SQL Server Rocks!

Arthur Olcot

Arthur OlcotSQL Server Database Developer/Administrator. (MCITP Database Administration 2005 & 2008, MCITP Database Developer 2005 & 2008, MCDBA/MCSE). Background in developing OLTP/document based databases, SQLXML and performance tuning. Loves to read subject matter related books and blogs, but not a fast reader though!

I hope to create a number of interesting blogs dedicated to SQL server specifically around XML and performance and I welcome your feedback on the content or the website itself.

....I have an unhealthy fascination for the SQL query optimiser!!

Recent Blogs

  • Shredding a simple xml structure to a single row flat table

    Tags: Xml

    May 16 2012 11:00 AM
    (16 views) - 0 Comments

    I was helping out a user on the forums the other day where they were asking questions about shredding an xml structure of which they didn’t know the schema for. They wanted to know the best way about writing a generic function to shred any xml to a flat table. In the past I have used the XMLTable function developed and blogged by Jacob Sebastian to shred an xml structure and suggested this as a starting place for them. After posting that comment, it did get me thinking though that I could … more

  • Command line to configure windows firewall for SQL server access

    Tags: Firewall, Configuration, Ports, Command Line, SQL Browser

    May 10 2012 8:17 PM
    (13 views) - 0 Comments

    I regularly deploy SQL Server to new Windows Server 2008 hosts and one thing that I find quite a chore is the wizard to configure the windows firewall on the host. So I done a quick bit of research today and found that the windows firewall can be configured from the command line very easily. Basically all you need to do is run the command prompt as an administrator and type/paste in the following:

    netsh advfirewall firewall add rule name="SQL Server TCP1433-In" action=allow protocol=TCP … more

  • Script to analyse space usage by your Service Broker

    Tags: Service Broker, Script, Admin, Performance, Monitoring, Space

    Apr 16 2012 12:51 PM
    (32 views) - 0 Comments

    I believe that service broker is one of the best features from SQL server 2005, well along with the xml data type, and I use service broker a lot for messaging between solutions. Over the years it has proven to be extremely reliable; only really stopping because of a poison message or other environment type issue outside the control of the broker.

    Service broker itself uses a number of internal tables which it uses to store details regarding conversations and routing, and there are also any … more

  • Creating cards in Trello via the REST API and parsing the returned JSON all in a SQL CLR

    Mar 14 2012 2:41 PM
    (155 views) - 0 Comments

    I recently blogged about how good I thought Trello was and shortly afterwards I found out that they did provide a full read/write RESTful API. Awesome! After a bit of thought I realised that I should be able to use the API to create new cards in Trello from within SQL by simply calling a CLR procedure and I could use that feature to help manage my distributed servers by getting the servers to create new cards in a Trello board when I want the servers to notify me of something. So one large … more

  • Trello: An agile style kan-ban web app that really works

    Tags: Productivity, Tools

    Feb 27 2012 12:35 PM
    (101 views) - 2 Comments

    I am no different to many others where I am being asked to work on various projects concurrently and expected to work through a long list of technical debt that needs addressing with our SQL databases. Throw in the usual day to day production issues as well and you get yourself a long list of jobs to do that have rapidly changing priorities. Now, we all aim to be productive and we all spend time trying ways to be more productive and finding ways to be really organised with our increasing … more