Wednesday, April 7, 2010

SQL Server 2010 vs. SQL Server 2008 R2

Microsoft initially planned to call next version SQL Server 2010. As they were working on it, they focused only on some aspects of it and due to the fact that most components didn't have significant changes decided to call it R2.l

That was a fair decision. I see only one problem with it. It will have a significant impact on adoption rate of SQL Server 2008.

Unfortunately, most shops waited until 2008 was released to upgrade their 2000 servers to 2005. Their rational for not upgrading to 2008 was that Service Pack 1 was not yet available. If Microsoft named next release 2010 as initially planned, everybody would hurry to deploy 2008. Unfortunately, most non-technical decision makers will not even notice R2. They will simply continue running their shops on 2005.

SSIS not cluster aware

Unlike Database Engine and Analysis Services, Integration Services is not cluster aware. If you need to patch (upgrade) it, you will have to do it manually on every node.

Windows Cluster does not provide for SQL Server

  1. CPU scale out
  2. redundant storage
  3. load balancing

However:

  1. Wait for SQL Server 2008 R2. Microsoft is utilizing technology they bought - Datallegro
  2. set it on SAN
  3. Wait for SQL Server 2008 R2. Microsoft is utilizing technology they bought - Datallegro

Current date in SSIS expressions

How to make a file with current date in SSIS? You can build a file name using an expression builder in SSIS. There is a function GetDate() that returns current time (not date) in form of DB_Timestemp SSIS data type. You can extract just date if you cast it using (DT_DBDate) function. You will also need to convert it to string and add static parts of file name to it:

"c:\\backup\\file"
+ (DT_DBSTR 10, 1252)(DT_DBDate)GetDate() + ".txt"

XML Notepad

Better way to view/edit DtsConfig files: XML Notepad from Microsoft.