Microsoft Technologies

A blog for Microsoft Technologeis, Articles, Reviews,Best Practices, Upcoming Microsoft Technologies particulary related to Windows Server System and Azure and related Discussions. The purpose of this blog is to provide a resource to the quick information that Application Developers,Designer and Architects need on Microsoft's Technologies for developing and integrating these technologies. "T H E K N O W L E D G E W H I C H I S C O N C E A L E A D I S L O S T"

Friday, April 27, 2012

Getting started with Database Mirroring using SQL SERVER Management Studio

SQL SERVER provides a number of fail over techniques over the time. Database mirroring is one of the popular solution from all others (Log shipping, snapshot, replication). I am going to teach you simple steps to test and verify database mirroring through step by step screen shot technique. Major problem for most of DBA's is availability of proper hardware to install any technique prior to implement in production environment.

Database Mirroring

Database mirroring works with all the standard hardware that supports SQL Server 2008 and it ensures no data loss in the event of a database failure. The mirror database will always be updated with the current transaction that's being processed on the primary database server. figure below illustrates the flow of data.

If your principal server does go down, you can rest assured that the mirror server has an exact point-in-time copy of the principal database as of the last committed transaction. Thus, the mirror is always ready to take over the principal server role.

Operating Modes

The database mirroring topology you'll use will depend on the transaction safety and operating modes you've chosen. The operating modes that are supported by database mirroring include high-safety (with or without automatic failover) and high-performance.

High-Safety (with automatic failover) This mode supports maximum database availability with synchronous data transfer and automatic failover to the mirror database. This operating mode is best used when you have fast and very reliable communication between the principal and the mirror servers and you require automatic failover for a single database. In this scheme, the principal database waits to commit a transaction until it receives a message from the mirror server that the mirror server has hardened the transaction's log to the disk.

High-Safety (without automatic failover) This mode supports maximum database availability with synchronous data transfer but without automatic failover to the mirror database. In this mode, if the mirror server instance becomes unavailable, the principal server instance continues to function but will not be able to mirror the data. If the principal server goes down, database mirroring is suspended but you can manually force the service to fail over.

High-Performance In this operating mode, the transfer of data is asynchronous. The principal server does not wait for an acknowledgment from the mirror as it does in the above two modes. The mirror server does its best to keep up with the principal, but it is not guaranteed at any point that all the most recent transactions from the principal will be hardened in the mirror server's transaction log. If the principal server goes down, database mirroring is suspended but you can manually force the service to fail over.

Prerequisites

You need to remember some basic settings before setup this technique.

Setting up database mirroring is a simple process if you establish a strong foundation using best practices:

Principal and mirror servers are running on the same edition of SQL Server, You can use either the Standard or Enterprise edition.
If you are planning to use high-safety with automatic failover, then make sure that the witness server is available
Make sure that the mirror server instance has the identical jobs, logins, SQL Server Integration Service (SSIS) packages and Link servers.
If you are planning to configure database mirroring on same server then you need different endpoints and ports that must open through network and system security.
If you are planning to configure database mirroring on different server then you can set same port but again it must enable on all servers.
You can configure database mirror in automatic fail over (with Witness) or Manual fail over (without witness). for Auto fail over witness server needs SQL server installed on Witness machine but there is no restriction of Express, Standard or Enterprise edition.
You database Engine must be running with Domain Admin account on Network, otherwise you need to set it with your local account that has admin rights.

Previous Link

Failover techniques in SQL Server

Next Steps

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 11 Beta Power Tools

Power Tools are a set of enhancements, tools, and command-line utilities that increase productivity of Team Foundation Server scenarios.

http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/27832337-62ae-4b54-9b00-98bb4fb7041a

Learn Everything About SharePoint 2013!

Learn Everything About SharePoint 2013!
The SharePoint 2013 Beta series at USP Journal is a subscription series that aims to keep you updated on the latest news, updates, and information regarding the next version of Microsoft’s collaboration platform, currently called SharePoint 15

http://sharepoint2013beta.com/

What To Expect in SharePoint 15

A new version of the Microsoft collaboration and enterprise content management platform is in the works, and it will offer improved social networking, client and mobile UI enhancements, an app marketplace, and better cloud support. And that just scratches the surface.

http://redmondmag.com/articles/2012/04/01/whats-next-for-sharepoint.aspx

By Jeffrey Schwartz
04/04/2012

Ascendum Unveils Latest Innovation: New SharePoint On Demand(TM) Changes the Rules by Taking Away the Hassles but Not the Power of Industry-Leading Platform

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/ascendum-unveils-latest-innovation-sharepoint-150000589.html

Monday, April 23, 2012

Health Care Templates fore Sharepoint 2010

Health Care Templates for SharePoint 2010 are available at http://www.techsolutions.net/SharePointSolutions.aspx

Friday, April 20, 2012

Be the Next Microsoft Employee Show

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

SQL SERVER Agent Job configuration and running history.

Problem: I came across a requirement to generate a list of jobs for specific databases along with their configuration detail like description, steps, schedules and latest history.

Solution: Simple solution for me is to create an excel sheet use a simple query to return jobs name and copy paste their detail one by one but I have to do this task daily or on demand. Now it is bit different I have searched for its solution and find some good articles most effective of all articles is

http://sqlconcept.com/2011/06/25/how-to-query-currently-running-sql-server-agent-jobs/

when I ran its query it shows jobs current running status with some useful information and this query is very good in some conditions but I have to do something more to fulfill my requirements.

Now I have decided to write query that run every useful information about job, its detail and history etc. to do this I have started writing my query using following steps.

Step1:

I have generated a Create script for an existing job and note which steps SQL Server perform to generate a job. I have found following procedures used from msdb database

sp_add_category

sp_add_job

sp_add_jobstep

sp_add_jobschedule

There are more procedures but these 4 are of my concerns.

Step2:

Now I have used sp_helptext procedure to return structure of every procedure and note tables when all procedure inserts its data. I have drilled down following tables from all above procedures

msdb.dbo.sysjobs

msdb.dbo.syscategories

msdb.dbo.sysjobsteps

msdb.dbo.sysjobschedules

msdb.dbo.sysschedules

Step3:

After that I have my required table and their columns. I have write my required query but now I need to understand columns data for many columns like job status and time interval based columns. For that I have gathered all required information from http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms174997.aspx online help and apply case statements to generate all required information.

Step4:

Once I have completed my initial work and execute query I got all required information but missed one important info and that is latest job history. For that my friend’s blog I have mentioned above helped me and I got another table

msdb.dbo.sysjobhistory

Conclusion:

Finally my query returns all my requried information about all jobs for specific databases along with their detail like description, steps, schedules and latest history.

Query:

Here is the query that I use. You can use where clause to limit your databases.

use msdb

; with jobHistory

(

SELECT row_number() over(partition by job_id order by instance_id desc) as JobExecCount,

job_id,step_name,[message],run_date,run_time,run_duration,run_status FROM msdb.dbo.sysjobhistory

)

SELECT j.name,j.enabled,description,

CASE c.category_class

WHEN 1 THEN 'JOB'

WHEN 2 THEN 'ALERT'

WHEN 3 THEN 'OPERATOR'

ELSE 'NONE'

END ,

CASE c.category_type

WHEN 1 THEN 'LOCAL'

WHEN 2 THEN 'MULTI-SERVER'

ELSE 'NONE'

END

, c.name

,step_id,

JS.step_name,

subsystem,

command,

CASE flags

WHEN 0 THEN 'Normal'

WHEN 1 THEN 'Encrypted command (read only)'

WHEN 2 THEN 'Append output files (if any)'

WHEN 4 THEN 'Write TSQL step output to step history'

WHEN 8 THEN 'Write log to table (overwrite existing history)'

WHEN 16 THEN 'Write log to table (append to existing history)'

WHEN 32 THEN 'Write all output to job history'

WHEN 64 THEN 'Create a Windows event to use as a signal for the Cmd jobstep to abort'

ELSE 'NONE'

END AS flags,

server,

database_name,

database_user_name,

CASE on_success_action

WHEN 1 THEN 'Quit With Success'

WHEN 2 THEN 'Quit With Failure'

WHEN 3 THEN 'Goto Next Step'

WHEN 4 THEN 'Goto Step'

ELSE ''

END AS on_success_action,

CASE on_fail_action

WHEN 1 THEN 'Quit With Success'

WHEN 2 THEN 'Quit With Failure'

WHEN 3 THEN 'Goto Next Step'

WHEN 4 THEN 'Goto Step'

ELSE ''

END AS on_fail_action,

ch.name as ScheduleName,

ch.enabled as ScheduleEnabe,

CASE freq_type

WHEN 1 THEN 'One time only'

WHEN 4 THEN 'Daily'

WHEN 8 THEN 'Weekly'

WHEN 16 THEN 'Monthly'

WHEN 32 THEN 'Monthly, relative to freq_interval'

WHEN 64 THEN 'Runs when the SQL Server Agent service starts'

WHEN 128 THEN 'Runs when the computer is idle'

ELSE 'NONE' END as freq_type,

CASE WHEN freq_type = 8 THEN

CASE freq_interval

WHEN 1 THEN 'Sunday'

WHEN 2 THEN 'Monday'

WHEN 4 THEN 'Tuesday'

WHEN 8 THEN 'Wednesday'

WHEN 16 THEN 'Thursday'

WHEN 32 THEN 'Friday'

WHEN 64 THEN 'Saturday'

ELSE 'NONE' END

WHEN freq_type = 8 THEN

CASE freq_interval

WHEN 1 THEN 'Sunday'

WHEN 2 THEN 'Monday'

WHEN 3 THEN 'Tuesday'

WHEN 4 THEN 'Wednesday'

WHEN 5 THEN 'Thursday'

WHEN 6 THEN 'Friday'

WHEN 7 THEN 'Saturday'

WHEN 8 THEN 'Day'

WHEN 9 THEN 'Weekday'

WHEN 10 THEN 'Weekend day'

ELSE 'NONE' END

ELSE '' END AS freq_interval,

CASE freq_subday_type

WHEN 1 THEN 'At the specified time'

WHEN 2 THEN 'Seconds'

WHEN 4 THEN 'Minutes'

WHEN 8 THEN 'Hours'

END AS freq_subday_type,

freq_subday_interval, -- Number of freq_subday_type periods to occur between each execution of the job.

CASE freq_relative_interval

WHEN 1 THEN 'First'

WHEN 2 THEN 'Second'

WHEN 4 THEN 'Third'

WHEN 8 THEN 'Fourth'

WHEN 16 THEN 'Last'

END AS freq_relative_interval,

freq_recurrence_factor, -- Number of weeks or months between the scheduled execution of a job

active_start_date as ActiveAt, -- Date on which execution of a job can begin. The date is formatted as YYYYMMDD. NULL indicates today's date.

active_end_date, -- Date on which execution of a job can stop. The date is formatted YYYYMMDD.

active_start_time, -- Time on any day between active_start_date and active_end_date that job begins executing. Time is formatted HHMMSS, using a 24-hour clock.

active_end_time, -- Time on any day between active_start_date and active_end_date that job stops executing. Time is formatted HHMMSS, using a 24-hour clock.

JS.step_name,

[message],

run_date, -- Date the job or step started execution. For an In Progress history, this is the date/time the history was written.

run_time, -- Time the job or step started.

run_duration, -- Elapsed time in the execution of the job or step in HHMMSS format.

CASE run_status

WHEN 0 THEN 'Failed'

WHEN 1 THEN 'Succeeded'

WHEN 2 THEN 'Retry'

WHEN 3 THEN 'Canceled'

END AS run_status

FROM

msdb.dbo.sysjobs j LEFT OUTER JOIN

msdb.dbo.syscategories c ON j.category_id = c.category_id left outer join

msdb.dbo.sysjobsteps js ON js.job_id = j.Job_ID

left outer join msdb.dbo.sysjobschedules jch ON j.Job_ID= jch.Job_ID

inner join msdb.dbo.sysschedules ch on ch.schedule_id= jch.schedule_id

left outer join (select * from jobHistory where JobExecCount = 1 ) jH on jh.Job_ID = j.Job_ID

Saturday, February 26, 2011

Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Launch Event

Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2010 Launch Event at University of Engineering and Technology Taxila on February 17,2011

for details: http://msartuet.wordpress.com/

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

TechNet Virtual Labs: SharePoint Products and Technologies

Step into the SharePoint Virtual Labs for Free

It's simple: no complex setup or installation is required to try out SharePoint Products and Technologies running in the full-featured TechNet Virtual Lab. You get a downloadable manual and a 90-minute block of time for each module. You can sign up for additional 90-minute blocks any time.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/virtuallabs/bb512933

Saturday, July 03, 2010

Fab40 for Sharepoint 2010

Fab 40 templates were free templates released by Microsoft for sharepoint 2007 and wss 3.0 to address some of the common scenarios encountered by SharePoint administrators, developers and event business/Marketing managers to demonstrate and show case some of the capabilities of MOSS to end users.

Discussion about that how good these templates are and in which scenario these are more helpful versus things which needs to be improved in these templates is a separate topic but I have noticed many SharePoint people using these templates either for small clients , for demonstration purpose and even for training purposes etc. ..

I have uploaded some of these Fab 40 templates for sharepoint 2010, so now you can have Fab 40 for sharepoint 2010, at least some of these are available for now…rest coming soon

http://sharepointwebstore.com/product-category/sharepoint-2010/

Friday, June 18, 2010

Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint Power Tools are now available!

Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint Power Tools

The Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint Power Tools is a set of templates and extensions that provides additional functionality to SharePoint developers who use the SharePoint developer tools in Visual Studio 2010. Below is the list of features included in the current release of the power tools.

Sandboxed-compatible Visual Web Part
This item template enables you to use a visual designer to create SharePoint web parts that can be deployed in a sandboxed solution for SharePoint 2010.

Sandboxed Compilation
This extension displays build errors when you use types or members in a SharePoint 2010 sandboxed project which are not allowed in the SharePoint sandbox environment.

for details :

http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/8e602a8c-6714-4549-9e95-f3700344b0d9

Monday, June 07, 2010

New Features in SharePoint 2010

Microsoft is releasing a slew of new technologies in 2010, and one of the most important of them is SharePoint 2010. Previously known by the code name SharePoint 14, SharePoint 2010 marks a significant upgrade to the SharePoint product. Here are ten of the most important things about the SharePoint 2010 release.
(http://www.windowsitpro.com/article/hardware/new-features-in-sharepoint-2010.aspx)

1. Enhanced SharePoint Designer—Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2010 sports a new UI, improved workflow, and improved integration between designers. Although there were doubts about the Office 2007 ribbon-style interface when it was first released, Microsoft has been steadily putting the ribbon UI in many of its products, including SharePoint 2010. The new designer also has a tabbed interface and provides breadcrumb navigation.

2. New browser support—SharePoint 2010 supports an extended set of browsers. It's designed to support XHTML 1.0–compliant browsers and will support Internet Explorer (IE) 8.0 and IE 7.0, Firefox, and Safari. Notably, IE 6.0 isn't supported. So far, there's been no official mention of Google Chrome or Opera.

3. Enhanced collaboration features—SharePoint 2010 supports tagging content as well as providing enhanced blog authoring capabilities. There's a new group authentication feature that's based on distribution list or organization and a new rich text editor for creating wikis. In addition, calendars from Microsoft Exchange Server can be merged with SharePoint calendars.

4. Visio Services—Visio Services in SharePoint 2010 lets users share and collaborate on Visio diagrams. A built-in viewer lets SharePoint users view Visio files in their browser without having Visio installed on their system. Visio Services also retrieves and renders any external data used in the Visio diagrams.

5. Usage reporting and logging—SharePoint 2010 includes a new database designed to support usage reporting and logging. The usage database is extensible, allowing third-party vendors to create custom reports based on the information it contains.

6. FAST Search—The new SharePoint release will incorporate the FAST Search technology that Microsoft acquired from the Norway-based Fast Search & Transfer company. The FAST technology provides a superset of the original SharePoint search capabilities. As its name implies, FAST Search is designed for high-end scalability. It supports a number of enhanced capabilities, including a content-processing pipeline, metadata extraction, visual search, and advanced linguistics.

7. SharePoint Best Practices Analyzer—With the SharePoint 2010 release, SharePoint Best Practices Analyzer will be incorporated as part of the base SharePoint product. This tool provides Microsoft's guidance for SharePoint implementation and troubleshooting. A Problems and Solutions page in the analyzer helps you solve common implementation problems.

8. New software requirements—In addition to new hardware requirements, SharePoint 2010 will require an x64 edition of either Windows Server 2008 or Server 2008 R2. It also requires a 64-bit version of Microsoft SQL Server 2008 or SQL Server 2005.

9. New hardware requirements—Like the majority of new Microsoft servers, SharePoint 2010 will ship only as a 64-bit product. If you're deploying SharePoint on new hardware, this situation shouldn't be a problem, but it's definitely a consideration if you're planning to upgrade an existing SharePoint server.

10. New SharePoint editions—In an effort to better unify the SharePoint lineup, Microsoft will make some big changes to the SharePoint editions with the 2010 release. Windows SharePoint Server (WSS) is gone, and so is Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS). The free WSS has been replaced by the new SharePoint Foundation 2010. MOSS is replaced by SharePoint Server 2010, which will be available in either the Standard or Enterprise edition as well as in editions for strictly internal sites and for Internet or extranet sites.