Cristian's Blog

Well, it's not really a screencast, it's a "replay" of the presentation from the last user group meeting.

Thanks Narcis for the hardware.

Windows Media Video archive: Download

Format: wmv
Duration: 00:12:47

It started with this question: Let's suppose that I want override the QUERY_GOVERNOR_COST_LIMIT value for an user that connects to the server. How can I do that?

I want to customize the value per user so I won't use sp_cofigure and query governor cost limit option, as it would configure the cost limit at the instance level.

I thought that I might try to do it in a logon trigger.

So what would be the value for the QUERY_GOVERNOR_COST_LIMIT option if I connect after running this code:

USE master;
GO
CREATE TRIGGER test_logon_trigger
ON ALL SERVER
FOR LOGON
AS
BEGIN
SET QUERY_GOVERNOR_COST_LIMIT 5;
END;

Hint: SET (Transact-SQL) [quote]... If a SET statement is run in a stored procedure or trigger, the value of the SET option is ...[/quote]

Another Hint: The default value is 0.

After 7 months of confusion between DMF (Dynamic Management Functions) and DMF (Declarative Management Framework), a new name makes the new feature of SQL Server 2008 very clear as purpose: Microsoft ® SQL Server ®  2008 Policy-Based Management

Read more about it on Dan Jones blog: Declarative Management is Out!

It was a hard year for me but I want to mention in retrospect just the good part:

• Our group grew more than we expected and we hope that this is just the beginning.
• We have a basketball team and though we lost every single game Pierre de Coubertin said that “the most important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win but to take part, just as the most important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle. The essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well”. And we fought well.Then we tried streetball not as ROSQL (just 4 from the team). We had the name “White Men” from the “White men can’t jump” movie. We were surprised to win 2 games from 3 and to qualify for the next round in which we lost because I missed a free shot.
• As a SQL Server group we had several meetings this year, a hands-on lab and reached 3000 posts on the forum.
• This year I was glad to see new people answering on the forum,  leaving me more time to concentrate in organizing meetings and writing.
• I have a list of most valuable forum contributors:
• Remus Rusanu
• Bogdan Crivat
• Gheorghe Ciubuc
• Razvan Socol
• Diana Moldovan
• Catalin Petrisor
• Bogdan Sahlean
• Catalin Gheorghiu
• Marcel Soare
• And also a list of people that helped me and the forum, most of them from Microsoft:
• Microsoft Romania:
• Zoli Herczeg
• Sebastian Vijeu
• Bogdan Musat
• Ioan Nicut
• Petru Jucovschi
• Gabriel Nicolaescu
• Loredana Calin
• Elisabeta Ionita
• Todi Pruteanu
• Marian Brostean
• Tudor Galos
• Avi Rodica Guta
• Vitalie Ciobanu
• Microsoft Redmond:
• Remus Rusanu
• Bogdan Crivat
• Laurentiu Cristofor
• Jerome Halmans
• Boris Baryshnikov
• Edward Melomed
• Steven Hemingray
• Raul Garcia
• Gopal Ashok
• Non-Microsoft:
• Ionut Boldizsar (Provision)
• Georget Barbu (Provision)
• Rafal Lukawiecki
• Bob Beauchemin
• Robert Ioan
• Iulian Vasilovici
• Adi Stoian
• Last but not least I want to mention Narcis Ditiu that was always behind the forum, behind the camera and made things happen. Here's a picture with me, Rafal and Narcis, this time in front of the camera: 

• I will end by sharing with you my Christmas present from Microsoft (thanks Lore):
• 

The spirit of Christmas is everywhere. Last meeting of ROSQL this year. I wanted bring some joy into this meeting.

I started asking Remus to speak about Service Broker. He said YES!

Next at Microsoft Romania Eli, Lore, Sebi, Ioan, Zoli and Petru took care that I have some gifts for my MVPs (most valuable posters (contributors)).
I hope that books on LINQ, Security, BI, Query Optimization and Certification will really help you guys. Thanks to Ame that helped me delivering the goods.

The next step was to prepare my presentation on Resource Governor. That was the hardest part. I borrowed the demo from Torsten Grabs from one of the most informative webcast I've seen TechNet Webcast: Data Warehousing Enhancements in Microsoft SQL Server 2008 (Level 200) but the Demo did not work. For some reason the cumulative CPU percents for two separate workloads was somewhere around 140%. That was a problem. Somehow I expected this, as Torsten's demo failed too.
Different approach: as an affiliate to a Microsoft Partner company I was able to see a demo with Francois Ajenstat:
ALTER RESOURCE POOL pFast
WITH (MAX_CPU_PERCENT=80);
ALTER RESOURCE POOL pSlow
WITH (MAX_CPU_PERCENT=20);
The last source available and the most comprehensive one was the ITForum session DAT202 Introducing SQL Server 2008 Resource Governor of Boris Baryshnikov. I knew Boris from some mail exchanges in 2005 after a webcast on performance monitoring using Dynamic Management Views and Functions. So I emailed Boris again. A long conversation started and the visible results were my today's demo and Boris post: Part 1: Anatomy of SQL Server 2008 Resource Governor CPU Demo. Thanks Boris.
Finally my demo worked, and to make things funny I too the example of Jeffrey Snover and made my powerpoint full of Merlin's animations. At least the audience laughed!

Remus had a great presentation:

And at the end everyone seemed to be happy:

Here's the Christmas card for all our members signed by Zoli and Petru:

Zoli also wrote a blog entry here.

I mentioned in previous blog posts the Visual Studio 2008 Training Kit and the SQL Server 2008 CTP5. Now you can download virtual machines to test them: 

- Visual Studio 2008 Rhythm Training Virtual PC (Vista) (EXPIRES ON 16 DECEMBER 2007)

- Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Community Technology Preview (November 2007) VHD

Additional resources:

- Visual Studio 2008 Training Kit

- Visual Studio 2008 Training Workshop Recordings:

• VS2008 Training Kit: Integrating Windows CardSpace
• VS2008 Training Kit: Building Microsoft Windows Workflow Foundation Enabled Windows Communication Foundation Services in .NET Framework 3.5
• VS2008 Training Kit: Web Programming with WCF
• VS2008 Training Kit: Connected Application Foundations using WCF, WF, and Windows CardSpace
• VS2008 Training Kit: Building Windows Presentation Foundation Applications in Visual Studio 2008 and Expression Blend
• VS2008 Training Kit: What's New in Windows Presentation Foundation 3.5
• VS2008 Training Kit: Introduction to Silverlight
• VS2008 Training Kit: Building Web Applications with Visual Studio 2008
• VS2008 Training Kit: Introduction to ASP.NET AJAX
• VS2008 Training Kit: Introduction to the Microsoft Client Continuum
• VS2008 Training Kit: ADO Synchornization Services
• VS2008 Training Kit: .NET Framework 3.5 Enhancements
• VS2008 Training Kit: Using LINQ with Relational Data
• VS2008 Training Kit: What's new in Visual Basic 9.0?
• VS2008 Training Kit: What's new in C# 3.0?
• VS2008 Training Kit: .NET Language Integrated Query (LINQ)
• VS2008 Training Kit: Lap around Visual Studio 2008 & .NET Framework 3.5

Everyone knows Rafal as one of the best technical speakers. What is not so obvious to most of the people is that Rafal is also a very nice person. I had the pleasure to talk to him and I can tell you that I was very impressed. I think I can talk to Rafal several years and still be excited.

The purpose of Rafal visit was a Data Mining tour so naturally we took an interview with him about Data Mining. In the interview we mention Rafal's presentation "Building More Intelligent Applications with Data Mining". You can view this presentation on the TechNet Spotlight site: Developing More Intelligent Applications with Data Mining

Format: wmv
Duration: 0:07:17