Subject Line: SQL Server Magazine UPDATE, October 13, 2005--How Does TPC-C Score?

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October 13, 2005

1. Perspectives

2. SQL Server 2005 Watch

3. News & Views

4. Events and Resources

d?

5. Featured White Paper

6. Peer to Peer

7. Announcements

8. New & Improved

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1. Perspectives

by Brian Moran, [email protected]

One dollar can't buy many things any more. A cup of coffee? Doubtful. Heck, most dollar stores don't even sell things for a dollar anymore. But 99 cents does cover the cost of a single transaction--as measured by Price/tpmC--a new world record for price/performance ratios for TPC-C scores. You can see the details of the current TPC-C scores at the Transaction Processing Performance Council site ( http://lists.sqlmag.com/t?ctl=1661D:285886 ).

Over the years, I've seen the Price/tpmC number come down bit by bit from the hundreds to the teens--and now it's less than a buck. Heck, at this rate, what will happen if Microsoft drives the Price/tpmC to 0, or even into negative territory? Maybe Microsoft will have to start sending customers checks whenever the TPC announces a new score.

A few years ago, I wrote about TPC-C scores all the time. Lately, they don't catch my interest quite as much. A colleague at Microsoft Consulting Services recently sent me an email asking, "Do you think anyone cares anymore about TPC-C numbers?" My short answer was (and yes, this is my favorite all around answer) "It depends."

I'm amazed at the vast improvements in TPC-C performance scores and the price/performance ratios that go along with them. But the upper-end systems that Microsoft and other database vendors use in these tests go well beyond the kind of "big iron" that only a tiny handful of OLTP customers will ever need. Today, I truly believe that any of the major database vendors can meet the performance needs of most database customers. These upper-end TPC-C scores are helpful in justifying a "Yes, SQL Server can do it" decision if you're in an organization that still doubts the enterprise scalability of a Microsoft database. But honestly, I don't see that doubt as a problem these days. And although it's nice to see the Price/tpmC numbers, artificial benchmarks such as the TPC-C measure the workload characteristics of one narrow suite of tests. It's unlikely that your complex, real-world application will exhibit the same performance workload characteristics. So you can't really use TPC-C to predict how much your system will cost.

TPC-C has evolved into a game of leapfrog, with each vendor attempting to best the others by using systems that aren't relevant to the workloads of most database customers. But I suppose it's nice to know all that horsepower is there if you need it. Do customers care about TPC-C scores? As sort of a security blanket, sure. Beyond that, they're mostly useful for columnists looking for something interesting to pontificate about.

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2. SQL Server 2005 Watch

Microsoft released the SQL Server Report Pack for SharePoint Portal Server 2003, reporting tools that let you examine content and analyze how visitors use your sites so that you can optimize your portal to better serve users. Intended for midsized Web farm developments, the Report Pack includes eight reports that cover three areas: storage, site trends, and search terms and keywords. Users can navigate reports and manipulate report data through the features of SQL Server Reporting Services. For more information about the Report Pack, see the Microsoft article "Get Better Metrics with New Reporting Tools for SharePoint Portal Services" at http://lists.sqlmag.com/t?ctl=1660F:285886 . You can download the Report Pack at
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3. News & Views

Results of Previous Instant Poll: DBA Activities
"How much time do you spend on DBA activities?" Here are the results from the 96 votes:

New Instant Poll: Developer Activities
"How much of your time do you spend on application-developer activities?" Go to the SQL Server Magazine home page ( http://lists.sqlmag.com/t?ctl=16626:285886 ) and submit your vote for

4. Events and Resources

In this free half-day event, you'll learn how the top new features of SQL Server 2005 will help you create and manage large-scale, mission-critical enterprise database applications, making your job easier. Find out how to leverage SQL Server 2005's new capabilities to best support your business initiatives. Register today!
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Celebrate the release of Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005 at SQL Server Magazine Connections, November 7-10, in Las Vegas, Nevada. Every attendee will go home with a fully licensed copy of SQL Server 2005 Standard Edition AND Visual Studio 2005 Professional. Call 203-268-3204 or 800-438-6720 for details.
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Improved utilization of existing networking resources and server hardware enable allocation of scarce financial and time resources where they're needed most. In this free Web seminar, learn to optimize your existing infrastructure with the addition of server and storage consolidation software and techniques. You'll get the jump-start you need to evaluate the suitability and potential of your computing environments for the added benefits that consolidation technology can provide.
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The .NET Common Language Runtime (CLR) is bringing some very cool new capabilities to SQL Server 2005, and T-SQL is stronger than ever. This free Web seminar compares T-SQL and the CLR--including new features, pros and cons, performance tests, and risks--and gives you some guidance about when to use them. Register today to see Visual Studio in action and witness the staying power of T-SQL.
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5. Featured White Paper

Computer users can no longer wait for a new vaccine every time a new security threat appears. How do you defend your network in a world of smarter, faster, Internet-borne zero-day attacks? Find out about Intrusion Prevention that can detect and destroy unknown malware with virtually zero false positives.
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6. Peer to Peer

    by Microsoft's SQL Server Development Team, [email protected]

I have a huge table that doesn't have a clustered index but has a couple of nonclustered indexes. Because this table is so large, we occasionally receive index corruption errors such as "The index entry from row ID was not found in index ID 2, of table 1152723159." We've tried using the DBCC REINDEX command to correct these errors, but does this command actually have any effect on heap tables? If not, what should I do to rebuild an index on a heap table?

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ASP.NET 2.0 has several new features that make it a more powerful Web-development platform. And Microsoft claims that ASP.NET 2.0 reduces the coding required for many common tasks by about 70 percent over ASP.NET 1.1. In his October SELECT TOP(X) column "ASP.NET 2.0 Enhancements," Michael Otey highlights six important ASP.NET 2.0 improvements. Read this article today and post your comments at
    http://lists.sqlmag.com/t?ctl=16611:285886

SQL Server 2005's new PIVOT and UNPIVOT commands let you create a SQL Server result set that you can manipulate like an Excel crosstab or pivot table. However, if you're working with SQL Server 2000, those new commands don't solve your problem. Fortunately, one generous SQL Server professional has gone to the trouble of writing a stored procedure that creates crosstab functionality in SQL Server 2000. In this week's blog "Crosstab Result Sets in SQL Server," Kevin Kline gives you a link to this useful code. Read about the functionality and let Kevin know about other useful stored procedures at
    http://lists.sqlmag.com/t?ctl=16619:285886

Hot Threads: Check out the following hot threads, and see other discussions in our 30 SQL Server forums.
    http://lists.sqlmag.com/t?ctl=1661F:285886

Administration: Periodic DBCC
    http://lists.sqlmag.com/t?ctl=1660C:285886
T-SQL: Dynamic Inserts from Other Table
     http://lists.sqlmag.com/t?ctl=1660A:285886
Performance: Partition Tables with Bigint as Key
    http://lists.sqlmag.com/t?ctl=16609:285886
Security: SQL Server 2000 Database Access via Web
    http://lists.sqlmag.com/t?ctl=1660E:285886
Replication: Transactional Replication Log Reader Error
    http://lists.sqlmag.com/t?ctl=1660B:285886
SQL Server 2005 General Discussion: Fetching CLR Object Execution Time
    http://lists.sqlmag.com/t?ctl=1660D:285886

Hot Spot

Celebrate the release of Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005 at Microsoft ASP.NET Connections, November 7-10, in Las Vegas. Every attendee goes home with a fully-licensed copy of SQL Server 2005 Standard Edition and Visual Studio 2005 Professional. Register now and attend sessions at Visual Studio Connections for FREE!
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7. Announcements

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8. New & Improved

    by Dawn Cyr, [email protected]

Have you used a product that saved you time or made your job easier? Tell us how your favorite product solved a SQL Server problem for you, and if we print your submission in the magazine's Hands On department we'll send you a SQL Server Magazine t-shirt. Send your email today to [email protected]!

Norb Technologies announced Visual Defrag 2005, a tool for defragmenting database tables in SQL Server 2005, 2000, and 7.0. The tool lets DBAs quickly improve database performance without needing to write complex code. The tool comes with a built-in scheduler that lets you set up defragmentation jobs when you want. You can toggle between a graphical and textual display of the fragmentation state of your tables, and the tool lets you see statistics about what's happening in tables and alerts you to the most heavily fragmented tables. In addition, the tool creates for each database a summary report that you can save as a text file, in HTML, or in your favorite reporting package. Pricing for Visual Defrag 2005 Professional Edition starts at $395 for a single-user license (up to 15 servers), and a free 45-day demo version is available for download. For more information, contact Norb Technologies at [email protected].
    http://lists.sqlmag.com/t?ctl=16622:285886

Idera announced the SQL diagnostic manager Web Console, an addition to its SQL diagnostic manager tool. The new console lets you access realtime performance and diagnostic information anytime, anywhere, from a Web browser. Multiple DBAs can use this immediate access to respond quickly to SQL Server database problems. The console facilitates montoring of hundreds of SQL Server instances and offers drill-down views into individual SQL Server databases to provide deep diagnostic data through a Microsoft Outlook-style interface. Until December 31, 2005, Idera is offering the Web Console free to all SQL diagnostic manager users. After December 31, the Web Console will cost $295 per monitored SQL Server instance. For more information, contact Idera at 877-464-3372, 713-523-4433, or [email protected].
    http://lists.sqlmag.com/t?ctl=16625:285886

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