SQL Server's Fascinating Stories

Rule "Reporting Services Catalog Database File Existence" failed error: ------------ Solution: Check for the existence of Reporting Services database files in the default location or the location where the database files are set to go. Delete the database files. Then the retry would solve the problem.

This is quite a prevalant scenario for any DBA that would use begin tran to update a column as per requirement. If there isn't an instruction to the Storage Engine to either commit the transaction or roll it back, it would lead to a situation that would swamp the transaction log file which would slow down the system that would access the database. If that is the case, one can check for open transactions through the below command dbcc opentran This would show the process id if any transaction is open. Then the details related to open transaction can be fetched from one of the below system objects. exec sp_who or select * from sys.sysprocesses A column called sqlhandle can be useful to know the query being executed by the process. If the results produced through any updates are favourable, its better commit as soon as possible and if not roll it back.

·          I have SQL Server 2005 log shipping setup with primary/secondary configuration.  I can confirm from the logs that log shipping is working without issue, however, reports generated from the monitor server show this message: Violation of PRIMARY KEY constraint 'PK__#log_shipping_mo__3ABBDC91'. Cannot insert duplicate key in object 'dbo.#log_shipping_monitor'.  The statement has been terminated. There is nothing special about the configuration.  Any ideas? ·          I think the problem you are seeing is related to some old information being present in the tables used to store log shipping configuration.  There are some scenarios where this can happen and it causes the problem you reported in your first post.  We are working on correcting this in a future release.  As you can tell from the error, the problem is caused by an insert to a temp table causing a PK constraint violation.  The PK for the temp table is server name and database name.  This error is normal

Knowing the SPID of the current session we are using. select @@SPID To know the database name from the dbid select DB_Name (DBID) and viceversa, select db_ID (DBname) We can get the query being executed on any session using the below query. DECLARE @Handle varbinary(64); SELECT @Handle = sql_handle FROM sys.sysprocesses WHERE spid = 62; SELECT text FROM ::fn_get_sql(@Handle)

I recently had a quaint thinking, as to how to know the hostname of a machine given its IP. Its easy. Just give the following in command prompt. C:\> nbtstat -A xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx where xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx represents an IP address.

This is usually an error that is encountered while querying a remote database on a different server instance which says OLEDB provider "SQLNCLI" for linked server "ABCD" returned message "Deffered prepare could not be completed" Msg 8180, Level 16, State 1, Line 1 Statement(s) could not be prepared. This is the way I could rectify, though this is not the lone mistake that gives this error every time. Just set the default to the database that is being querying to the user through which the Linked server is connecting to the database.

Buffer Management of SQL Server: SQL Server uses buffer pages for any changes or requests for the data on the database. These buffer pages are 8KB pages on RAM that minimizes disc Input/Output. Any 8KB page can be buffered in memory, and set of all pages currently buffered is called as buffer cache. The amount of memory available to SQL Servers decides how many pages will be cached in memory. The buffer cache is managed by Buffer Manager. Either reading from or Writing to any page on the disc happens at two levels. The data that should be either read/Written is first copied to the buffer cache and the read/write operation is carried out on the data that is currently on the Buffer Cache. The edited data is updated on the disc by the buffer manager only if the in-memory cache has not been referenced for some time. While writing pages back to the disc, asynchronous I/O is used whereby the I/O operation is done in a background thread so that other operations do not have to wait for the I/

Hi People, check out this link. It discusses about searching the error log from the query editor which allows us to be more flexible in spotting out the exact error we need. http://www.mssqltips.com/tip.asp?tip=1476

The following query can be used to drop the locks on Database objects. It should be used carefully as the false killing of the processes would lead to disastrous issues which would come as chain of issues. Create Table #Tmp ( spid smallint, ecid smallint, status nchar(30), loginame nchar(128), hostname nchar(128), blk char(5), dbname nchar(128), cmd nchar(16) ) Create Table #TmpLocks ( spid smallint, dbid smallint, ObjId int, IndId smallint, Type nchar(4), Resource nchar(16), Mode nvarchar(8), Status nvarchar(28) ) Insert Into #Tmp Exec sp_who Insert Into #TmpLocks Exec sp_lock If(Select Count(*) From #Tmp T Join #TmpLocks TL On T.spid = TL.spid Where /*This is for tempdb*/ dbid = 2 And objid In (1, 2, 3)) > 0 Then you can kill the concerned spid with the command : Kill — The concerned spid Drop Table #Tmp Drop Table #TmpLocks

Its often to have issues on transaction log getting full with an error: The Transaction Log for the database ABC is full. To find out why space in the log cannot be reused, see the log_reuse_wait_desc column in the SYS.DATABASES System catalog view. If we execute the following query in the query editor, select log_reuse_wait_desc from sys.databases where name = 'ABC'; we get one of the follwing possibilities: Reuse of transaction log space is currently waiting on one of the following: 0 = Nothing Currently there are one or more reusable virtual log files. 1 = Checkpoint No checkpoint has occurred since the last log truncation, or the head of the log has not yet moved beyond a virtual log file (all recovery models). 2 = Log backup A log backup is required to move the head of the log forward (full or bulk-logged recovery models only). Note: Log Backup do not prevent truncation 3 = Active backup or restore data backup or a restore is in progress (all recovery

Methods of Data Pull from Excel to Database Tables: There are several methods that can be used to pull the data from an excel sheet into a database table. Using SQL Server's Import and Export wizard that lets us choose the excel file from which the data to be pulled. Each sheet of the excel file can be distinguished from the sheet name during the mapping step in the wizard. A sheet, for example sheet 1 is referred as Sheet1$ and so is Sheet2$ and so on. Creating an SSIS package, that lets us choose the data source to be an excel file and the data destination that would be a database table through a OLE DB Connection properly set up. Another way would be using a linked server. Here, select the OLE DB provider to be Microsoft Jet 4.0 OLE DB Provider. Select the Product Name as Excel, Data source is the full path of the Excel file and the provider string is Excel 8.0. This configuration is as mentioned in the below picture.  And later, click OK, which will complete the configur

The following query is used to get the SQL Server Uptime. Implicitly defines the SQL Server Services uptime. USE [master] GO /****** Object:  StoredProcedure [dbo].[GetSQLUptime]******/ SET ANSI_NULLS ON GO SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON GO CREATE PROCEDURE [dbo].[GetSQLUptime] AS BEGIN Declare @theMinutes int Set @theMinutes = (SELECT TOP 1 DATEDIFF(mi,login_time, GETDATE()) AS TotalUpTimeInMinutes FROM sys.sysprocesses ORDER BY login_time) Select @@SERVERNAME AS ServerName, convert(varchar(15), @theMinutes / 1440 ) + ' Days, ' + REPLICATE('0', 2 - DATALENGTH(convert(varchar(2), (@theMinutes % 1440) / 60 ))) + convert(varchar(2), (@theMinutes % 1440) / 60 ) + ' Hours, ' + REPLICATE('0', 2 - DATALENGTH(convert(varchar(2), (@theMinutes % 60)))) + convert(varchar(2), (@theMinutes % 60)) + ' Minutes' AS SQLUptime_Days_Hours_Minutes END GO