Category: Uncategorized

Do you know that there are actually two branches of SQL Server 2008 code right now? Actually I would bet there are 3 branches, but we have two publically available branches to choose from:

• The RTM branch
• The Service Pack 1 branch

I’ve known this for awhile, but haven’t thought about it. I read a post recently by Glenn Barry, who noted that CU5 for SQL server 2008 had been released. However this is only for RTM. If you have already installed SP1, then you would actually be looking for the CU2 for SQL Server 2008 SP1.

These both contain similar fixes, like this one:

972687 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/972687/ ) FIX: Error message when you restore a SQL Server 2000 database by using SQL Server 2005 Management Studio or SQL Server 2008 Management Studio: "Cannot show requested dialog. Failed to retrieve data for this request (Microsoft.SqlServer.SmoEnum)"

Glenn mentions an interesting item in that mainstream support for SQL Server RTM will end next year, so that you might want to think about SP1. I’m not sure that’s true based on the Product Support page, but it’s hard to read into it. The lifecycle support page also says that support ends 12 months after the next service pack is released. Assuming Release Services sticks to their 1 SP a year and we should see SP2 in the Mar/April timeframe, which would mean that SP1 and SP2 would be supported, RTM phasing out.

I’d recommend that you pick the SP branches and stick with them, keeping fairly current, applying at least one a year. So if you haven’t applied SP1 yet, I’d plan on doing it by the end of Q1 2010.

If all goes well, by the time you read this on Thanksgiving I’ll be up in the mountains of Colorado. No SQL Server questions to answer, no editorials to write, no articles to edit.

I think I say it often, but it bears some repeating. Get away from your day job and enjoy the rest of your life.

Happy Thanksgiving.

I had to run our weekly conference call this week. My boss is out of the office, but he’s been trying to get everyone to participate by having different people run meetings on different weeks. I’m not the best employee in this sense, and not always prepared, so I’ve tried to avoid running one over the last few months.

That stopped today, or yesterday, as I got an email from him saying he was gone and I needed to run the meeting. So I was on the hook as I grabbed my laptop and headed down (literally) to the basement today.

I ended up doing an OK job, despite not having an agenda ready. Usually someone prepares one based on feedback, but I didn’t do that, and had even deleted the old email from my boss where I had 2 or 3 things he wanted me to cover. I covered the two main items we’d emailed about, but kept thinking I was forgetting something.

Fortunately just before I asked for Any Other Business and closed the meeting I remembered the holiday schedule was on the list and covered that.

Now we’ll see how long I can avoid being in charge of another one.

I saw a post recently about the tempdb being overly large and causing issues for a user. The person was having issues shrinking the files and wasn’t sure what to do. Someone else responded that snapshot isolation might be an issue and I found that interesting. I hadn’t thought about tempdb being a place where snapshot isolation drops things but it does. This entry in BOL says:

“The tempdb database must have enough space for the version store.”

What this seems to imply is that if your database uses row versioning it takes up space in tempdb, which might limit your ability to shrink tempdb. There’s another entry (Row Versioning Resource Usage) that seems to confirm this in that there are possible conditions where tempdb space might not be freed.

Not sure if this is something many people encounter, especially as I don’t see many people shrinking tempdb often, but it’s a good piece of trivia to keep in mind.