005

Uses DMVs and shows statement text.


SELECT req.session_id
, req.blocking_session_id
, req.cpu_time
, req.Reads
, req.writes
, req.logical_reads
, sess.login_time
, conn.last_read
, conn.last_write
, sess.host_name
, conn.client_net_address
, sess.program_name
, db_name(req.database_id) As databasename
, stmt.text As command_text
, req.status
FROM sys.dm_exec_requests req
INNER JOIN sys.dm_exec_connections conn
On req.session_id = conn.session_id
INNER JOIN sys.dm_exec_sessions sess
ON req.session_id = sess.session_id
CROSS APPLY sys.dm_exec_sql_text(req.sql_handle) AS STMT
WHERE req.session_id >= 51