Imagine the following scenario:

You want to find the total number of orders that have the Order Status ‘A’ and the number of orders with an Order Status of ‘B’. This sounds like a simple enough request, that I’m sure you have heard of before.

Lets start off with some test data.

--Test Structure
USE master
go
IF DB_ID('Sandbox') IS NULL
BEGIN
    CREATE DATABASE Sandbox
END
GO

USE Sandbox
GO
IF OBJECT_ID('dbo.CountExample') IS NOT NULL
BEGIN
    DROP TABLE dbo.CountExample
END
GO
IF OBJECT_ID('dbo.Nums') IS NOT NULL
BEGIN
    DROP FUNCTION dbo.Nums
END
GO
-- Test Function to allow fast test data creation
CREATE FUNCTION [dbo].[Nums] (@m AS bigint)
RETURNS TABLE
AS
RETURN
WITH t0
AS (SELECT n = 1
UNION ALL
SELECT n = 1),
t1
AS (SELECT n = 1
FROM t0 AS a,
t0 AS b),
t2
AS (SELECT n = 1
FROM t1 AS a,
t1 AS b),
t3
AS (SELECT n = 1
FROM t2 AS a,
t2 AS b),
t4
AS (SELECT n = 1
FROM t3 AS a,
t3 AS b),
t5
AS (SELECT n = 1
FROM t4 AS a,
t4 AS b),
results
AS (SELECT ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY n) AS n
FROM t5)
SELECT n
FROM results
WHERE n <= @m

GO
CREATE TABLE dbo.CountExample
(OrderId int NOT NULL,
OrderStatus char(1) NOT NULL)

GO

--Test data
INSERT INTO dbo.CountExample
(OrderId,
OrderStatus)
SELECT n,
CHAR(n % 27 + 64)
FROM dbo.Nums (1000) AS N
GO

Now that we have some test data and tables, we can take a look at what solutions are possible.

Solution 1:

The solution that I have seen come from a lot of people has been to basically run two queries, one for each Order Stautus and then collect these together returning the result.

Something along the lines of:

SELECT (SELECT COUNT(*) CountA
        FROM dbo.CountExample AS CE
        WHERE OrderStatus = 'A') CountA,
       (SELECT COUNT(*) CountB
        FROM dbo.CountExample AS CE
        WHERE OrderStatus = 'B') CountB

This delivers the correct result, but causes two separate queries to be run (one for each Order Status). There are variations of this solution, using sub-queries or CTEs, but I hope you get the idea that a separate COUNT() is required for each total that you want to calculate.

Solution 2:

The best way, that I know of, to achieve this would be to change the logic from a COUNT() to a SUM(). This sounds wrong at first, especially because the column Order Status is a char(1) and not an integer!

Take a look at how I have solved the problem with SUM():

 
SELECT SUM(CASE WHEN OrderStatus = 'A' THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) CountA,
       SUM(CASE WHEN OrderStatus = 'B' THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) CountB
FROM dbo.CountExample AS CE

Looking at the code, we can see that I have not just used SUM(), but also a CASE statement. CASE is one of my favourite constructs in T-SQL, as it allows you to perform logical processing of an entire set or only part of a set without filtering using a WHERE clause.

If you take a look at the execution plan, you will also see that the table is accessed once. This is an instant improvement over the “standard” solution of COUNT()-ing per Order Status and has the added bonus of never being noticeably more expensive, regardless of how many different Order Status totals are required.

So there you go.  COUNT() isn’t always the best way to count data in SQL Server.

@Fatherjack (Web|twitter) requested a DBA-typical numbers breakdown of my trip, I have attempted to oblige him here:

38 days
20 flights
15 countries
11 servers
11 hotels
5 continents
4 power cuts
1 case of food poisoning

In that time, I racked up 37229 miles (according to www.gcmap.com) and reached the “Frequent Flyer” status with Lufthansa. I had a total flight time of approximately 80 hours (according to Lufthansa’s site), with the shortest flight being 150 miles and the longest 6526 miles.

I am happy to say, the rollout went well. The systems have been up an running since, and even survived a 5 day outage in one of the offices. The office came back online and synched up within a few hours, I was most surprised at that!

I am now easing myself back into my daily work, with an eye on my next trip to the PASS Summit in October – I hope to put my new Lufthansa status to use, maybe even upgrade this time round!

P.S. A final picture update is now online, with a few sites from Rio. Really nice city, if it wasn’t for all the smog!!

The roll-out was a set of reporting servers in a transactional replication setup, pushing operational data from a central server to the outlying branch offices around the world. I spent a great deal of time preparing these systems for the roll-out; standardising the installations, scripting out each step required to set up users, roles, permissions, DB objects, linked servers, jobs etc. This long preparation period was very tedious and I would often lose the motivation to keep at it.

The final payoff for this long drawn-out process has been the actual roll-out at each location. I have been able to arrive at each office, totally jet-lagged and tired from the entire travel regime and basically sit and watch the scripts run through and see the systems come to life. Had I not been prepared, I would have been in a world of pain, trying to remember what needed doing and when whilst fighting off sleep and headaches.

As a side note: A former colleague/mentor told me to save every script I ever run. If you don’t, you’ll need to repeat that script that took you an hour to write the very next day after you deleted it. This task has been made much easier to do thanks to the SSMS Toolspack provided by the more than awesome Mladen Prajdić. His SSMS extension has saved me hours of time when I have written code and accidentally thrown it away, or when SSMS has crashed. Use his tool and donate to the cause!

So, before you start any project, always keep the Scouts motto in mind – “Be prepared”. Hard disk space is so cheap as to be free, how cheap is your time?

My last post saw me in New Zealand where I spent a great 36 hours taking in what I could of Auckland. Unfortunately I didn’t meet up with Dave Dustin, his work got in the way at short notice – this didn’t stop me from checking out quite a bit of Auckland, including the SkyTower. I got a great view of the city and then walked around town taking in the sights and sounds.

The evening flight from Auckland to Los Angeles ended up being really comfortable. Air New Zealand’s Premium Economy is a major step up from standard economy, offering miles of legroom and the business class menu and winelist (for a snip at $150 on top). I didn’t sleep, but was definitely comfortable for the 12 hour flight. This was followed by a 90 minute layover at LAX, where I was given priority entry into the US so that I could get to my connecting flight on time.

Calgary offered up another uneventful installation, allowing me and a colleague to check out the Banff National Park. It has some great views, with some of the mountain ranges looking like the mountains from the start of my trip in Switzerland (decide for yourself by checking out my web-album – link at the bottom of the page).

As luck would have it, when I checked into my flight from Calgary to Houston, I was offered an upgrade to Continental First Class for the wallet-friendly price of $100. I took them up on the offer and had a very comfortable 4 hour flight down to Houston. I was picked up from the airport by my data-courier colleague who had landed in Houston a couple of hours before me. He had managed to get a nice rental car upgrade because the rental company had messed up the reservation and only had a big SUV left! We took off and setup the server in Houston and were treated to a relaxing evening at the local IT manager’s house. We were able to cool off in his pool and enjoyed a few ice-cold beers. This was the first real chance of relaxation since starting the trip all those weeks ago – thank you Volker! After missing the chance to meet Dave Dustin in New Zealand, I got another opportunity to meet an online acquaintance from the ASKSSC forum – Oleg Netchaev – for lunch in Houston. It was great to put a name to a face.

I then flew down to Veracruz for the next server installation. This was a little touch-and-go, because the hardware had been stuck in customs for a few weeks (it had been sent before I started my trip!). This was sorted out whilst I was in Houston and the server was brought online just in time to get things setup before my flight down to Mexico.

I arrived and finished setting up the server in Veracruz, no problems, everything ran like clockwork. The local IT manager then took us for a quick drive round the city, showing us a few sights and letting us get an idea of what the “real” Mexico is like. We ended up eating some mexican food (although I skipped the pigs brain in tortillas!) and heading down to the Aquarium. Whilst there, we were offered the opportunity to get into a glass box and feed the sharks in the big shark tank. We jumped at the opportunity and spent a fascinating 15 minutes in the water with an oceanologist who speacialises in sharks. That was definitely an experience I will never forget.

From Veracruz I set off to Rio de Janeiro (via Houston – where I am right now) to setup the 11th and final server. This will be a short hop, arriving Thursday and leaving on Sunday, but at this point I really don’t mind. The trip has been really interesting, but extremely challenging, both physically and mentally, and I’m looking forward to going home.

Luckily, I will be arriving in Germany next Monday and taking a 3 week break from work (and possibly technology). I should be able to recharge my batteries and get back to some sort of normal daily routine. My son has been asking if I’m in the planes that fly over our house since the first week of my trip. He seems to be looking forward to me coming home, I was worried he wasn’t bothered or had even forgotten about me

So, time to sit back and relax before the second longest flight of this trip. The President’s Club is comfortable and quiet and I’ll be fine for the 4.5 hours I have till boarding.

TTFN!

P.S. I have recently updated my web-album with the pictures taken since my last blog-post, with views from Calgary, Houston and Veracruz.

After part 3 I went on from Kuala Lumpur to Perth. This time I flew with Singapore Airlines – an extremely good airline as far as I am concerned, the entire experience was positive. I had a short hop from Kuala Lumpur to Sinpagore and then a 5 hours flight to Perth.

There was a mix-up at my company regarding the data transport, so I arrived a full 24 hours too early in Perth. I finally caught up on some of the missing sleep – I slept a full 18 hours!

The data finally arrived and I got to work at the Perth office. The installation ran without any issues (we’ve got the rollout totally sorted by now) and even managed to do a little more testing of the performance improvements of running readonly reporting on the local server. Who would have thought it, a server in the LAN is faster than a server over WAN!!!

I only saw the hotel (Esplanade in Fremantle), the office and a micro-brewery pub (The Mad Monk in Fremantle). This was the shortest stop of all so far, but I was more than happy to take that hit to allow me to have some “real” free time in New Zealand.

I arrived in Auckland this morning after an uneventful flight from Perth to Auckland. I spent the day exploring the city and adding to the photo collection. I will hopefully be meeting up with Dave Dustin (Twitter) for lunch tomorrow before jumping on my longest flight so far – Auckland to Los Angeles to Calgary. The first leg is over 10000 km and 12 hours, luckily in Premium Economy flying with Air New Zealand – a little extra legroom is always nice.

So, time for bed, the day starts early with me trying to take part in the PoSh webcast held by Aaron Nelson (Web|twitter) for the UK Sout West User Group. That’ll mean a 5am start, but my brain is scattered from timezone-hopping anyway.

I was unable to blog whilst in Dubai and Saudi Arabia, so I have a little catching up to do.

Dubai turned out to be the highlight of the trip so far. I was staying in the Mövenpick Hotel Ibn Battuta Gate. I managed to snag an extremely good deal on the hotel and upgraded to an executive room priced at 90 Euros a night. The hotel was absolutely brilliant and really proved the five star rating. The remainder of my trip will be comparing the other hotels to what was on offer in Dubai. I think it will be difficult to top though.

The roll-out has been pretty smooth so far. All those practice runs and copious notes seem to be paying off, who’d have thought!

Rolling into Saudi Arabia was a fun experience too. I landed at Dammam International Airport after a normal 90 minute flight from Dubai. The fun started at passport control, where I waited about 90 minutes to get processed. The men at the counters were rather lax in their work attitude, stopping to chat with their colleagues, smoke or just read a newspaper! I was luckily not waiting for a work-permit, some not so lucky Indians had already been waiting for 3 hours.

After finally collecting my suitcase, I went through to the arrivals lounge. It was then that I found out that no hotel and no pick-up had been arranged for me. Thus ensued a great deal of phoning around trying to find out who could help me out. As luck would have it, someone was still in the Dammam office. A car was sent to pick me up and a room was arranged for me at the Dhahran International Hotel. The hotel is a throw-back to the 70s (not a new hotel built to look that way). I’m sure I saw people with bell-bottom trousers and gold medaillions around their necks!

The roll-out in Dammam went equally smooth. The local IT man really looked after me while I was there. He took me to a couple of local restaurants for lunch, where I gorged on the brilliant arabian food on offer.

I then set off to my next destination – Kuala Lumpur. This was to be the longest leg of the trip so far, involving 3 flights. Dammam to Dubai, Dubai to Bangkok, Bangkok to Kuala Lumpur. I got to Dubai without any problems and treated myself to 3 hours of lounge access. I attacked the buffet and had a few beers to relax before the 6 hour flight to Bangkok.

The real fun started on the flight to Bangkok – Thai Airlines Flght TG 518. This will be burned in my brain until I die. I had a comfortable seat (32A) in a relatively new A330. The flight started nicely and I got stuck into the onboard film. Things changed when the food arrived. I tried the side salad (something with fish) and it didn’t taste right. 20 minutes later, my body decided that the fish really wasn’t right. I spent the remainder of the flight in a delirious cold sweat, running to the bathroom to throw-up. I can safely say, that was the longest 5 1/2 hours of my life.

The flight from Bangkok to Kuala Lumpur was a little better as I fell into a deep sleep.

All is well again this morning. I setup the system in Kuala Lumpur and have a day off tomorrow. I hope to climb the Patronas Towers and take a look around the city before flying to Perth on Sunday.

So, time to shut up shop for the day and relax a little. I’m only half way round the world and the travelling and time difference are certainly taking their toll!

TTFN!

Here is an update on the #sqlroadtrip, which started out in Switzerland (part one of the trip).

I have spent the last few days in Kiev in the Ukraine. I arrived at 01:30 (EET) at the airport and spent the next 45 minutes waiting for passport control. They had 8 control gates, but only two open!? They are seriously expanding the airport in preparation for the european football championships next year. This is also the reason for all the road works in and around the city.

I was driven from the airport to the hotel (Rus Hotel, Kiev), where I slept until 9am (local time = CET+1). Then setup our replication system. After 4 hours, and only one error message, I was done!

I went to the hotel, had some rather uninspiring food and some cheap Danish and Ukrainian beer, then fell into a deep sleep.

The following day was spent checking the replication was working properly (it was) and explaining the replication system to the people in the office. We are running transactional replication to allow reporting offloading for each office. It is quite impressive to see our data being updated at near real-time (~5 seconds), even to the offices with the worst network connection. They were happy about the new system, but also gave me a lot of information to take back to HQ regarding performance problems. The perceived performance is different to the measured performance. I have already identified areas in our software that can be optimised for a better user experience, where the devs back home would think the behaviour/performance is acceptable.

I will finish up today and make sure the next location is ready for the replication, then check out some sights around the centre of Kiev. After that, it will be time to pack up and get ready for my next flight. I check out of the hotel tomorrow morning at 08:00 (EET) and take a flight from Kiev to Vienna 10:50 (EET) departure, arriving 11:55 (CET). This is followed by a 90 minute layover and then an Austrian Airlines flight to Dubai (13:30 CET depart, 21:10 GST arrival).

The colleagues from the Kiev office have been really friendly and helpful the entire time. The same can be said for the majority of the people I met. I can definitely recommend Kiev as a holiday location, or at least as a place on a european tour. Most young people speak English, which is good if you can’t speak/read Ukranian or Russian!

Check back again soon for the next part of my #sqlroadtrip, where you will see what I get up to in the Middle East.

Just as a teaser, I will be staying in a slightly better hotel in Dubai, details to follow when I have arrived

Here I am in Zurich airport waiting for my next flight in my round the world trip.

Maybe I should bacck up a little and explain.

Without going into too many details and possibly getting in trouble with work, they want me to go to some of our branch offices to setup some sql servers and get replication up and running. This project has been in the planning stages for millenia and it finally got the green light. I found out on Wednesday evening (25.05) that I would be starting my trip on Friday (27.05). My first port of call was our company headquarters in Switzerland, so that meant jumping on a plane on Friday morning and flying down to HQ.

Whilst there, I made the finishing touches to the setup and initialised the third branch office and created a snapshot of the data. This took me until this morning (28.05 – 03:00 CET), after which I had a 3 hour nap. I then went back to the office and got my stuff together ready for my trip to the first branch office in Kiev (we had done two offices as a practice run).

I then drove back up to Zurich to take my next flight, Zurich to Frankfurt (where I am whilst writing this). This is basically the warm-up for the real thing, as my Star Alliance “Around The World” Ticket starts in Frankfurt and takes me to Kiev, Dubai, Damamm, Dubai (again), Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Perth, Auckland, Los Angeles, Calgary, Houston, Veracruz, Houston (again), Rio de Janeiro, Frankfurt, Muenster. This is *by far* the most international travel I have ever done in my life (over 36000 miles), and it is all compressed into a 5 week schedule! I finally arrive home on the 4th of July. Right on time to see my parents (who are stopping by on a road-trip through europe), then celebrate my wife’s birthday on the 8th of July and, last but not least, go on holiday on the 10th of July.

To take a look at the route, follow this link: Great Circle Mapper

I shall be documenting the trip here and via the twitter hash-tag #sqlroadtrip, so keep coming back to see what I’ve been up to.

The Bad News

I recently found out that the owner of Atlantis Interactive has decided to throw in the towel with regards to his absolutely amazing SQL Server Tools and IDE.

Matt Whitfield has produced (on his own) a set of tools that puts a lot of full blown companies to shame! The IDE SQL Everywhere is a complete replacement for SSMS, but boasts a number of improvements/extra features that seem blindingly obvious when you see them in SQL Everywhere. My favourites are “extract as CTE” where you mark some code and allow SQL Everywhere to create a CTE for you, and the smart renaming of variables/aliases etc.

When I heard that he had made this decision, I could understand it, but still find it a shame. He was obviously in a hard market to start with, with some very firm competition. I am still surprised that the tools haven’t made any noticeable headway – there are loads of people looking for good tools, even in the niche of T-SQL development.

The Good News

Matt has not decided to throw away all that he created. He has unlocked all the tools and set them free! His blood, sweat and tears (well, not so much blood – I hope!) have not been wasted.

If you have had enough of the limitations of SSMS intellisense, or general SSMS strangeness, take a good look at SQL Everywhere. Whilst you are there, have a look at the other great tools he created, you will be surprised at what you find.

My hat goes off to him and I hope that this setback doesn’t stop him from giving it another go in the future.

@Matt – if you read this, I’m looking forward to meeting you at SQLBits. I would love to hear about any other ideas you have on the back burner

I entered into the competition on the off chance that I was picked and got to go to one of their week long training events. The gods were not smiling on me that day and I wasn’t chosen

However, this has not deterred me from continuing my quest for awesome training. I mentioned in my entry to the SQLskills competition that I would be going to SQLBits VIII. I have now completed all the preparations to be able to go there in April.

I will be attending the Friday training day and the Saturday community day and am looking forward to it. I know a couple of the people on the speakers list (the Saturday sessions are still open to voting, so the list may change yet) and hope to either catch up with them (Andre Kamman / Blog – we met at the PASS Summit in Seattle) or finally meet them in person (Matt Whitfield / Blog – we met online at ASK).

I am also hoping to meet up with a couple of other people from the ASK) site (in no particular order):

Jonathan Allen
Kev Riley
Thomas Rushton

They have all helped me a great deal in the last 6 months and I think a pint is in order! On top of which I would love to finally meet some SQL people from the UK, they are very thin on the ground where I live.

I also plan on making this a sort of reconnaissance mission for my employer. They recently made it clear that the PASS Summit is too pricey and I have been inofficially tasked with finding top-rated training a little closer to home. The videos of previous SQLBits conferences are very promising, so I expect things to work out well on that front.

I’ll be staying at the Best Western in Brighton, just down the road from the conference. As this is on my tab, The Grand was a little too much for my wallet to handle (maybe work will foot the bill the next time and SQLBits will be at the Ritz).

I look forward to meeting people and learning a few new things whilst I’m beside the seaside, beside the sea.

Hope to see you there.