A primer to SQL Server 2012

Transcription

1 A primer to SQL Server 2012

2 Many industry insiders have declared SQL Server 2012 to be the strongest version Microsoft has released in a long time. The 2012 edition offers new features geared toward enterprises -- high availability and business intelligence among them which could shake up the market more than past versions have. Read this SearchSQLServer.com E-Guide to learn more about the changes in SQL Server Discover how the new edition supports Big Data initiatives with new features including column-based querying, enhanced Excel-based analytics and reporting, and high availability improvements. Learn how the Upgrade Assistant provides an automated mechanism for testing application compatibility when upgrading to SQL Server 2012 and how organizations can use the Upgrade Assistant to detect functional and performance issues that might arise as a result of an upgrade. By: Robert Sheldon, SearchSQLServer.com Contributor You ve been waiting for SQL Server 2012 to arrive, and now that it s here, you re ready to make the switch. You ve verified software and hardware requirements. You ve put the resources necessary to test and implement a new system into place. But you might be forgetting something important -- the client applications that rely on SQL Server data. That s where the Upgrade Assistant for SQL Server 2012 comes in. The Upgrade Assistant provides an automated mechanism for testing application compatibility when upgrading from SQL Server 2005, 2008 or 2008 R2 to SQL Server You can use the Upgrade Assistant to detect functional and performance issues that might arise as a result of your upgrade. The Page 2 of 9

3 Upgrade Assistant verifies how your application s Transact-SQL queries will function in SQL Server 2012, allowing you to detect and correct compatibility issues that might be buried in the application s source code. The Upgrade Assistant is the result of a joint effort between Microsoft and Scalability Experts Inc. (Download it for free at Scalability Experts website.) The Upgrade Assistant uses workload testing to compare the application s performance between the earlier version of SQL Server and SQL Server When you follow the steps outlined in the product documentation -- and reflected in the structure of the user interface -- you can identify issues that might affect the application, such as deprecated features or changes to the Transact-SQL syntax. Upgrade Assistant testing process The Upgrade Assistant guides you through the steps necessary to verify your application s compatibility with SQL Server Before you get started, set up the test environment necessary to run your sample workload. In theory you can run your tests against production databases, but that strategy is risky at best. Not only could you negatively affect the performance of your live applications, the back-end databases and the network itself, but you also risk breaking applications and tainting the integrity of the data if naming conflicts arise or transactions become disrupted. At the least, your test environment should include a database server on which you can install your current version of SQL Server (2005, 2008 or 2008 R2) as well as the Upgrade Assistant. The server must also support an upgrade to SQL Server In addition, you must be able to connect to the database server from the application being tested. The application should be a test system so you can execute automated procedures that run the full complement of the application's features. If you use the production application to run your tests, you ll likely be checking a smaller percentage of the functionality. Once you ve set up your test environment, use the Assistant to carry out the following steps: Page 3 of 9

4 Back up the relevant system and user databases and capture a sample workload. The Upgrade Assistant captures the workload as trace files that record a representative sample of application queries running against the database. Set up a baseline environment based on the backup and trace files created in step one. As part of this process, run the Advisor to identify any upgrade issues present in the database trace files and backup files. At this point, you should address any issues that arise before proceeding with the Upgrade Assistant. Replay the sample workload trace created in step one to establish a baseline trace. In a later step, the baseline trace will be compared with a trace against SQL Server Upgrade the SQL Server instance to SQL Server Replay the sample workload trace created in step one to establish the upgrade trace against SQL Server Compare the baseline trace with the upgrade trace to identify any potential issues that resulted from running the sample workload. Not surprisingly, these steps provide only an overview of the testing process, but they should give you an idea of how the Upgrade Assistant can help you review your data-driven applications before implementing SQL Server SQL Server upgrade technologies You might have noticed that in step two you run the Advisor. Although not a component of the Upgrade Assistant, it is an important part of the process. The Upgrade Advisor, which unfortunately has a name very similar to the Upgrade Assistant, will analyze the installed SQL Server components that you re considering upgrading to SQL Server The Upgrade Advisor generates a report that identifies any issues you should fix in your SQL Server instance before performing your upgrade. The analysis includes database objects such as triggers, stored procedures, scripts and trace files. When you use the Upgrade Advisor in conjunction with the Upgrade Assistant, include the sample workload trace you created in step one. Page 4 of 9

5 Another SQL Server 2012 technology important to the Upgrade Assistant testing process is Distributed Replay, a tool used to assess the impact of hardware and operating system upgrades. Like SQL Server Profiler, Distributed Replay can replay a captured trace against an upgraded test environment. The Upgrade Assistant incorporates Distributed Replay functionality to produce more realistic performance testing than could be achieved in previous versions of SQL Server. The Upgrade Assistant could prove to be a valuable tool for any organization that supports data-driven programs. The last thing you want to do is to upgrade to SQL Server 2012 and break all your applications. Keep in mind, however, that SQL Server 2012 will run a legacy database at a compatibility level equivalent to that of the SQL Server version on which the database was created. This lets you implement SQL Server 2012, yet take the time you need to get your applications up to speed. Your goal should be to get those apps up to the same level as SQL Server 2012, but until then, you have a viable alternative. And when you re ready to update your applications, you ll find the Upgrade Assistant to be invaluable. By: Alan Earls, SearchSQLServer.com Contributor For Frank Rietta, the fact that Microsoft has been willing to work with an established open source project is the best part of SQL Server Rietta is talking about the Apache Hadoop integration with SQL Server He is a software developer and president of Atlanta-based Rietta Inc., one of the member companies at the Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC), which runs the incubator program at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Big data is becoming increasingly important even for small startups, he said. And Microsoft s partnering with established open source project is refreshing, he said. Page 5 of 9

6 The alternative would have been reinventing the wheel, rendering itself incompatible with the competition. Rietta added that some of the new features in SQL Server 2012 look useful, including column-based querying, enhanced Excel-based analytics and reporting, and high availability improvements. But in his opinion, they are not compelling enough to encourage a migration from a working open source server stack to Microsoft. So he s not upgrading yet. Big data a huge feature for SQL Server 2012 Discussions with a spectrum of users and consultants revealed the usual reasons some IT shops like SQL Server over competitors -- namely, its simplicity and lower cost. SQL Server 2012 had its virtual launch in March and was made generally available April 1. And big data is no doubt on the minds of many IT shops and has them intrigued. Count Sanjay Bhatia among them. Bhatia is CEO and founder of Atlantabased Izenda, a decade-old ad hoc reporting company. The company uses SQL Server to store all its data, and it is the database that 90% of its customers use. Bhatia likes the Hadoop feature because it is integration with what he called SQL core capability. So you may have an enormous amount of unstructured data, and with Hadoop-like query capability you could have an enormous user volume able to access that data, he said. Bhatia added that when you consider SQL 2012 with the forthcoming Windows Server 8, a business unit can press a button and in effect, get an application. For example, if you want an app, it can be automatically installed in a private cloud. Then your business unit gets billed or it can refund the money if it doesn t work to the level of the service-level agreement. So, instead of tackling huge software installations you can do this and just try it first, he explained. Page 6 of 9

7 Another enthusiast is Jordan Hudgens, senior software engineer at MCW Services in Midland, Texas, which specializes in creating software applications for the oil field industry. His company has a heterogeneous database environment, including Microsoft SQL 2008 for its.net applications and MySQL for PHP. They are using managed servers from Rackspace and LiquidWeb, along with other cloud-based solutions, and are in the process of migrating to SQL Server Hudgens said the best feature in SQL Server 2012 for MCW Services is its ad hoc query paging that is going live. By being able to more efficiently filter query results, we can decrease lag time and increase the data available to users, he said. Specifically the new functionality built into the OFFSET, SELECT and FETCH commands will help return more accurate results for our data-rich applications. Hudgens felt those commands in SQL Server 2008 R2 were somewhat cumbersome and that they will be more streamlined and efficient with SQL Server SQL Server, generally speaking Bhatia said the biggest thing to like about SQL Server in general is that the Microsoft software requires less of a scarce resource: DBAs. If this was 15 years ago, your only choice would be to buy an Oracle database or something similar and hire a team of DBAs, he said. Now, even small businesses can afford similar database technology, and although they might hire a number of people, there is a good chance none of them will be DBAs. The most profound change with SQL Server 2012 is that when used with modern hardware you will be able to handle close to 10 terabytes of data without tuning -- a 2-order-of-magnitude improvement over its predecessor. While Oracle and IBM deliver similar capabilities, Bhatia said SQL Server 2012 has a big cost advantage. Page 7 of 9

8 There is a theoretical performance advantage with other databases, but to get that you must usually spend hundreds of hours tuning, while with Microsoft it is pretty much unnecessary, he said. You don t need to requisition a DBA from IT and then wait a year. Even the customers that can afford to do that to would rather not. That difference highlights the built-in simplicity that Bhatia said has been a Microsoft hallmark. It has always been simple, but with this release they simplified things further, he said. That simplicity begins with installation -- something that Bhatia said even a nontechnical manager could always do. By contrast, Bhatia said complexity has been part of the culture with Oracle. SQL Server was not structured that way, even the first version you could install without being certified. SQL Server 2005 offered the Index Tuning Wizard and 2008 offered the Database Engine Tuning Advisor, which was basically the same thing, he said. Those tools had already reduced time requirements to complete tasks, Bhatia said, but with SQL Server 2012, the scale of capabilities has simply grown. Now you can buy SQL Server 2012 for terabytes of data and for crunching billions of records, still without hiring someone to optimize the database. Of course, he noted that companies can still benefit from optimization. But it s not a requirement, and that s what continues to make the 2012 version of SQL Server so attractive, according to Bhatia. Because we have a self-service model for our customers, that ease-of-use is important for us, he said. Today we still need to help customers optimize, but with SQL 2012, we are confident that if they are using new hardware it will handle the load without the optimization process, and that is huge for us. Page 8 of 9

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