Pythian Group

Microsoft introduced Change Data Capture (CDC) technology in SQL Server 2008.  This technology captures DML (insert/update/delete) changes to a table.  After CDC is enabled for a database and a given table, one can use cdc.fn_cdc_get_all_changes_ function to query changes made to the table. cdc.fn_cdc_get_all_changes_ function returns all columns from the table, even when only one column was updated. It also returns __$update_mask column which is a bit mask that shows which columns were updated, but still – the whole row is returned. When calling this function with “all_update_old” option it returns two records for each update: one with “before update” values and one with “after update” values.  The challenge was to produce a “log” table with columns like this:

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I’m here at the PASS Community Summit 2010 in Seattle, WA. This happens to be the largest SQL Server conference in the world with regards to content, attendees and Microsoft participation. With the conference center very close to the Microsoft Redmond campus, Microsoft can afford to send as much as they can from the SQL Server team – from the development team, CSS team, SQLCAT as well as from their business platform group. There have been several announcements made in today’s keynote, few of which were just waiting to be blogged about from the insiders since earlier this year. First of which is the release of SQL Server 2008 R2 Parallel Data Warehouse. Formerly codenamed Project Madison, this was used to be DATAllegro, Inc. – a provider of breakthrough data warehouse applicances – before Microsoft bought them over back in 2008. SQL Server 2008 R2 Parallel Data Warehouse will be readily available in the market so that customers can take advantage of having a data warehouse appliance that runs the very familiar Microsoft SQL Server product.
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Welcome to Log Buffer, the weekly roundup of database industry news.

For your reading pleasure this week we have Log Buffer #196:

Charles Hooper blogs about an in-depth investigation on what can cause Oracle to ignore a hint.

Doug Burns reminds his readers that there are only two weeks left to submit papers for UKOUG. The deadline is Aug. 2.
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We’re well into summer and almost at our 200th edition of Log Buffer, a blog of blogs about the database world.

Remember if you find a link or interesting blog post that you think Log Buffer should mention, send a note to the editor at Log Buffer and be sure to include the link, and a short note outlining why you think that particular post would be of value to other DBAs, or what you learned from reading it.

Now on to our weekly reading in Log Buffer #194:
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Welcome to Log Buffer, the weekly roundup of DBA industry happenings.

Read on for the latest updates in Log Buffer #193. Don’t forget, we’re always looking for volunteer editors to publish and host an issue of Log Buffer. If you’d like this to be you, contact the Log Buffer coordinator.

ODTUG/Kaleidoscope 2010 roundup:

Sheeri Cabral has posted slides and a summary of the first ever MySQL track at ODTUG/Kaleidoscope, citing a successful event.

Tim Hall, on Oracle-Base blog gives a daily report on the event summarizing his take on day 1 & 2, 3, 4, and 5.
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It’s Friday, and summer’s here. While it seems the industry is slowing down to a lazy pace, there is still some action so let’s splash right in to this week’s edition of Log Buffer DBA industry news in Log Buffer #192.

Alex Gorbachev had a few minutes to suggest the following interesting tidbits to me before running off to attend Oracle ACE Director activities at ODTUG/Kaleidoscope this weekend. One of these days we’ll have to see if he can share some of what goes on behind closed doors at those hush hush sessions.
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Welcome to Log Buffer, the weekly roundup of database blogs.

Kicking off this week in Log Buffer #191 are posts from Alisher Yuldashev:

Randolf Geist blogs on an Advanced Oracle Troubleshooting Session – PGA/UGA memory fragmentation for when a batch process takes significantly longer than expected.

James Morle talks about an example of a misleading average in Log File Sync and AWR – Not Good Bedfellows.

And a few faves from Bradd Piontek:

Marco Gralike, on Blog.Gralike.Com, revisits Enabling and Disabling Database Options, a small item that is easily overlooked. Marco also notes a cool tool: VirtualBox Appliance which makes a great start-up test environment. Word of caution however, it’s for testing purposes only.

On Askdba.org, Amit advises on downloading Oracle software directly to server in a post based on Pythian’s downloading from OTN directly to your database server. Watch for future posts from Brad on how he does it via Firefox, and edelivery.oracle.com.

Alex Gorbachev is spreading the word about The Ultimate SQL Tune-off with Jonathan Lewis and Kyle Hailey, two of his most respected Oracle performance experts, believing the session should be interesting to all DBAs, not just Oracle.

Robert Catteral continues to recap session highlights from the International DB2 Users Group Conference last month in Nuggets from DB2 by the Bay, Part 3, following Parts 1 & 2.

Chen Shapira contributed Cloning Oracle Home from RAC to Stand-Alone.

On In Recovery, Paul Randal wrote the whitepaper Proven SQL Server Architectures for High Availability and Disaster Recovery he wrote for the Spring SQL Server release has been published.

Moving to MySQL world, Vadim Tkachenko continues storage benchmarking of MySQL FlashCache (very much like Oracle FlashCache but for MySQL InnoDB engine). This time he is using FusionIO cards for FlashCache.

And, to round things off, Ronald Bradford writes about When SET GLOBAL affects SESSION scope.

Have a great weekend everyone.

Welcome to Log Buffer, the weekly roundup of database blogs. We’re back this week with a short Log Buffer #190. Only ten more issues, and we’ll be celebrating our 200th edition post.

Chen Shapira was eager to share news early this week, sending along her favorite picks on Tuesday.

Prof. Neil Gunther doesn’t like the way commercial load testing software distributes think times.
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Welcome to Log Buffer, a weekly review of the database industry. This week’s issue Log Buffer #189 is generously published by Iggy Fernandez, editor of the quarterly journal of the Northern California Oracle User Group (NoCOUG).

As always, if you’d like to host your own issue of Log Buffer, simply reach out to the Log Buffer coordinator.

Please enjoy Iggy’s issue of Log Buffer #189.

It’s Friday already, and we know what that means! Log Buffer, the industry’s weekly review of database blogs is here again for your reading pleasure in the 188th issue.

Starting off this week’s issue is a request from Mark Grennan a DBA who would like to let the community know about his blog MySQL Fan Boy, where he wrote an interesting post on including a script to replace MySQL table files on a live system, making it faster and limiting locking on large table loads. Also a post this week on whether MariaDB is a drop in replacement for MySQL.

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