Operating Systems

The Machine SID Duplication Myth is an article on the Microsoft Technet blog by Mark Russinovich. It goes through an in depth explanation of what SID’s are used for, and notes that Sysinternals has officially retired the NewSID utility as of Nov 03, 2009. This is of particular interest to anyone who created desktops and laptops via saved images as NewSID was a staple utility after the machine was imaged to ensure it did not conflict with other machines on the network.

Michael Larabel published some CentOS 5.4 vs. OpenSuSE 11.2 vs. Ubuntu 9.10 Benchmarks on the Phoronix site. I was suprised to see that CentOS beat the others on the majority of tests run, at least in part due to issues with the ext4 filesystem that both SuSE and Ubuntu use as their defaults.

Over at the Computerworld blog, Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols writes about 5 Reasons why Ubuntu 9.10 is better than Windows 7. I agree with most of what he says, but generally Linux is still not an easy conversion for a die hard Windows user. It sure did spark a huge amount of debate in the commentary.

Mandriva Linux 2010 is out. Check out the release information and feature set at the Mandriva blog site. I’ll have a closer look at this if I ever get the time.

Hardware

In the world of hard drives the trend has always been to bump up the amount of bits the drive can hold to combat the constant increase in data size. Another way of dealing with this could be deduplication of data which should reduce the amount of storage required for the same information. Could a hard drive dedupe data has more on this subject.

Security

Ryan Paul writes HTTPS, SSL attack vector discovered; fix is on the way. This vulnerability was discovered by Marsh Ray and Steve Dispensa from security company PhoneFactor but not publicized pending a fix. There is a temporary workaround from the OpenSSL team, hopefully it’ll be resolved quickly.

Not long after Windows 7 was released, John Leydon at The Register writes that Naked Win 7 still vulnerable to most viruses. He’s reporting on testing done by the Sophos security firm which showed that 7 out of 10 of the malware tested still managed to run in the default configuration. So even if you upgraded to Windows 7 you still need to run that anti virus.

Even Linux is not safe from security threats (nothing ever is IMHO). Bug in latest Linux gives untrusted users root access by Dan Goodin gives you the details. Patches for RedHat linux are already out, keep your system up to date to make sure you get the patch as soon as it’s available.

Virtualization

Red Hat takes on VMware with server virtualization solution by Ryan Paul discusses RedHat’s newest foray into the virtualization market with their solution called Enterprise Virtualization for Servers. This solution uses RedHat’s recently acquired KVM and is prominent in the recent RedHat Enterprise Linux 5.4 release.

So as not to be left out, Cisco, EMC, and VMware join hands and plunge into cloud with their new joint venture called Acadia. You can also read more about this in Cisco, EMC, VMware & Intel Form Acadia.

In the “I totally called it” department

I mentioned in a recent version of this blog that Microsoft was backing a Family Guy episode. I said at the time that I did not see how they could funny it up, apparently Microsoft could not see it either. Joe Fay gives us the skinny in Microsoft drops Family Guy like a hot deaf guy joke. Apparently the humour was not in keeping with the clean, family friendly image that Microsoft wants to convey. Seriously? I suggest someone at Microsoft watch any of the Seth McFarlane shows before signing on with him. I am guessing it was not a matter of foul language however, expletives are an occupational hazard when using Windows.

Til next time, keep your cache full and your swap empty.
Brad

Some of the question couldn’t be answered during the meeting so I’ve followed up on them and I’m posting the answers here since they may be of interest for many others.

Q: Is there a separate background process for writing flashback logs?

A: Yes. RVWR (Recovery Writer, a.k.a Flashback Writer) was introduced in Oracle 10g to write flashback data from the Flashback Buffer in the SGA to the flashback database logs on disk.

Q: Do I need to shutdown and mount the database to turn flashback on?

A: NO! This is a very common misconception. ALTER DATABASE FLASHBACK ON is an online operation.

To turn flashback on, all Oracle needs to do is to start saving the before-images of the database blocks before they are changed. This guarantees that the database can be flashbacked to the exact point-in-time when the flashback mode was turned on.

Q: What happens if RVWR cannot write to disk?

A: It depends on the context where the write error occurs:

• If there’s a Guaranteed Restore Point, the database crashes to ensure the restore point guarantee is not voided.
• If there isn’t a Guaranteed Restore Point and it’s a primary database, the Flashback Mode will be automatically turned off for the database, which will continued to operate normally.
• If there isn’t a Guaranteed Restore Point and it’s a standby database, the database will hang until the cause of the write failure is fixed.

Q: Is it possible to specify the size of the Flashback Buffer in the SGA?

A: Yes, but indirectly. The size of the Flashback Buffer is set to 2 * LOG_BUFFER.
For performance reasons, it’s recommended to set LOG_BUFFER to at least 8MB for
large databases running in Flashback Mode.

Q: Can RMAN be used to backup flashback logs?

A: No. Flashback Logs are not backed up. Even if the command BACKUP RECOVERY AREA is used to backup the contents of the FRA to tape only the following file types are backed up: full and incremental backup sets, control file autobackups, datafile copies, and archived redo logs.

Flashback Logs are considered to be transient files and cannot be backed up by RMAN. They are not needed for media recovery.

Q: When are the flashback logs deleted?

A: Flashback logs are managed by Oracle only. Oracle will try to keep as much Flashback logs as needed to satisfy the DB_FLASHBACK_RETENTION_TARGET parameter. However, if there’s space pressure in the Flash Recovery Area (FRA), flashback logs may be deleted to make room for other things, like backups and archived logs, for example.

• If the fast recovery area has enough space, then a flashback log is created whenever necessary to satisfy the flashback retention target.
• If a flashback log is old enough that it is no longer needed to satisfy the flashback retention target, then a flashback log is reused.
• If the database must create a new flashback log and the fast recovery area is full or there is no disk space, then the oldest flashback log is reused instead.
• If the fast recovery area is full, then an archived redo log that is reclaimable according to the FRA rules may be automatically deleted by the fast recovery area to make space for other files. In this case, any flashback logs that would require the use of that redo log file for the use of FLASHBACK DATABASE are also deleted.
• No file in the fast recovery area is eligible for deletion if it is required to satisfy a guaranteed restore point. Thus, retention of flashback logs and other files required to satisfy the guaranteed restore point, in addition to files required to satisfy the backup retention policy, can cause the fast recovery area to fill completely.

Other than that flashback logs are deleted according to the below:

• When flashback mode is turned off all flashback logs are deleted ONLY if there’s no guaranteed restore points. If there’s at least one guaranteed restore point, no flashback logs are deleted.
• When the oldest guaranteed restore point is deleted and flashback mode is off, all flashback logs older than the second oldest guaranteed restore point are deleted. If flashback mode is on for the database OR the guaranteed restore point is not the oldest no flashback logs are deleted.

Q: How to list restore points in RMAN?

A: You can use either the RC_RESTORE_POINT view in the recovery catalog or the command
LIST RESTORE POINT [ALL|restore_point_name] in RMAN.

Q: After flashback’ing to a point-in-time before a RESETLOGS operation is it possible to flash forward to the incarnation after the RESETLOGS?

A: Yes, it’s perfectly possible.

Q: Can you see the progress of a FLASHBACK DATABASE operation?

A: Yes, you can. During a FLASHBACK DATABASE operation you can query V$SESSION_LONGOPS from another session to see the progress of the flashback.

The FLASHBACK DATABASE operation has two distinct phases: the actual flashback and the media recovery that happens afterwards to bring the database to a consistent state.

While the actual flashback is running you’ll see the following message in V$SESSION_LONGOPS:

Flashback Database: Flashback Data Applied : 238 out of 282 Megabytes done

During the media recovery, the following messages will be seen:

Media Recovery: Redo Applied : 263 out of 0 Megabytes done
Media Recovery: Average Apply Rate : 1164 out of 0 KB/sec done
Media Recovery: Last Applied Redo : 626540 out of 0 SCN+Time done
Media Recovery: Elapsed Time : 232 out of 0 Seconds done
Media Recovery: Active Time : 116 out of 0 Seconds done
Media Recovery: Active Apply Rate : 1859 out of 0 KB/sec done
Media Recovery: Maximum Apply Rate : 1859 out of 0 KB/sec done
Media Recovery: Log Files : 15 out of 0 Files done
Media Recovery: Apply Time per Log : 7 out of 0 Seconds done

Q: How should I set the database to improve Flashback performance?

A: Oracle’s recommendations are:

• Use a fast file system for your flash recovery area, preferably without operating system file caching. It is recommended to use a file system that avoids operating system file caching, such as ASM.
• Configure enough disk spindles for the file system that will hold the flash recovery area. For large production databases, multiple disk spindles may be needed to support the required disk throughput for the database to write the flashback logs effectively.
• If the storage system used to hold the flash recovery area does not have non-volatile RAM, try to configure the file system on top of striped storage volumes, with a relatively small stripe size such as 128K. This will allow each write to the flashback logs to be spread across multiple spindles, improving performance
• For large, production databases, set the init.ora parameter LOG_BUFFER to be at least 8MB. This makes sure the database allocates maximum memory (typically 16MB) for writing flashback database logs.

Recently (and much to my embarrassment after making that statement), a colleague demonstrated that this is not correct. DTSRun.exe can be found on SQL Server 2005 64-bit installations (although it might not be supported by Microsoft).

Upon investigating and testing on my own, I found that on the servers I checked, DTSrun.exe is located in: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SQL Server\80\Tools\Binn\.

I mocked up a simple DTS package that picks up a flat file, creates a table, and then imports the data into it with a transformation step. I saved it as a structured storage file, which I copied to the 64-bit server, generated a DTS Run line (F.Y.I. – DTSRunUI.exe is not located on these servers), then executed it from a command prompt on the 64-bit server. And it worked!

SSIS is a good platform with many noticeable improvements over DTS (also some new quirks), but if you need a workaround or just can’t justify a complete re-write of your DTS packages to your manager, this may be an option for you.

I tested some simple commands, (not the entire functionality) so I strongly recommend you test your packages before relying on this in a production environment.

Please note that DTSRun.exe is not included in SQL Server 2008 installations.

MySQL

Brian “Krow” Aker has something to say about Drizzle, InfiniDB, and column-oriented storage: “I have been asked a number of times ‘do you think there is a need for a column oriented database in the open source world?’ The answer has been yes!  . . .  I was very happy to see Calpont do their release of Infinidb last week.”

Vadim of the MySQL Performance Blog said, “As Calpont announced availability of InfiniDB I surely couldn’t miss a chance to compare it with previously tested databases in the same environment.” And he didn’t, as shows his post Air traffic queries in InfiniDB: early alpha. Bob Dempsey and Jim Tommaney of InfiniDB are in on the discussion.

Back to Drizzle for a moment, and Jay Pipes’ item, The Great Escape. “This week, I am working on putting together test cases which validate the Drizzle transaction log’s handling of BLOB columns.  . . .  I ran into an interesting set of problems and am wondering how to go about handling them. Perhaps the LazyWeb will have some solutions.  . . .  The problem, in short, is inconsistency in the way that the NUL character is escaped (or not escaped) in both the MySQL/Drizzle protocol and the MySQL/Drizzle client tools.”

Baron Schwartz has been catching erroneous queries, without MySQL proxy, having been inspired by Chris Calender’s post, Capturing Erroneous Queries with MySQL Proxy.

Nick Goodman promises instant relief from slow MySQL reporting queries using dynamoDB. And no gooey applicator!

Robert Hodges of the Scale-Out Blog looks at replicating from MySQL to Drizzle and beyond. “I am . . . delighted that Marcus Erikkson has published a patch to Tungsten that allows replication from MySQL to Drizzle. He’s also working on implementing Drizzle-to-Drizzle support, which will be very exciting.  . . .  This brings up a question–what about replicating from MySQL to PostgreSQL? What about other databases?”

And back to xaprb, where Baron confesses, I’m a Postgres user, as it turns out.

PostgreSQL

Bruce Momjian has published a new security talk, Securing PostgreSQL From External Attack.

Andrew Dunstan delves into recursion in Recursion, n. See recursion. “Never,” he says, “underestimate the usefulness of silly demos (this is written for a talk next week) to teach things worth knowing.”

Bernd Helmle shares a walk-through of cloning Slony nodes. “The new stable branch 2.0 of Slony-I is out for a while now. Time to blog about one of my favorite new features there, cloning an existing node without doing an initial SUBSCRIBE command.”

SQL Server

It was PASS Summit this week. On Home of the Scary DBA, Grant Fritchey covers the event with several good posts, including PASS Summit 2009 Key Note 3. (Grant is also Geek of the Week! Congratulations, Grant! I guess. Quote: “I think most DBA’s have adminhood thrust upon them. I think the ‘accidental’ DBA is the most prevalent path into becoming a DBA. I became a full time Admin by opening my mouth once too often.”)

Aaron Bertrand also has his summary Blogging from the PASS Keynote: 2009-11-03. (Grant and Aaron both have to specify which keynote they mean, because there’s more than one keynote. This, I guess, is “keynote redundancy”, but I still think PASS needs to normalize.)

Greg Low announces the launch at the PASS Summit of a new book, SQL Server MVP Deep Dives. “This is no ordinary book,” he writes. “Paul Nielsen took up Steve Ballmer’s challenge at a recent MVP summit to do something notable to give back to the community. He organised a large group of SQL Server MVPs to create a unique book and worked with Manning to get it published. The money made on the book was to go directly to a charity and the charity chosen was WarChild.”

Ben Nevarez asks, Are You Using Scalable Shared Databases? “Did you know that you can share read-only databases between several instances of SQL Server?  . . .  Scalable Shared Databases is a very interesting SQL Server feature that many of us seem to almost have forgotten about . . . ”

Here’s Roman Rehak reporting an issue with restoring 2000 backups on 2008. He writes, “Recently we’ve been experiencing a lot of headaches with SQL Server 2008 crashing while restoring a backup taken on a SQL Server 2000 production server. The crash resulted in a stack dump but SQL Server would continue running, although less stable, and sooner or later needed a reboot.”

Meanwhile, Adam Machanic reports on SQL Server 2008: lock escalation, INSERTs, and a potential bug. Adam says, “Lock escalation is a funny thing. I’ve found myself on numerous occasions waging war against its concurrency-sapping existence, and rarely have I found myself wishing that it would work more aggressively. But there is a time and place for everything, and yesterday I discovered that a major change has occurred with regard to lock escalation in SQL Server 2008.”

Oracle

Mohammed Mawla on the Pythian Blog bridges the gap with his item on running the same query against multiple SQL Server AND Oracle instances.

Surachart Opun shares his HOWTO on using DUPLICATE without a connection to target database: “ . . . that’s a 11gR2 Feature. DUPLICATE can be performed without connecting to a target database. This requires connecting to a catalog and auxiliary database.”

Here’s another HOWTO, this one from the great grandson of Husnu Sensoy: How to Install Oracle 11g Release 2 on OEL 5.4 on VirtualBox: Installing Grid Infrastructure. He begins, “In Oracle 11g Release 2 you will find that things have changed even for single instance database installation. I will try to illustrate in this series of posts how to install a single instance Oracle 11g Release 2 database to your Linux machines.”

But let’s step back a bit. Ronny Egners says, Oracle on linux – yes of course – but what linux?. “There is a discussion from December 2008 what Linux (SLES vs. Red vHat vs. Oracle Enterprise Linux) to use for running oracle on Linux by Yann Neuhaus.  . . .  After nearly one year i wanted to catch up the article and check if the pros and cons are still valid or if there changed anything.”

Chen Shapira offers The Senile DBA Guide to Troubleshooting Sudden Growth in Redo Generation, which begins, “I just troubleshooted a server where the amounts of redo generated suddenly exploded to the point of running out of disk space.  . . .  The problem was found and the storage manager pacified, I decided to save the queries I used.  . . .  It was very embarrassing to discover that I actually have 4 similar but not identical scripts . . .  Now I have 5.”

Embarrassing, Chen! But do you have guilty feelings like Martin Widlake does? He makes a guilty confession. The sin? “I use the Buffer Cache Hit Ratio.”

Last, Tyler Muth introduces Logger, A PL/SQL Logging and Debugging Utility.

That is all for now. Please let’s hear your favourite database blogs in the comments. Until next time!

It is always recommended to have a 64-bit application running on a 64-bit OS to take full advantage of the 64-bit platform. IIS, by default, runs 64-bit on a 64-bit Windows Server system. SQL Server Reporting Services requires ASP.NET which can be manually installed on top of IIS.

When you install the .NET Framework on a 64-bit machine, you have both the 32- and 64-bit versions. Nonetheless, you will not be able to install ASP.NET 32-bit version on a 64-bit IIS, which will be needed by SQL Server Reporting Services.

To be able to install ASP.NET 32-bit on a 64-bit IIS, you need to configure IIS to run 32-bit web applications. With Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1, IIS can be enabled to run 32-bit applications on a 64-bit Windows using the Windows32-On-Windows64(WoW64) compatibility layer. This makes it possible to run ASP.NET 32-bit and other 32-bit web applications as well as allow creation of 32-bit worker processes.

To enable IIS 6.0 to run 32-bit web applications on a 64-bit Windows, navigate to the %windir%\Inetpub\AdminScripts directory. Run the adsutil.vbs script with the following parameters:

csript.exe adsutil.vbs set W3SVC/AppPools/Enable32BitAppOnWin64 "true"

This will enable IIS to run 32-bit web applications. You can then install SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services 32-bit which will install the corresponding ASP.NET version as part of the .NET Framework.

If, however, you already have the .NET Framework installed on the server, you will need to manually install ASP.NET 2.0 32-bit on IIS after it has been configured. Doing so before configuring IIS will throw an exception stating that you cannot run 32-bit ASP.NET on 64-bit IIS. Navigate to the %WINDIR%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727 folder (the 64-bit version of the .NET Framework will be at the %WINDIR%\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\ folder). Run the aspnet_regiis.exe utility on the command line.

aspnet_regiis -i

Now that all the groundwork has been prepared, you are ready to run SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services 32-bit on a Windows Server 2003 64-bit.

If, however, you decide to install it on a Windows Server 2008 64-bit, there’s more groundwork to do. By default, IIS 7 as well as ASP.NET are not installed. You have to add the web server role and further configure IIS. SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services is dependent on the IIS 6 or earlier metabase, and thus requires installation of the IIS 6 Metabase Compatibility and IIS 6 WMI Compatibility. Installing these two would also configure the IIS Default Application Pool to run on 32-bit similar to running the adsutil.vbs script for Windows Server 2003.

A Microsoft KB outlines the detailed steps in preparing IIS7 to run SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services on Windows Vista, but the steps work pretty well in Windows Server 2008. In case you still see the installation error on required 32-bit ASP.NET, you can switch the configuration of the Default Application Pool to Enable 32-bit applications. You don’t really need to do this once all the IIS 7 groundwork has been completed but, then again, you’ll never know. It might come in handy.

SQL Server 2005 has several DBA-job-saving options available to the would-be administrator. Think of a Database Backup as the technology to save data and Database and Availability as the technology to keep it online and available to it’s consumers.

A very brief introduction to SQL Server databases

Its important to have a few SQL Server database basics in order to understand the backup options. If you know what a recovery model is, and the difference between an .ldf and .mdf file, you can skip this section. If this is as good as a foreign language to you, read on.

Files

By default, every SQL Server database has two files: one data file (with the .mdf extension), and one transaction log file (with the .ldf extension). The data file (.mdf) holds your database objects (tables, views, etc) and the data. The transaction log file (.ldf) contains the transactions in your database. Depending on the recovery model selected, it may hold uncommitted transactions, or it may hold every transaction since the last truncation.

Wait – What’s a transaction?

According to Wikipedia, a transaction is defined as a unit of work performed against the database. If you have a particularly large database, someone may split your databases into several files, or even put them on different disks. This is often done to balance the disk activity, and it can be part of your backup strategy. A DBA might put tables that are infrequently or never changed into their own file database file.

Recovery Models

There are three recovery models to choose from: Simple, Full, and Bulk-Logged.

This is set per-database and it doesn’t affect options for the other databases on this server. The recovery model chosen affects some backup, availability, and redundancy options.

Simple
Basically, when Simple recovery is in use, the data from any committed transaction will be discarded after each checkpoint is issued. These transactions cannot be backed up or restored. The transaction log for these databases will be smaller.

Full
All transactions will be stored in the transaction log until the log is truncated or backed up. Please note that, contrary to popular belief, only transaction log backups and truncating the log remove entries from the log, full backups do not. More here.

This recovery model is required for certain backup and availability options. In order to avoid extremely large transaction logs and/or filling up the disk, you must schedule regular transaction log backups to use this recovery model.
The reason this recovery model is used is that it allows you to perform point-in-time restores (discussed more later).

Bulk-Logged
Very similar to Full recovery, except some operations are minimally logged. A list of details regarding which operations are minimally logged can be found here. This recovery model also allows point-in-time restores, but not to any point of a non logged operation.

Now that you’re up to speed on files, transactions, and recovery models . . . 

What are the backup options?

Full backups — These are exact copies of your database at the time they’re taken. They “stand alone” and can be restored back to your server, or onto other SQL Servers. The output of a full backup will be one file, but will include the transaction log and all data files for the database.

Differential backups — These are backups that include all of the changes since the last full backup that was taken. The result will be one backup file and will only hold the changed data. You will require the most recent full backup in order to restore the differential backup(s).

Transaction Log Backups — These are backups of all of the transactions in the exact order of occurrence, since the last full backup, OR the last transaction log backup. Transaction log backups require the database to be in “Full” recovery mode.

Backups can be set up, created, and scheduled via SSMS or scripted and run as code. If someone has added several files to a database or has invoked some of the high-availability options, there are additional options for consideration. This brings me to a couple special circumstance options.

Copy-Only backups

Introduced in SQL Server 2005 as an option and in SQL Server 2008 as an option in the GUI, copy-only backups do not affect the chain of backups. This is a great addition to the platform as it allows backups to be taken in special circumstances, merely for the purpose of duplication.

Partial Backups

Partial backups are new to SQL Server 2005, and are intended to be used on databases where the tables have been segmented into filegroups, and some of them set to read-only. In this situation, the partial backup would back up all changed data from the non-read-only filegroup.

This is a great feature for large data-warehouse type databases but won’t be used by everyone. The ideal candidate is someone who has a large data warehouse or a similar database where there is archive type date in the database.

This feature is not accessible from SSMS, which means you will need to write SQL to use it.

Differential Partial Backups

Only to be used with partial backups, all of the same prerequisite circumstances exist for partial backups, with the additional requirement that your must be using partial backups.

SQL Server Enterprise Edition brings a new option for compression of backups. Any edition of SQL Server 2008 can restore compressed backups, but only Enterprise Edition can create them. This option will reduce the size of your database backups.

How do I decide which backups to use, and when to use them?

Next post . . . 

I’m looking forward to attending the conference in Perth, not only because I’ll be presenting there but also because it’s my first time in Western Australia. All going well my presentation will be honed before the weekend and I’ll be arriving in Perth still this week, on Friday, to enjoy an extended weekend in Perth and Margareth River wine region with my wife before the conference begins.

SQL Server 2008 brought the ability to execute Statements Against Multiple Servers Simultaneously by simply creating a local server group or broadly using a Central Management Server and one or more server groups. Inside these groups there should be one or more registered servers.

There is also the commercial Red-Gate SQL Multi Script with an Unlimited edition license that allows you to run your code against any number of SQL server instances.

Before SQL Server 2008, there was no native support for running the same query against multiple instances using shipped tools, so it can be approached in one of these ways:

• Manually connecting to each instance to run the code; this is very time consuming.
• Using batch files to call OSQL or SQLCMD to loop against a defined set of servers; this involves a bit more work and control of the batch files.
• Using linked servers and loops inside a T-SQL query.
• Using DTS or SQL server Integration services.

I’ve used nearly all of them, but I have found that linked servers provide a higher degree of control on the target servers, error handling, and most important, the ability to use SQL server Encryption to store the credentials of source servers if some of the servers are using SQL authentication.

I’ve also managed to make this run against Oracle databases, but had to take the extra step of configuring configuring Oracles as linked servers as described in KB 280106.

The code has the following characteristics:

1. It uses encryption to store and retrieve credentials for Oracle and SQL server instances that use SQL authentication. There is a way to connect to Oracle using windows authentication but I didn’t test that.
2. The code uses an ASYMMETRIC KEY to encrypt the credentials.
3. It uses SQL cursors to retrieve list of servers against which I will run the code.
4. Use of TRY…CATCH for error handling.
5. Code against SQL server is run using Sp_executesql. The supplied code is liable for any restrictions imposed by Sp_executesql; I found very long queries in particular to be sometimes a problem.
6. Code run against Oracle instances are done through Openquery. I found that using direct Linked server name exposes some problems especially with metadata. The supplied code must be Oracle-compatible.

Remarks

• You need at least SQL server 2005 to use TRY..CATCH and Encryption.
• You need to format the source code to be syntax error-free, especially when it contains single quotes.
• When it comes to retrieving data only, Openrowset looks like a fast alternative to creating then dropping a linked server. OpenRowset is a fast way to access remote data on the fly using an OLE DB data source.
• I’ve not used the code much against Oracle—just simple tasks, but it worked for me.
• The code can be used against any datasource (DB2, MySQL, etc.) that can be accessed using Linked servers.

Here is the code. sql-oracle.sql.txt I welcome your feedback and additions.

Operating Systems

Ubuntu 9.10 is released. Anyone who reads my blogs knows by now that I am a Kubuntu user and I think that it’s the best desktop Linux available right now. They’ve put a lot of work into this one and it’s the best version of Ubuntu yet, easy to install and use with all the features you could ask for. Ryan Paul at Ars Technica has his own review called Ubuntu 9.10 brings web sync, faster bootup, GNOME 2.28, check it out.

Here’s a short list of some types of Ubuntu you can get, and their niche.

• Ubuntu – The standard desktop featuring Gnome.
• Ubuntu Server Edition – Just how it sounds.
• Ubuntu Netbook Remix – A version of Ubuntu designed to work on your netbook.
• Kubuntu – The KDE desktop version of Ubuntu. With KDE it’s an easier conversion for Windows users in my opinion.
• Edubuntu – Edubuntu is an educational operating system that is designed for kids, parents, teachers and schools. I have not tried this one yet, but my 3.5 year old is ready for it.
• Mythbuntu – A replacement for Windows Media Center featuring MythTV. I use this for a PVR at home, easy install and great interface.
• XUbuntu – A version of Ubuntu using the xfce desktop, and designed for older or less powerful machines that have trouble with the Gnome or KDE desktops.

Windows 7 is still fresh in the minds of many. If you want an exhaustive review of all the pros and cons of Windows 7, how about trying to get through a 15 page review by Peter Bright. For the impatient, he sums it up at the end saying “…Windows 7 is, overall, a fantastic OS. It builds on a solid platform, and just makes it even better”. Read the full review in Hasta la Vista, baby: Ars reviews Windows 7.

PC Pro has an interesting article up called The Crapware Con. This article has some interesting information on what sort of extra software each of the major manufacturers are adding to your laptop, and what sort of effect this has on your performance. If you have an Acer, Sony or HP laptop they are apparently the worst offenders.

Security

Dan Goodin has an interesting article about a free Microsoft product that can identify and harden applications against common avenues of attack without even needing access to the source code itself. Read the scoop in Free Microsoft security tool locks down buggy apps.

Dan Goodin reports on a new Mozilla site that will check the plugins in your FireFox for old versions which may have security issues and allow you to update them easily. Mozilla service detects insecure Firefox plugins has the full story, and the plugin check page is here.

Software

Paul Lorimer, Group Manager for Microsoft Office Interoperability, writes in his blog that “In order to facilitate interoperability and enable customers and vendors to access the data in .pst files on a variety of platforms, we will be releasing documentation for the .pst file format”. This will open up the specifications for the pst file, used by MS Outlook to store email, making it easier for other software vendors to tap into the file format. See more in Roadmap for Outlook Personal Folders (.pst) Documentation.

Internet

The Internet celebrated its second 40th birthday on Thursday marking the date that the first word, “Lo”, was sent between 2 machines at UCLA on October 29, 1969. Get more of the story in Internet pops champagne on (second) 40th birthday. On an unrelated note, this happened 40 years after the 1929 stock market crash.

Hardware

Neil Mcallister at InfoWorld has an interesting article on the rise of the ARM processor as a competitor to the Intel’s Atom for mobile devices. Read on in ARM vs. Atom: The battle for the next digital frontier.

Computerworld has an article about the recent Intel release and recall of it’s SSD firmware update due to issues with data corruption. Intel pulls firmware for SSDs just a day after release has more details. Ars Technica also covered the story in Intel’s SSD firmware brings speed boost, mass death (again).

That’s all we have time for this week folks. Be sure to tune in again next week. Same bat time. Same bat channel.

The MySQL Team

Being able to work side by side with two MySQL experts like Sheeri Cabral and Augusto Bott has been a great experience. I have learned a lot, not only about MySQL, but also about what a great DBA should be like. Both of them are recognized MySQL Community members and regular speakers at the MySQL Users Conference and other events. Sheeri has been named MySQL Community Member of the Year twice in a row. Both are a guarantee of excellent service.

My Predictions For Pythian

I believe that the IT services industry will undergo a change that is continuation of the the transformation that the IT industry as a whole has been going through over the last few years: commoditization.

Very few will argue at this point that hardware and software are commodities, especially when they support a company’s infrastructure. This trend has put MySQL in the position it has today in the database arena. In this scenario, managing the IT infrastructure, whether it’s running in The Cloud, a hosting company or internally, no longer adds value to the core business. As in any economic downturn, companies reconsider their overhead and look for solutions that are more flexible and cost-effective that their in-house services. This is when they start looking into outsourcing alternatives.

This time, however, is different—they have a designated fixed budget and very specific needs. The traditional consulting model doesn’t fit this scenario since it doesn’t have the required flexibility. This is where companies like Pythian come in.

Pythian’s business model and practices allows the clients to control their budgets while keeping a healthy infrastructure, and concentrating on the tasks that add real value to their business. Under the direction of Andrew Waitman, CEO, and Paul Vallée, Pythian’s founder, the company is in a an excellent position to satisfy the new market needs.

What’s Next

I will continue participating as actively as I can in the MySQL Community and continue with the development of sar-mysql. My blogs will move to a new home, but will be a continuation of the of the articles I have been writing here (without Dave Edwards cleaning up my English though); and they will also be syndicated in Planet MySQL. I will do my best to keep an eye on the articles I posted in the Pythian blog to keep answering any new comments that may be posted there. If you have the patience to deal with my non-technical tweets, feel free to follow me through Twitter: @seattlegaucho.

I will see you around!

P.S. to the MySQL DBAs in the wild: This might be a good opportunity to polish your résumé and submit it to Pythian. Who knows, you may end up working for a company on the rise, side-by-side with some of the best MySQL DBAs in the market.