Tuesday, August 11, 2009

SQL 2008 R2 News

The first Community Technology Preview - what we used to call an alpha back in the good old days - of SQL Server 2008 R2 is now available on MSDN. General availability will follow shortly, apparently.

Michael Otey over at SQL Server Magazine has an interesting point of view on the version - to whit, he feels that it's too soon to be releasing a new version considering most businesses haven't even made the move to the "regular" SQL 2008 build. I don't have an opinion yet, as I haven't yet got my own hands on an install. The features that I saw demoed back in March looked impressive, but I'm still learning new tricks and features of last year's release.

One of the disappointments in this first CTP is that the much-heralded MDS features aren't present, according to the indefatigable Jamie Thomson. This is one of the most interesting additions to SQL Server in some years, and it'll be really interesting to see what Microsoft have to offer when it finally arrives.

Labels: , , , ,

Monday, August 10, 2009

Scripting data

Scripting database objects, or entire databases, has always been easy in SQL Server, but scripting the data to populate the database tables used to be a different matter. A number of third-party tools were and are available that do the job nicely, but all the most useful ones have to be paid for.

However, I discovered an option for scripting data INSERTs straight from the SQL Server 2008 Management Studio. It's a little hidden away, but it's there and it works beautifully.

Select a database in SSMS, right-click, and choose "Tasks/Generate Scripts..." from the context menu.

Under the "Choose Script Options" wizard page set "Script Data" as True, set the other options as appropriate, select the necessary objects...et voilà:


Good or what? It works on SQL 2005 dbs too. It's obviously not the answer to every problem, but it's a nice extra to have.

Labels:

Thursday, August 6, 2009

Practical Database Mirroring Walkthrough

There's an interesting step-by-step walkthrough of a failover scenario using SQL Server Database Mirroring on the Gaffer-Tape Engineering blog. It's not quite a transparent behind-the-scenes intervention-free example, but that real world aspect to the story is what makes it interesting; you can find the article here.

Labels: , , ,