Benchmark IT Consulting

sp_refreshview How Did I Forget You?

Colin Stasiuk — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 20:37:50 +0000

So a developer asked me a question about how he added a column to a table and now the view that referenced the table wasn’t showing the column. I asked the obvious question: “Did you add the column to the view?” to which he replied “The view is doing a SELECT *”

OK it may not be that bad… and it definitely not the reason for this post as I think enough people have wrote articles on why you shouldn’t use SELECT * …. so anyways I queried the view myself and saw the same thing that the developer saw.

So after a little “googling” I came across sp_refreshview.

sp_refreshview (Transact-SQL)

“Updates the metadata for the specified non-schema-bound view. Persistent metadata for a view can become outdated because of changes to the underlying objects upon which the view depends.”

So I’m not sure if it’s because I don’t develop alot these days or if it’s because I name all my columns in my views directly but sp_refreshview slipped my mind so I thought I’d write a blog post about it just in case I’m not the only one.

Other ways to resolve this would be to do an ALTER VIEW and just keep the schema the same or to DROP and CREATE the view again (but you risk losing all permissions on the view so that’s just a bad idea). If Microsoft gives you a “sp_refreshview” just for this reason… I say use it!

EDIT: Denis Gobo tweeted me with a great article he wrote as well on the subject at LessThanDot

Enjoy!!

Congrats to Team Canada!!

Colin Stasiuk — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 23:18:01 +0000

It’s a rarity for me to blog about something non-SQL Server related but I have to tell you the 2010 Winter Olympic Games were pretty amazing. Anyone who knows me (or who met me at the Summit last year) knows that I’m a huge hockey fan and I have to give credit where credit is due… Team USA beat us in the preliminary round and gave us everything we could take in the Gold medal game……..but

Sorry Team USA… no “Miracle on Ice” this time. LOL

Hockey was not the only thing that interested me this Olympics though… it’s amazing how you can get into so many sports that you normally would not watch at all just because the participants are representing your country. I saw curling, speed skating, moguls, ski jumping, downhill skiing, bobsledding, snowboarding and yes even figure skating LOL.

I hated Canada’s “Own the Podium” campaign… it felt very “un-Canadian” to me and put a dark cloud (in my opinion) on the unprecedented success that Canada had at this years Winter Olympics. It is obviously every countries wish to do well at the Olympics and whether the campaign was put in place to help raise money for our Olympic athletes or just raise general awareness for Canadians about the Olympics… if you took a poll of everyday average Canadians I think they would say it was in bad taste and didn’t represent Canada in a very favorable light.

That being said…. Thanks to all who represented our country and a special “shout out” to the Men’s and Women’s Hockey Teams!!!

Rebooting a Server Using PowerShell

Colin Stasiuk — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 17:43:05 +0000

The more I work with PowerShell the more I love it

So what do you do if you’re in a VM environment and you want/need to reboot your server but you can’t connect via RDP and you can’t connect to the console using the VM Infrastructure Client, and all other attempts to connect just don’t work. I decided to go down the route of using PowerShell.

$ServerToRestart = Get-WMIObject win32_operatingsystem -computer <>
$ServerToRestart.reboot()

Get-WMIObject – Windows PowerShell: The WMI Connection

Simple, easy and very dangerous/powerful. I’ll channel my inner “Uncle Ben” (see Spiderman quotes) and just leave this message as a closing thought:

“With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility”

Enjoy!!

EDMPASS Meeting – January 27th 2010 #YEG

Colin Stasiuk — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 15:49:50 +0000

On January 27th 2010 the Edmonton Chapter of PASS is having it’s next meeting. Details below:

http://www.eventbrite.com/event/503789849

Please be sure to not only click the “Add to my calendar” but also the “Register” button so that we can plan accordingly for food and drinks.

Date: Jan 27th 2010
Time: 5:00 pm – 7:00 pm
Location: Stanley A. Milner library
Map: 7 Sir Winston Churchill Square
Meeting Room: Centennial Room – Basement Level
Speaker: Buck Woody
Topic: Improvements in SQL Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008R2

Session Abstract:

“Come hear Buck Woody, Microsoft’s “Real World DBA”, explain the improvements in SQL Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008R2 over SQL Server 2000 and SQL Server 2005. He’ll show you what the new features are for developers and DBA’s and a quick overview of the new Business Intelligence features. He’ll show some practical examples of the new Transact-SQL statements, management features, and data types so that you can figure out where it fits in your organization.”
Presenter Information: Buck Woody (http://blogs.msdn.com/buckwoody/)

Buck Woody has been working with Information Technology since 1981. He has worked for the U.S. Air Force, at an IBM reseller as technical support, and for NASA as well as U.S. Space Command as an IT contractor. He has worked in most all IT positions from computer repair technician to system and database administrator, and from network technician to IT Manager and with multiple platforms as a Data Professional. He has been a DBA and Database Developer on Oracle systems running on a VAX to SQL Server and DB2 installations. Buck has a business degree and several industry certifications, including MCSE, MCDBA and Brainbench DBA. He is the author of over 400 SQL Server articles and five published SQL Server books; he is the site personality on InformIT.com’s SQL web, and was the President of the Tampa SQL User’s Group for 5 years. He was awarded the Microsoft MVP Award in 2006 for SQL Server, and started work in the SQL Server Team at Microsoft a year later. He has over twenty years extensive professional and practical experience in computer networks and database design. He also teaches a Database Design course at the University of Washington.

Agenda:
5:00 pm – Pizza and Socializing
5:30 pm – Sponsor Presentation
5:45 pm – Feature Presentation
7:00 pm – Wrap Up and Draws

If you haven’t signed up already at EDMPASS.com please do so now to receive meeting notifications, news, and updates from EDMPASS.

Hope to see you there.

Enjoy!!

A Very Busy January

Colin Stasiuk — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 14:32:34 +0000

First off I’d like to say Happy New Year to everyone and extend my congratulations again to all the new MVPs out there… well done and the community is a better place because of people like you.

January is going to be a VERY busy month for me both personally and professionally so I thought I would write a quick blog post just so people don’t think I’ve fallen off the face of the earth or something LOL The biggest and challenging task at hand is I need to have the first draft of my final 2 chapters done by February 1st. While I’m not concerned too much about making this deadline I’m doing my best to make sure I don’t make the same mistakes I made in my first chapter with these final 2 chapters.

The second thing on my “hit list” for January is the EDMPASS meeting on January 27th with Buck Woody. This will be the first time that I’m going to make the meeting “public” via Live Meeting and also going to work with recording it and making it available after the fact as well.

A couple personal items are next for me as I’m leaving on a jet plane on January 20th to go to Las Vegas to play in a Ball Hockey tournament called “The Sin City Shootout”. I didn’t take any time off during the holidays as I was covering for alot of people that did so this will be a nice little break and alot of fun if only for 5 days. From my previous trips to Vegas 5 days is pretty well the max for me cause (for me anyways) Vegas after 5 days is just annoying.

And finally I hope to make a trip somewhere in there for the weekend up to Cold Lake (about 3 hours NE of Edmonton) to see my sister, brother-in-law, niece, and new baby niece Ella. I’ve seen pictures and videos but I can’t wait to get up there and spend some QT with the new little addition to my sister’s family.

I hope everyone is doing well and sorry for being a bit out of touch (via MSN, Twitter, etc)

Enjoy!!

My 2010 Goals and Themeword

Colin Stasiuk — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 20:13:53 +0000

I’ve seen a few of these types of posts over the last week or so and I figured I should publish something on the intertubes that would be something to look back on come next year at this time. Tom LaRock had a very interesting spin on things (as he always does) and added a ThemeWord into the mix.

Colin’s 2010 Themeword is……… FOCUS

No not that kind of focus….

Happy Holidays From Benchmark IT Consulting

Colin Stasiuk — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 15:03:36 +0000

Here is to hoping that everyone finds some time to spend with loved ones this holiday season. It has been a crazy busy year for me in 2009 with so much going on it’s been hard to step back and enjoy it. That being said I plan on spending as much time with my family as possible in the next couple weeks and living vicareously through my 2 beautiful children as the Christmas excitement builds.

My wife Heather has taken on the role of Christmas Cheermeister (see Jim Carrey in The Grinch That Stole Christmas) and she’s done an amazing job on helping build the excitement for our kids as well as myself. I’ve never really been a fan of Christmas itself but I’ll gladly take as much quality time with my family as I can get.

So Merry Christmas and God bless you and your families this holiday season and throughout the coming year.

Enjoy!!

EDMPASS + Twitter = Hockey Tickets?

Colin Stasiuk — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 14:23:40 +0000

If you were not able to attend the last EDMPASS meeting about the Summit then you missed out on a great round-table discussion. A reoccurring theme in the discussion was around the networking/social aspect being so HUGE as part of the entire Summit experience. Everyone knows that the Summit is THE #1 SQL Server Conference and that the speakers and sessions are amazing but the part of the Summit that surprised me the most was the networking side and Twitter in particular.

So as we like to do from time to time at EDMPASS we’re having ourselves a contest.

If you’re not on Twitter this is what you have to do:

Join Twitter
Add myself @BenchmarkIT (This is how I’ll know you’re entering the contest)
Add 10 or more SQL Server tweeps… here is a list from SQLServerPedia to help get you started or some of the frequent tweeters today are listed below…

@BrentO – A previous EDMPASS presenter
@SQLRockstar- Last months EDMPASS preseter
@BuckWoody
@SQLAgentMan
@Peschkaj
@MrDenny
@SQLChicken
@kensimmons
@Way0utWest
@Wendy_Dance

This list is nothing more then me scrolling through my SQL Group and grabbing the first 10 people I see… so if you’re not on here sorry LOL

So there you go… you’re entered… easy huh? Now I’m not going to force you to start a conversation with any of these people but all I ask is that you give it a chance and if you have something to contribute or ask… do so and see what happens

A tip for you as well… install TweetDeck… it’ll make the experience way more enjoyable.

If you ARE already on Twitter

Add @BenchmarkIT if you don’t already have me on your list
If you already have me on your list DM me asking to be entered
Comment on this blog post and tell us a quick story of a positive experience you had with another SQL tweeter

So what’s the prize?

2 Tickets to an upcoming Edmonton Oilers game – I have a few games to choose from so the winner will be able to pick

Now in order to be eligible for the draw you will have to take part in the Twitter contest and be in attendance for the Dec 16th EDMPASS Meeting with @SQLServerSleuth (hint hint… add him too!!!)

If you’re a BenchmarkITConsulting.com reader (Thanks!!! ) feel free to share YOUR real good feel good SQL Twitter story as well… (sorry no hockey tickets for you lol)

Enjoy!!

Have You Seen This Man?

Colin Stasiuk — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 15:51:04 +0000

EDMPASS WANTS BUCK WOODY!!!

When talking to Summit attendees the one name that comes up constantly or the one question that comes up is…

“Did you get a chance to see Buck Woody present?”

I did… and it was my first time. It was the end of the day I believe on the Thursday… I would tell you EXACTLY when but….

Anyways… back to the story… so I go into Buck Woody’s session on Policy Based Management, Data Collector, and Central management Servers and I was pretty tired as it was and the room was cooking but as soon as I walked in the door it was entertainment from start to finish…. and not just entertainment but VERY informative.

I remember back in the days of junior high and high school the teachers that stand out in my mind are the ones that were able to educate the class while adding a bit of fun and their own flavor to the material. This is Buck Woody.

We’re all at the Summit, we’re all there to learn, and we’re all excited about SQL Server BUT if you had the pleasure of seeing a Buck Woody session you should know exactly what I mean when I say this guy takes presentations to the next level.

I heard a rumor on Twitter that if the Summit was NOT in Seattle that there is a chance that Buck Woody might not be able to attend and speak due to the travel costs:

… and this is exactly why I for one DO NOT want to move the Summit out of Seattle. PASS has come right out and said that if we move the Summit from Seattle that we will NOT be able to take advantage of the all the local Microsoft folks (like Buck Woody). Now some might say I’m a little biased in my opinion because Seattle is only an hour and 45 minute flight for me… but I would feel the same way if it was in Chicago, New York, or Boston.

Anyways the goal of this post was 2 things:

1) To spread the good word about a great speaker – Buck Woody

2) To get Buck Woody to speak at EDMPASS

I’ve accomplished #1…. let’s see how I do with #2

Enjoy!!

You don’t think of them as human… You don’t think of them at all

Colin Stasiuk — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 16:00:30 +0000

OK maybe I’m feeling really good today… maybe it’s because it’s @Peschkaj’s birthday… maybe it’s because I needed to find a way to work some Tina Turner into my next blog post…or maybe it’s because I successfully took care of both kids last night for the first time while wifey started some photography classes.

Developers gets a bum rap… ok I have to stop right there… bum rap? who came up with that phrase?

http://www.yourdictionary.com/idioms/bum-rap

“This expression originated in the 1920s as underworld slang, and by the mid-1900s it was also used figuratively for other kinds of injustice.”

OK so apparently I’m going 1920’s with this blog post… back to developers

So yeah as DBAs we’re bred to hate on anyone (other then ourselves) who make changes to the environment that we’ve been charged with managing and protecting. We don’t trust developers and we think they are constantly trying to intentionally mess with “our world” and implement bad SQL code.

The relationship between DBA and developer is just like any other relationship in life… it requires work from both sides to be successful.

Ask yourself this:

Do you meet with the development team to get an idea of what projects they’re working on? their timelines? if they need any ideas or help, etc?
When was the last time you did a lunch and learn to try and help educate and show off some new tools or features in SQL Server?
When you “reject” or complain about developer code do you not only identify the problem but help provide alternative approaches or solutions?

Pssssssssssssssssssssst…Oh and by the way… as shocking as this sounds… come here… I’ve got a secret to tell you….

IT’S NOT YOUR DATABASE

Now I don’t want to get hung up on semantics but if the business didn’t require applications and developers didn’t create the applications and databases… what database environment would you be managing? LOL

At the end of the day we need all need to get along. Developers need to stop looking at DBAs as “road blocks” and DBAs need to stop looking at developers like terrorists who are just planning their next attack on your database environment.

So next time you have the urge to go rip a strip off an unsuspecting developer stop… breathe…. think about this blog post and come into the discussion not just armed with problems and complaints… but with solutions and education.

<< GROUP HUG >>

Enjoy!!