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December 2, 2004
1. Perspectives
2. News and Views
3. Announcements
4. Peer to Peer
5. Events Central
6. New and Improved
- Migrate Stored Procedures
- Get File-Based Continuous Data Protection
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1. Perspectives
by Brian Moran, [email protected]
Last August, in "Will Stinger Steal Yukon's Glory?" ( http://www.windowsitpro.com/Article/ArticleID/43713/43713.html ), I commented about how interesting it was that IBM DB2's latest release beat Microsoft to market with native Common Language Runtime (CLR) support within the database engine. Since then, I've further explored how the DB2-CLR implementation compares to the CLR support that SQL Server 2005 will have next year. I spoke with several people from Microsoft, including SQL Server Director of Product Management Tom Rizzo, SQL Server Group Program Manager for CLR Mahesh Prakriya, and SQL Server Group Program Manager for the relational database engine Balaji Rathakrishnan. They gave me some helpful information about the most important differences between SQL Server 2005 CLR implementations and IBM DB2 8.2's implementations.
DB2 supports CLR 1.0 or CLR 1.1, whereas SQL Server 2005 will support CLR 2.0, which provides a richer and more powerful set of hosting APIs. To be fair, because Whidbey hasn't been released, IBM couldn't have supported CLR 2.0. However, the richer hosting APIs in Whidbey are incredibly important to SQL Server 2005's ability to host the CLR in-process. DB2 hosts its CLR out-of-process by using what IBM calls a "fenced mode." I believe that the difference between in-process and out-of-process CLR implementation is perhaps the single most important difference between Microsoft and IBM in this regard. Among other things, hosting in-process will provide substantial performance gains. Sources at Microsoft told me that in lab tests, the SQL Server 2005 CLR implementation performs up to seven times faster than the out-of-process IBM implementation.
In addition, the richer hosting APIs in Whidbey let SQL Server dynamically optimize the CLR within its view of what's happening within the process. DB2's reliance on previous versions of the CLR prevents the core engine from dynamically tuning the CLR as well as SQL Server 2005 will be able to. DB2 simply won't know what's happening inside of the CLR process. Think of it this way: SQL Server is essentially acting as the OS for the CLR. In comparison, DB2 and its CLR aren't much more than side-by-side processes that talk to each other like any other two processes might. Neither process has much information about the other, and neither process can make intelligent decisions about how it should run based on the activity in the other process.
The differences in SQL Server and DB2 security are also important. SQL Server 2005 will pass along security and context information so that the CLR can effectively impersonate the original caller when external resources are accessed. DB2's CLR is based on process and user-level isolation, similar to the way SQL Server 2000's xp_cmdshell works, which isn't as flexible as SQL Server 2005's security model.
DB2 doesn't support user-defined types (UDTs) or user-defined aggregates (UDAs) within the CLR implementation--SQL Server 2005 will. CLR assemblies in SQL Server 2005 are a native part of the database and are stored in the database. DB2 assemblies are stored in the file system and administrators must back them up separately, making backup and recovery more difficult. SQL Server 2005's CLR has more sophisticated host protection, which prevents users from calling certain .NET APIs that could be dangerous to run within the engine. DB2's host protection isn't as rigorous as SQL Server's. For example, opening a GUI dialog box from a DB2 CLR procedure would essentially hang that connection, whereas SQL Server's CLR would consider such an action unsafe and prevent it. A DB2 CLR procedure could call the Environment.Exit method, which would essentially shut down the entire DB2 CLR instance. Again, the host protection in the Microsoft version would prevent this action. Microsoft has provided a richer level of tool support and tighter integration with Visual Studio .NET. For example, SQL Server 2005 will let you step through a CLR procedure by using the Visual Studio debugger. This isn't possible with the DB2 implementation. You can manually attach to the CLR process for debugging, but DB2 doesn't natively support debugging in the core development tools.
The entire list of differences between the Microsoft and IBM CLR implementations is long, so I'll stop now and just give you a few links that will help you dive deeper into the subject. For a comprehensive overview, see "Comparing SQL Server 2005 and IBM DB2 v8.2 as a Database Platform for Visual Studio and .NET Developers" by Michael and Denielle Otey at http://download.microsoft.com/download/c/e/c/cecc2098-85a1-4c41-98bd-f4c6d566a78d/DatabaseForVSDevelopers.pdf. Or, you can review the published Web chat "SQL Server Chat: SQL Server 2005 Beta 2 CLR Q&A," sponsored by the SQL Server Worldwide Users Group (SSWUG) at http://www.microsoft.com/technet/community/chats/trans/sql/SQL_101204.mspx. And Microsoft's Chris Brumme writes a Weblog ( http://blogs.msdn.com/cbrumme/category/2669.aspx ) that has some great CLR information.
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2. News & Views
"Approximately how long have you worked in IT?" Here are the results from the 406 votes:
3. Announcements
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4. Peer to Peer
by Brian Moran, [email protected]
Q. When I query the fn_trace_getinfo() function, I see a trace running. When I try to stop the trace by using EXEC sp_trace_setstatus trace_id, 0, SQL Server shuts down. When I restart SQL Server, the trace is running again. What is this trace, and how do I stop it?
Read the answer to this question today at
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SQL Server Magazine conducted its 113-question industry and salary survey from August 23 through September 10, 2004. We sent email invitations to about 30,000 SQL Server professionals who had opted to receive information from the magazine, and we promoted the survey in our UPDATE email newsletters and on our Web site. The magazine offered five $100 (US) American Express gift certificates as an incentive to participate in the survey. A total of 778 people provided data by the close date. See what respondents had to say in our three December focus articles.
Read "Masters of Multitasking" today at
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Read "Who Makes What?" today at
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Read "SQL Server Pros: Surviving or Thriving?" today at
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Hot Threads: Check out the following hot threads, and see other
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Need Help Writing a SELECT Statement
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Running dtsrun.exe on a 64-Bit Server
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Migrating a Maintenance Plan
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Can I Query a Stored Procedure's Results?
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Setting Low Priority on Automatic Stored Procedure
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Hot Spot
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5. Events Central
Sign up today for this FREE, one-hour Web Seminar and learn how to ensure your SQL Server applications are always highly available. You'll also discover ways to best protect your mission-critical data and gain a better understanding of the associated metrics helping to quantify the value of your SQL Server based application data. Register now:
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Mark your calendar for the spring 2005 SQL Server Magazine Connections conference March 20-23, 2005, at the Hyatt Grand Cypress Resort in Orlando, Florida. You won't want to miss this exciting event offering cutting-edge sessions by industry gurus. Call 800-438-6720 or 203-268-3204 for more info and check our Web sites for updates.
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See the complete Windows IT Pro Network guide to Web and live events
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6. New & Improved
by Dawn Cyr, [email protected]
AdventNet announced the release of a free edition of SwisSQL Database Stored Procedure Migration Tools, part of the company's suite of tools that automates migration of complex proprietary stored procedures, SQL dialects, database schema, and enterprise data between database platforms. The SwisSQL database migration suite is the first toolset to offer stored procedure migration. The free edition, which is designed for small projects or parts of larger projects, lets customers migrate up to 5000 lines of stored procedures across SQL Server, Oracle, IBM DB2, and Sybase databases. The free edition supports all the migration features of the product's Professional Edition, which you can try free for 30 days. The free edition of SwisSQL Database Stored Procedure Migration Tools is available for download at http://www.swissql.com . Pricing for the Professional Edition is based on the number of lines you need to migrate and starts at $495. For other product information and pricing, contact AdventNet at 925-924-9500 or [email protected].
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TimeSpring Software announced TimeData, file-based continuous data-protection software. The software automatically captures all changes to application data in realtime so that transaction-dependent organizations--such as those involved in the financial, retail, healthcare, and manufacturing industries--can recover from data loss, corruption, or security breaches in minutes. The software makes it possible to perform offline processing such as reporting, analysis, or application testing by capturing all application and file metadata changes as they occur. The product checks all data changes for consistency and time stamps them in a secure repository built on a standard Windows server. The data repository provides a complete change history and audit trail for application data that's easy to access and use. Pricing for TimeData starts at $1295 per file server. For more information, contact TimeSpring Software at 408-834-8966 or 888-375-7634.
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