In the first part of this week’s documentation series we covered documentation in the traditional sense. In today’s lesson we’re going to talk about a new avenue which many are using as a sort of documentation repository and that is the personal tech blog.

Now I could use this lesson as an entire post on how to get started blogging but I won’t. Instead I will re-direct you to professor Brent Ozar’s series on How to Start a Blog. Consider that your homework assignment for this class. So if I’m not going to talk about starting a blog then what are we going to discuss? How about the significance of blogging or writing for your own personal development and growth? I’m very fortunate in that I have managed to have Tom LaRock (Blog | Twitter) as part of the faculty and this semester he is playing the role of DBA Coach and he touches on some of these points in this week’s lesson as well.

Help Yourself

So this is documentation week, what does that have to do with blogging? Well, let’s say you’re a small company. You’re the one-man show in the IT department (in fact, you ARE the IT department). Since you’re tasked with trying to do anything and everything it gets really tough to remember how you fixed that one problem on that one system many months ago. Now since you’re just one person, chances are you don’t have something like Track-It! or CA Service Desk to log trouble tickets and create a knowledgebase with. So what do you do? Well you can hope you can remember everything or you can start documenting these things. A blog is a great place to document these issues as you can easily refer back to them at a later time. There are plenty of free blogging platforms out there such as Blogger or WordPress that make starting one a breeze. In addition to making it easy, they provide plenty of tools to help you get started. For me, I started on Blogger as the interface was extremely user-friendly and since I already had a Google account I was up and running in a matter of minutes. In addition to nice tools for content creation, you have nice built-in search tools so if you’re somewhere and need to look up ‘arcserve fix’, your site is already to receive that query and find the posts for you that fulfill that request.

Help Others

Since your blog is public (by default but you can make it private if need be), search engines such as Google and Bing can index it. The power behind this is that sometime, somewhere somebody is running in to the same issue as you. And when that happens, what’s the first thing people do? They Boogle the problem. And if you’re thinking “I’m running some obscure software that nobody else runs” then all the more reason to blog your solutions for the world because I guarantee you that a company wasn’t formed, developed a software package and sold one and only copy of it (unless this is stricly a custom homegrown app but you know what I mean). How many times have you done a search for something and you get the dreaded ‘no results found’ page? Well aren’t you glad that everytime you search for something and hits are returned that you have something to go to? Well, now you can help seed that global knowledgebase! Best part about having it public is that if you’re a consultant (or at a relative’s house which you inevitably get sucked into helping because you’re the “computer” guru of the family)  you can always get to what you need from your site. Also helps when referring others. Let’s say you get asked about a particular issue all the time. Instead of having to answer each email individually, and having that siphon your time, just write up a post addressing the issue and direct folks there. Eventually when they see you have something to offer they’ll keep coming back, you keep writing and everybody wins!

For Friday’s class I’ll be talking about tools to help you in your documentation efforts. In the meantime make sure you read the assigned reading from above and see you guys at the next lesson!

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First off, welcome back class! So this week we’re talking about writing. As a DBA or a developer you are going to be asked at some point to perform a necessary evil called documentation. Why is this evil? Well, it’s not really evil but it is not one of the more glamorous parts of the job, yet it is one of the most essential. Good documentation is everything! Without documentation you can spend all the time in the world developing the greatest system on earth, utilizing some of the most complex and beautiful code ever written but when something eventually (and it will) break, you’re going to be expected to be the one to fix it.

“But I’m working on this really important production issue, I can’t stop everything just to troubleshoot a system I put into production 3 years ago and can’t remember half the things I put into it!” Ah, but if you had only documented it someone else could be supporting the system and you could be blissfully working on the here and now. When we talk about documentation, however, that word means different things to different people. Let’s go over some of the different aspects of documentation within a system and why they are important.

Code Documentation

In the database world you have lots of objects in your databases such as tables, views, stored procedures, triggers, etc. Some objects can be fairly easy to deduce what they do, for example, a stored procedure named usp_DisplayAllInventory. From the name alone you can probably tell that executing it will return a listing of all the inventory in your system. But is that necessarily correct? Not really. That stored procedure could accept a parameter that tells it a specific department and displays all of the inventory for that given department. But how can truly know what it does? Glad you asked!

SET ANSI_NULLS ON

GO

SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON

GO

– =============================================

– Author:        Jorge Segarra

– Create date: 4/7/10

– Description:    Example Stored Procedure that pulls back all inventory items

– =============================================

CREATE PROCEDURE usp_DisplayAllInventory

– Add the parameters for the stored procedure here

@departmentid INT

AS

BEGIN

/*SET NOCOUNT ON added to prevent extra result sets from

interfering with SELECT statements. */

SET NOCOUNT ON;

– Insert statements for procedure here

SELECT ProdID,ProdName,ProdPrice,InventoryQty FROM dbo.Products WHERE ProdDept = @departmentid

END

GO

In the above stored procedure, you’ll see a few lines of code that aren’t truly code. In T-SQL you can leave comments within your code one of two ways:

1: You can precede a line with two hyphens (–). This will cause that entire line of code to be commented out. This allows you leave quick explanatory notes about a particular piece of code. In the above example you can see I used this method to document who wrote the stored procedure, its creation date, and a brief description of what the stored procedure’s overall function is. I’ve also used the line comment code method after the CREATE PROCEDURE command to explain what the next line of code is doing or why its important to the overall process.

2: If you plan on leaving a longer comment that explains something, and you don’t want to have to start each line with the double-hyphens, you can comment out an entire block of text by adding /* to the beginning of the text and closing the comment block with */. You can see an example of this after the BEGIN statement. I’ve used this method to write out a longer explanation of why I’ve chosen to add the SET NOCOUNT ON to the stored procedure.

It’s always good practice to comment your code because even though you may be intimately familiar with the  inner workings of a particular piece of code, truth is a few years down the line you may not be around. Someone else will be looking at that code and need to know what is going on in there. By documenting your code as you go you not only make it easier for yourself to figure out what you’re looking at (since it may be quite awhile before you look at that piece of code again) but you make it easier for others to figure out what your though process was as well.

System Documentation

Oh to only have to deal with SQL, wouldn’t that be wonderful? Well truth of the matter of is that many of us also double as system administrators. As such we often called (and rightfully expected to) be able to put together a run-book of the systems you manage. A run-book is basically a document you put together that covers important details about your system such as IP addresses, support contact info, operational information, backup windows, etc. Below I’ve linked to a sample run book you can use as a template in your shop, if you don’t have one already. This document should be a “living” document in that it should periodically and regularly reviewed and updated to make sure you have all of the latest information available in case of emergency. Nothing is worse for a company to discover during a disaster that the one guy who knew what was on the server or how to fix it, was let go 6 months ago and nobody else knows anything about the system. Let’s use another, less drastic, example. Imagine you’re on your first vacation in over 3 years with your family. You’re at the airport getting ready to  board when you get a frantic call that a critical system went down. Now from listening to the call you can tell you’ll be on the phone awhile trying to explain or walk-through someone how to fix said issue (which would probably be a 5-minute fix for you if you were there but the operator calling knows nothing about the system). In the meantime your spouse is giving you the stink-eye because you promised to focus on vacation and not your work and your day just quickly goes downhill. Wouldn’t it be nicer if that person that called you had a step-by-step manual detailing important information on exactly how to fix common issues? This way they could refer to the document first, apply any troubleshooting tips/steps you have supplied and save you a headache (heck, they might even learn something themselves).

Due to the high importance of this kind of documentation, make sure you place it somewhere protected (read also: being actively backed up) yet accessible to others within your group (or whomever needs access to it). It does nobody any good if you spend 100 hours documenting all of your systems and all those documents only exist on your hard drive. If your drive goes (as most eventually do), then you’ll have lost all of that hard work and vital information. No fun. Instead I recommend placing these files out on either a shared network drive or SharePoint site. SharePoint sites are great for this kind of thing since you can ratchet down permissions based on groups/users, gets backed up regularly (at least it should be if you don’t want to be sorry), and provides an easy platform for collaborating on and editing the document on a regular basis. You can even setup alerts on a particular list/folder to alert you if an item gets added or changed. I’d also recommend keeping copy of these documents on a portable drive that should be part of your takeaway kit. To read more about takeaway kit (or bug-out bag) and how it relates to emergencies, check out Brent Ozar’s article on the topic.

Lastly, having this kind of documentation on-hand makes you look great to management. If your boss (or anyone really) ever has any basic questions regarding the systems in your care you can refer to them your document store and they can check it out themselves. When your boss sees how organized you are and how in-control you are of the environment I’m sure that certainly won’t hurt come review time!

That’s all for today’s lesson. For Wednesday’s lesson we’ll be covering blogging and how starting one can help you in your documentation efforts.

• Download sample Run-Book template (Word Macro-Enabled Template & Regular Doc for 2003 compatibility)
  • NOTE: This is only a sample template. Feel free to modify it to fit your needs.

Continue to part II

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Well the new year is here and I’m currently planning what’s next for SQL University this semester. I’m hoping to have a few more additions in staff as well as add some more interactive options to get everyone involved! I’ll have more details in the coming weeks about that. In the meantime I have setup a feedback form for SQL University. If you can, please take a minute to fill out this form. This feedback lets me know what we’re doing wrong/right and what you would like to see in the future. Thank you!

Feedback survey click here

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Good day students! Unfortunately your professor who was supposed to cover indexes (that’s a pun, you’ll learn why in the following lessons) fell ill so we had to call in a guest professor. I’m honored to introduce to you professor Gail Shaw (Blog | Interview)! Gail has written a series of articles on indexes at SQLServerCentral.com. In order to read these articles you will have to create an account, don’t worry it’s free and HIGHLY recommended as SQL Server Central has some of the best SQL material around!

So without further ado, here are your indexing lessons for the week:

Introduction to Indexes

The Clustered Index

The Non-Clustered Index

Supplemental indexing material:

Additional Indexing articles by Gail Shaw (from her blog) Recommended Reading

Index Primer-Just what statistics are Kept? (author: Josef Richberg)

A big “thank you” again to Gail for giving us permission to add her work to the SQL University curriculum! Don’t forget to head over to the basketball court and let coach Tom Larock help you put your newfound skills to the test.

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First off I apologize wholeheartedly about the lateness of this post. Turns out I have a day job as well (go figure!). Anyhow thus far we’ve talked about the past in the history of SQL Server, we’ve discussed the present state of affairs in PASS and the events currently going on in the state of SQL Server knowledge and development, and now we’re going to discuss the future and that future is you!

Ok that last line came off a bit hokey but seriously folks, you really ARE the future of SQL Server and PASS. This year we’ve seen some great strides with PASS with the re-branding and refocusing of the Virtual Chapters. The Virtual Chapters, as was mentioned in the last article, are chapters that meet online and are focused on several aspects of SQL Server such as Administration, Application Development, Women in Technology, Virtualization, etc. Another thing that we learned through recent PASS elections campaign madness process is just how passionate we can be about our organization. We’ve also seen the passion from members come forth in form of blog posts such as Brent Ozar’s post ‘What Community Means to Me‘.

Getting Involved

But that covers how others feel and contribute, how do you fit in? Well first off get involved! Be it something as small as communicating with others via your social network of choice (i.e. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn) start connecting with other SQL professionals. I know, for me, the relationships I’ve fostered via Twitter have been invaluable for me. I’ve found that not only it pays off for day to day questions but it also makes it much easier to transition to meeting folks “in meatspace” such as PASS Summit, SQLSaturday or user group events. Which brings me to my next point, local user groups are great resources. You can check the PASS Chapters website to see the list of the official PASS chapters all over the world. For those not familiar with user groups, these are groups that meet on a regular basis (typically about once a month) and they share information and network on particular topics. In our case we have user groups that are SQL Server focused (database administrators, developers, architects, etc.) as well as groups dedicated to SQL Server Business Intelligence. Attending user groups is a fantastic way to arm yourself with knowledge for free (as well as food and swag, hehe) as at these meetings the usual meeting structure includes having someone come in and speak on a particular topic to the group. In addition to the learning you get from these presentations you can get so much more by networking with your fellow SQL peers. This is a fantastic way to solve real-world problems as others in your field share problems and solutions they’re working on or have come across. No matter what your level of SQL expertise be it someone who has never even opened SQL Server before or someone who has been working with the product for 10+ years I highly encourage you to participate in your local user groups.

If there is no chapter in your area you can set one up yourself. Worried you need to be a SQL guru to do so? Let me alleviate your worries and tell you you don’t. One of the best stories I heard this year came from Bonnie Allard ( Twitter | LinkedIn), the chapter leader of the Spacecoast SQL Server User group. Bonnie actually came into SQL Server with no prior experience so in order to learn it she setup her own test systems at home and just kept playing with the product to get herself familiarized with it. After attending a SQLSaturday event, Bonnie decided to setup a SQL User group in her area (they are located in Melbourne, Florida) as the next closest group was Orlando which was over an hour away. Although the group is small Bonnie has shown great dedication to her craft, PASS and the SQL Community as a whole. If you are interested in setting up a group contact your local Regional Mentor to get started. You can find the regional mentors by clicking on your respective region on the Chapters page. If you have any questions you can contact Blythe Morrow (Email), the Communities coordinator for PASS Headquarters, and she’ll connect you to the proper folks.

Volunteer Work

So we’ve talked about PASS as a whole as well as the local level branches of PASS in local user groups but how else can you continue to pitch in? Well PASS is a global organization and they are always in need of good volunteers to pitch in be it something as simple as helping them put together a PowerPoint for a keynote or as much as volunteering at the Summit to help guide attendees around. Volunteers are the lifeline of PASS and so they can always use as many as possible to help out! If you’re interested in volunteering check out the Volunteers page at the PASS website or contact Blythe Morrow  for more opportunities.

Just Do It!

Bottom line is you don’t need to be a Super person with 100+ titles to be involved. Best way to get started is to just do it! Many of the SQL experts you see in the community started off just like you. One of the greatest things about being part of the PASS and SQL community is that you get so much more in return the more you put in to it. So get out there and volunteer, speak, blog, tweet, whatever as long as you get involved! Maybe I’ll see you at the Summit next year and you can relay your own story of how you setup a new PASS chapter or how you got involved with PASS, I’d love to hear them all.

Update: Jeremiah Peschka (Blog | Twitter), PASS Board Member and all-around awesome guy, just posted a blog about volunteering with PASS which you should definitely check out.

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Welcome back students! In our last lesson we covered the history of SQL Server, the product. This is important stuff to know in order to understand the evolution of the technology you’re working with. SQL Server has made many strides and it continues to do so to this day. Today’s lesson we’re going to cover current events. The reason we’re covering current events is because this past week was the annual conference for PASS called the PASS Community Summit. PASS Summit Unite 2009 is the largest, most focused, and intensive Microsoft SQL Server conference in the world.

Sounds great doesn’t it? Well you might be asking yourself: What is PASS? I’m glad you asked! PASS stands for the Professional Association of SQL Server. PASS is an independent, not-for-profit association, dedicated to supporting, educating, and promoting the Microsoft SQL Server community. From local user groups and special interest groups (Virtual Chapters) to webcasts and the annual PASS Community Summit – the largest gathering of SQL Server professionals in the world – PASS is dedicated to helping its members Connect, Share, and Learn by:

• Facilitating member networking and exchange of information through our websites, Chapters, annual Summits, regional and local events, and virtual communities
• Working with Microsoft to influence the evolution of SQL Server products and services
• Delivering high quality, up-to-date, technical content, presentations, and other educational material for professional development

PASS was founded in 1999 by Microsoft and CA and continues to enjoy executive level endorsement from both organizations. As the number one user community for Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft looks to the PASS community for valued feedback, input, and inspiration. (Source: About PASS)

If you’ve been following anyone in the SQL community either via Twitter, reading SQL blogs, or browsing around any SQL-related forums you may have noticed a very large buzz in the community about the conference this week. There’s very good reason for this: The PASS Summit is the Superbowl of SQL Conferences (or World Cup for my international friends). This is the one conference during the year where folks from all over the world unite in one place and share their SQL skills, experiences and friendships. The motto for PASS is Connect, Learn, Share and that’s definitely what the Summit embodies. I personally have never been but this year I followed along via Twitter and it almost felt like I was there (Twitter is even funnier when you see the after-hours activities like Karaoke).

There have been a slew of blog posts about why the Summit (and I stress that the conference is called Summit, the organization is called PASS but many mistakingly refer to the conference as just PASS) is so great to attend. This post will try to not turn into one giant PASS Summit commercial but its hard not to gush over how awesome it is when you see all the knowledge shared and how the community rallies together. Suffice to say the annual conference is definitely worth your time and money to try and attend.

Beyond the conference PASS offers much more to the community. As a professional association they offer education resources for all members. How does one become a member? Don’t worry, it’s free and everyone is invited to join! Just follow this link to register. So what kind of learning resources does PASS offer? Well for starters the website offers links to resources to just about anything you can think of from technical articles, webcasts, tips/tricks from the experts, newsletters, tips/resources for speakers and much more. But the website is just the tip of the iceberg! PASS truly is a worldwide organization and that fact can be seen through the proliferation of local and regional SQL Server User groups. PASS has chapters all over the world and with each passing year it keeps growing! You can check the PASS Chapters page and check your region to see if there is a user group in your area. If there isn’t a user group located near you then guess what? You can establish one yourself! To get started on that journey check out the page on what steps are needed to set one up and become an official PASS chapter!

PASS Chatpers Worldwide as of 2009

Another great resource PASS has established in the past year has been the proliferation of Virtual Chapters (formerly called Special Interest Groups or SIGS). These virtual chapters each have a focus on a different aspect of SQL Server such as Business Intelligence, Application Development, Professional Development, Virtualization, Women in Technology, Performance and Database Administration. These Virtual Chapters act just like local chapters in that they meet on a regular basis but rather than meeting in a physical location they meet online via LiveMeeting. These meetings are great and open to everyone. At these meetings they have someone in the community do a one-hour presentation (much like you would see at a conference or a local user group meeting). These are fantastic, and best of all free, learning resources which helps you advance your knowledge and career!

Another great item to come out of the PASS umbrella are the free, local training events called SQLSaturday. These are free 0ne-day training events modeled after code camp events. At SQLSaturday there are several tracks based on different aspects of SQL Server (i.e. Administration, BI, Development etc.). These events attract speakers from all over and gives a chance for attendees to not only learn about SQL Server and PASS but gives them a taste of the community as well. If you’re interested go check out their events page and see if there is one scheduled for your area!

While there are many, many learning resources for SQL Server out there such as SQL Server Central, SQLShare and SQLServerpedia, know that we are all united when it comes to PASS since we are all members of the same fraternity of data professionals.

In our last class for this week I’ll cover the future of SQL Server, PASS and you!

Continue on to part III

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Well this is going to be an interesting week as we have the PASS Summit going on. What’s the PASS Summit? What’s PASS? Why are the people on Twitter so excited about #sqlpass? Well by the end of the week my hope is you’ll have an understanding of where the Microsoft SQL Server (the product) came from, where its going, what PASS is and why its important to us.

So the past few weeks you’ve been working with Microsoft SQL Server. Some of you may have worked with it for years and others may be using it for the first time. So how did this fantastic relational database product come to be? Microsoft SQL Server’s humble beginnings started in 1989 with the release of SQL Server 1.0. This was Microsoft’s first entry in to the database market and the product’s codebase was based on Sybase SQL Server 3.0 code.Eventually Sybase and Microsoft went their separate ways. Starting from version SQL Server 7.0, released in 1998, the codebase was re-written from the legacy Sybase code.

In 2000 Microsoft released the first version that did away with the previous numbering scheme and was released as (and the originality award goes to…) SQL 2000. This product marked the first time the product was available with an edition aimed at the IA-64 architecture. The IA-64 version of SQL 2000 was available some time after the x86 version. It was also a little finicky, being more prone to crashes than the x86 edition (thanks to Gail Shaw for this info!). This evolution of the product also saw the introduction of SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) as an add-on in 2004. Reporting Services would re-emerge in SQL Server 2005 with many improvements in regards to end-user tools, self-service ad-hoc reporting and ease-of-usability. This release also gave us a built-in ETL (extract,transform,load) tool called Data Transformation Services (DTS).

For the 2005 release, SQL Server 2005 was considered a revolutionary release by many. Quite a few things were overhauled and improved upon. The Enterprise Manager was replaced by the SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS). SSMS is basically a Visual Studio shell with SQL Server components built in which made for a cohesive development/management environment for users. As well as getting a new management interface there were huge new features and enhancements to the database engine itself. SQL Server 2005 was the first SQL Server to include support for managing XML data types. Some other improvements 2005 brought were better indexing algorithms, better recovery systems, Dynamic Management Views, instant file initialization, better security (granular role/schema/object permissions), introduction of SQL CLR which allows developers to use native .NET code within SQL Server (assuming your DBA allows it, hehehe). Another huge change in this release was the replacement of DTS with a far superior and more polished ETL solution in SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS).

The most recent iteration of the product is SQL Server 2008. This version built upon the leaps from its previous release and improved upon them. These improvements came in the form of new features such as Policy-Based Management, the Performance Data Collector, data compression, resource governor (which allows dba’s to restrict resources for certain queries), transparent data encryption, data auditing, server group management in the form of the Central Management Server, the introduction of the MERGE statement, introduction of LINQ, support for geospatial data, filtered indexes, new DATE/TIME data types (until this point date/time was one column and together, this release allowed you to separate the two), BI improvements, and much more.

So what’s next? Glad you asked! The next announced release is referred to as SQL Server 2008 R2. This release offers mostly higher spec bumps (such as support for more processors, more memory, etc.) but also offers a few new feature additions as well. Some of these new features include Master Data Services, SQL Server Utility (a new way of managing databases as Data-Tier Applications), Data-Tier Application capabilities (DAC), PowerPivot (formerly known as Project Gemini) and more. Here’s a full list of all the various improvements available in the R2 release.

Note: This article was heavily drawn upon entries from Wikipedia. Click here to read the full SQL Server entry from there.

Continue on to part II

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Good afternoon students, this is just a quick announcement to let you know that SQL University (sort of) is offering a computer lab for students to cut their teeth on SQL 2008 technology. I say sort of because this lab is actually offered via a partnership with PASS, Maximum ASP, and DELL Computers at http://www.sqlserverbeta.com .

The labs offer up a virtual sandbox environment where you can discover and practice everything you learn here in a dedicated hosted environment! Here’s the lab description:

We will be adding additional labs in the coming months in preparation for the release of SQL Server 2008 R2, so check back often.

So how do you get in on this great deal? Well just head on over to http://www.sqlserverbeta.com and Register!

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Tom LaRock aka SQLRockstar

Exciting news for SQL University today, we have now named Tom LaRock (Blog | Twitter) our head basketball coach at SQL University! A basketball program? For a virtual University? How’s that going to work? Well Tom details his plans in his blog post but here’s the general idea:

Each week Tom will hand-pick 5 players in the SQL community to put on the hardwood for that week. Think of them as Dream Team of the topic we’re covering that week. If I’m feeling saucy over the weekends I may Photoshop trading cards of each player he selects. We’ll see how everything plays out.

Practice! Practice! Practice! Tom will be coming up with practice drills for you students to follow to hone your newfound educational skills on the topic of the week. Just think of it as homework only with Coach Tom yelling at your to drag your butt back up the court and play some Defense!

I’m excited to see how this all pans out as it adds a nice dynamic to SQL University!

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Listed below is the Fall 2009 Syllabus for SQL University. Please refer back here often as weekly topics/presenters/dates may be subject to change. Each week each professor is asked to present between 2 and 3 articles on a given topic. The days where you see as Optional are listed in case the presenter that week chooses to take advantage of that 3^rd day.

For links to each session please check the main SQL University page.

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