My first article on SQL Server 2008 has been published at http://sql-server-performance.com. I wrote this article based on the tests I did regarding Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) that is newly introduced with SQL Server 2008. This articles covers;

• What is Transparent Data Encryption?
• Implementation of TDE.
• Is my database secure now, as it says?
• What needs to be considered before enabling TDE?
• What is the impact when TDE is enabled?

You can read my article at http://sql-server-performance.com/articles/dba/Transparent_Data_Encryption_p1.aspx. Please let me know you thoughts on this, you can either add a comment to the article or send me an email to dinesh@sqlserveruniverse.com. I will writing two more articles on SQL Server 2008, will be publishing at http://sqlserveruniverse.com and http://sql-server-performance.com.

Yossi Elkayam has done a nice add-in to the BIDS that allows you to save views created for SSAS and run them as new requests. Seems this is very useful if you are currently working on a SSAS project.

Read more and download from here.

I am back. I did not write anything on my blog for last two months, I am not sure what kept me away from my favorite area, my blog. One reason would be, I guess, I was influenced by many things. Few things I want to make a note on;

My Personal life
Many things came and went, happiness, sadness, love, affection, success, failure... Most shattered my life with both green and red lines. I got sick again and had to hospitalized for couple of days. I was suffering from lot of sickness, some were known to me, and some were newly diagnosed. Many thanks go for Dr. Chandima de mel, my family, my friends and, Nawaloka hospital staff. Special thanks go to a person, who stayed with me in every possible minute, until I got recovered. I experienced a lot, with all of that, hereafter I will be singing a different tune.

My Msc :)
I have completed all my exams, assignments and, I am in last stage of the Msc, which is the project. I started doing the project, started with project proposal, project charter and finally poster session that gave me both good and bad comments :). I will be completing my Msc by end of August, hope I can get through without any complications.

My Database life
I started exploring SQL Server 2008 few months ago, gradually absorbing it. I recently did a session at SQL Server Sri Lanka User Group meeting on SQL Server 2008 - new features. Still I had no chance to use it with any commercial applications, hope will have a chance soon.

Our http://sqlserveruiniverse.com web site
It is growing and growing, spreading the word of SQL Server. Must thank Gogula for his dedication to the site, he has done a great job in my absence (even in my presence).

Doing my presentation.	Dinesh Asanka, Gogula and me, getting ready for the community launch.

That's about few things happened in last two months. I will be writing technical related things again in my blog, so, stay tune.

We started a new series of sessions, called "Know before doing it" for SQL Server Sri Lanka User Group Meeting and the first part of it was presented at the last meeting. I did a the first part of it, demonstrating some of the internal process of SQL Server and feedback from the audience for the session of really good.

Use this link to get all the presentation we did at last meeting, including Preethi's great presentation about Performance of Stored Procedures.

Gogula has written, good, properly explained article on SQL Server 2008, one of the newest data types, hierarchyid and has been published at http://sqlserveruniverse.com . It is a very useful article, worth to read it.

Click here to read the article.

I have been doing lot of development on SSIS for last two, three months and I made this note on what I faced during the project. It may useful for your future SSIS development, or brush up your SSIS knowledge. Read and see.

Click here to read the article.

Anyway, original name for the article was not this :), thanks for Gogula, naming it with nice title.

My latest article, Data Comparison with Data Dude has been published at www.sql-server-performance.com. This talks about the way of comparing the data between two data sources and scripting the changes.

Read and see, click here to visit the site.

Had to spend few minutes on this, to resolve the issue but found no solution. The problem was really weird. It was with variable window;

 

Look at the variable window. All buttons are disabled, disallowing creating or modifying variables created. I made a search to see whether anyone has experienced this before but could not find anything related to this. However, closing and reopening the packed resolved the problem :).

Here is a chance to show your colors and win very valuable prizes. All you have to do is, write some, creative, good code on SQL Server 2008 that will help to the community and send to CodePlex.

For more details, click on here.

Have you ever tried this and seen the speed of file allocation process? Though I had heard about it, I had not tried (I might have but I cannot remember :)). The default file allocation of SQL Server is zero initialization that takes long time when you try to create a database with a large sized data file or when you try to restore a fairly large database that is not exist. These two processes (not only these two, other processes like adding a new file...) can be speeded up by enabling Instant Initialization. You can enable the Instant Initialization by giving proper permission to the server that runs the SQL Server instance. Let me show you the simple test I did;

My SQL Server service runs with a account called SQLServerAccount that has just few user rights. It is not in the administrators group. I ran the code below and it took 13 seconds to create the "Test" database.

CREATE DATABASE [Test] ON  PRIMARY
( NAME = N'Test', FILENAME = N'C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.1\MSSQL\DATA\Test.mdf' , SIZE = 200 , FILEGROWTH = 1000 )
 LOG ON
( NAME = N'Test_log', FILENAME = N'C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.1\MSSQL\DATA\Test_log.ldf' , SIZE = 1024KB , FILEGROWTH = 10%)
GO

I dropped the database and added the SQLServerAccount user account to "Perform volume maintenance tasks" policy. it is located under Administrative tasks -> Local security settings -> User right assignment. After restarting the SQL Server service, I ran the script again. Now SQL Server avoids zero initialization. It took only 1 second to create the database. This is a just a database with 200MB, so, think about a database with 10GB, or think about a restore process of 10GB database. Hope you can see the advantage.

This is not enabled by default because of security reason. Enabling this allows SQL Server administrator to see the recently deleted files that are not supposed to be seen by the SQL Server administrator.

This feature only available with SQL Server 2005 and it needs to be run with Windows 2003, XP or later. If the service account is already the local administrator, you already have the advantage. Note that this is not applicable to the log file.

Since the 20th is a Poyaday that is a mercantile holiday in Sri Lanka, we decided to have SS SLUG meeting on 21st, Thursday. Fiqri, ASP.NET MVP is going to join with us this time, showing his knowledge on SQL Server mobile edition. I am sure that Fiqri is going to deliver very valuable info for us because we have not discussed this topic before.

Gogula will be doing a session too; "Inmon vs. Kimbal - The great debate". This is a very interesting topic, and I am sure that people involve with BI know about this debate. Let's see what he is going to deliver us.

And I will be doing a session too; I will be showing another greatest redgate tool, SQL Multi Script.

Hope we have added enough things to the meeting. As usual, we have arranged few things for give-away items, including T-shirts, USB drives, Mugs, Pens. Come and join with us. Listen and grab both knowledge and prizes.

For more info, visit SQL Server Universe .Com

Another note of mine talks about "Schema Comparison with Data Dude" has been published at www.sql-server-performance.com. This shows the way of doing the schema comparison and how Data Dude addresses the changes.

Read it from here and let me know whether it is good enough for readers.

We, Sri Lankans celebrated 60th National Independence day today. It held on a grand scale at Gall Face, Colombo and all the media channels showed the program live. I am proud of being Sri Lankan because of the greatest history we have and wonders our ancestors had done.

Though we celebrate our independence like this, the LTTE terrorists are slowly sweeping it away from us. They keep on killing innocents and destroying the country. They targeted some innocents people today too, at Colombo Railway Station, killing 12 including two school children. When we can see the peace? When we can live happily? Will they let our children live happily in this country?

Two of my articles have been published; one at http://sql-server-performance.com and http://sqlserveruniverse.com.

Test Data Generation with Data Dude
This article explains the usage of Data Dude for test data generation. It is published at http://sqlserveruniverse.com.

SSIS: Usage of Checkpoint File
I wrote this few months back and it was in the queue. I made this note based on the experience I had when checkpoint files are used with SSIS.

Read both and see whether they are useful.

My MVP title has been renewed, for the third year. I believe that I have done a fair community service last two years and thanks for Microsoft for evaluating and awarding me the title again.

Two new MVPs have been introduced but I expected the count as three. Hope that third one is being reviewed by Microsoft. Two new MVPs are, Gogula Aryalingam and Joy Pradeep. Congratulation guys!

Another year started with full of hopes and plans. I just went through the checklist of plans I had for year 2007 and found, wow, I have achieved almost all plans.

Now it is time to list out plans for the new year, 2008. I am thinking of launching a new thing; it has already been started and is being accelerated, which is one of my major plans. Hope future has stored good things for me.

SQL Server Sri Lanka User Group meeting is happening today (19th) and yes, it is the last meeting for this year. Gogula will be doing a session regarding SQL Server 2005 Service Broker that we really wanted cover with previous meetings and Dinesh Asanka will be doing a session about one of the red-gate products; SQL Data Compare.

We decided to give out lots of prizes this time, including mugs, t-shirts, USB pen drives, so pay attention and grab them all. All these give-away items are sponsored by red-gate, Microsoft Sri Lanka, Virtusa-eCollege and SQL Server Universe.Com.

I published a new article regarding log shipping with SQL Server 2005. I have added details as much as possible and the way of implementation.



Read and see whether it is worthwhile.

I have uploaded the presentation I did at SS SLUG meeting. You can download the presentation from here.

Doing my presentation - part of the audience	Prize grabbers

The one Dinesh Asanka did will be uploading by Monday. See some pictures of the meeting here.