Michael Rys

Update on SQL PASS 2007 Presentations

mrys — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 04:01:00 GMT

I am giving 3 presentations at SQL PASS 2007 in Denver:

Wednesday, September 19th, 9:45am to 11am, room 709:
DBA-317-M The Next Release of Microsoft SQL Server: Beyond Relational
(co-presenting with Kevin Farlee)
Main focus will be the new features in the areas of unstructured and semistructured data management in SQL Server 2008.

Wednesday, September 19th, 1:30pm to 2:45pm, room 709:
AD-407-M Deep Dive into XQuery and XML in Microsoft SQL Server: Common Problems & Best Practice Solutions
This is the same presentation I gave at TechEd 2007, a bit shortened to fit into the timeslot. Focus is on SQL Server 2005 XQuery and XML optimizations, however they also will apply to SQL Server 2008.

Thursday, September 20th, 1:30pm to 2:45pm, room 709:
AD-312-M Building Spatial Application with Microsoft SQL Server
(co-presenting with Isaac Kunen)
This will be an updated presentation of the chalktalk that I gave at TechEd 2007. Main focus is that the demo runs now on the bits that will be shipping :).

We merged the Friday 4pm presentation on managing unstructured and semistructured data (AD-313-M) with the presentation on "Beyond Relational" that Kevin and I will give on Wednesday. Primarily because the two presentations had a large overlap and neither Shan nor Srini were able to attend.

SQL Server 2008 June CTP has been annouced at TechEd 2007.

mrys — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 15:35:00 GMT

At today's TechEd 2007 in Orlando, we have annouced SQL Server 2008's, formerly known as Katmai, first community tech preview (CTP). Unlike SQL Server 2005, where we took over 5 years, SQL Server 2008 will be delivered in less than 3! See here for the official scoop and register here!.

What does this bring for XML Support and other interesting programmability support, you may ask. Well, we are doing a bit of XML (not quiet as much as you may would have liked, but we need to also invest in other areas ;-) ), added a new MERGE statement, finally added some more usable date and time datatypes, work on adding support for spatial datatypes and indexing and a slew of other interesting, cool features.

I personally have been working on XML (obviously) and spatial indexing, besides being involved in one way or another with many of the programmability features, and - yes, that's the most important change for the product ;-) - the change of @@version from 9.0 to 10.0 :-).

I am at TechEd as well and will give the following breakout and chalk-talk presentations on XML and Spatial:

Wednesday, June 6 10:15 AM - 11:30 AM, Blue Theater 12:
DAT11-TLC - XML Q&A
Speaker(s): Peter DeBetta, Michael Rys
Two experts, one place to get your questions on XML in SQL Server answered. Interested in what's new in SQL Server 2008 ("Katmai"), or the new FOR XML PATH? Want to know when to use XML? How to index it? Need to know how to write an XQuery? Come to this session, and Michael and Peter will see that you get an answer.

Thursday, June 7 9:45 AM - 11:00 AM, Blue Theater 12:
DAT17-TLC - Spatial Support in Microsoft SQL Server

Speaker(s): Michael Rys, Michael Wang

The next version of SQL Server will include provide support for spatial data. This chalk talk presents the new spatial datatypes and indexing mechanisms so you can fully take advantage of the new capabilities that are being offered.

Friday, June 8 1:00 PM - 2:15 PM, S210 E:
DAT422 - Deep Dive into XQuery and XML in Microsoft SQL Server: Common Problems and Best Practice Solutions
Speaker(s): Michael Rys
This presentation provides a deep dive into the XML, XQuery, and XML indexing support in SQL Server 2005. It uses example scenarios that customers have come across when using XML and XQuery to show how to use optimize XQuery expressions, and provides the best practices on how to address the encountered issues.

Of additional interest should be the following presentations:

Today, Monday, June 4 3:00 PM - 4:15 PM, S320 A:
DAT201 - The Next Release of Microsoft SQL Server: Overview
Speaker(s): David Campbell
This session provides an overview of the next release of SQL Server that is currently under development. We cover the core value-proposition, major themes and scenarios, and some specific improvements. We also cover the new development processes being used to build this release, the release timeline and the disclosure calendar.

Tuesday, June 5 2:45 PM - 4:00 PM, N320 E:
DAT202 - The Next Release of Microsoft SQL Server: Beyond Relational

Speaker(s): Shishir Mehrotra
As the data your applications work with changes from “words and numbers” to “sights and sounds”, we are evolving our data platform to go beyond relational data, beyond OLAP, to truly support all of the digital data types of the future. We will strive to deliver the best platform for integrated storage, and advanced applications such as spatial data, while also making it dramatically easier for you to build data-driven applications, without needing to invest significant resources in bridging the gap between data and programming language data structures. Come learn about the new enhancements in the next release of SQL Server that will help you manage all types of data.

Tuesday, June 5 4:30 PM - 5:45 PM, S210 E:
DAT312 - XML in Microsoft SQL Server 2005
Speaker(s): Peter DeBetta
XML is now a native type in SQL Server 2005. This session explores this new type, XML methods, new features for shredding and composing XML, and provides an introduction to XQuery, XPath, and some preferred practices for implementing XML, and other XML-related topics.

Wednesday, June 6 3:45 PM - 5:00 PM, Blue Theater 12:
DAT18-TLC - Overview of New T-SQL Programmability Features in the Next Release of Microsoft SQL Server

Speaker(s): Michael Wang

This session offers a high level overview of all new T-SQL programmability features introduced in next release of SQL Server in terms of SQL type system, DDL, server procedure programming, supportability, and globalization.

Friday, June 8 10:45 AM - 12:00 PM, Blue Theater 12:
DAT06-TLC - New T-SQL System Types in Microsoft SQL Server Codename "Katmai"
Speaker(s): Michael Wang
This session focuses on all new T-SQL system data types introduced in next release of SQL Server.

I hope to see you there or at the TLC booth of SQL Server.

Now that we can publicly talk about "Katmai", I will be blogging more about what's new and be available to take your feedback.

Request for Feedback: Usage of xs:date and xs:dateTime and negative dates in SQL Server XML Schema Collections

mrys — Fri, 04 May 2007 04:51:00 GMT

Hi all SQL Server and XML enthusiasts!

As part of the next version of SQL Server, we have to stop supporting negative years in the two types xs:dateTime and xs:date in the XML data type for reasons I currently cannot go into details.

The SQL Server product team would like your help in deciding on what upgrade experience is acceptable. We would appreciate if you could do the following if you are storing XML in your database that is constrained with an XML schema collection (if you have customers, we would love to hear from their databases, but please ask them first whether you can run the script):

Consider the three upgrade options:

Database upgrade without size of data upgrade, affected tables, XML Schema Collections and XML indexes will be taken offline. A built-in system stored procedure will have to be run, that will perform the size of data upgrade, change negative dates to a user-provided date that needs to be positive and then recreates the indices and re-enables the tables and XML Schema collections.
Database upgrade without size of data upgrade, affected XML indexes will be taken offline. Creating an XML index and XQueries will fail if the data queried/indexed contains a negative date or dateTime value. A built-in system stored procedure will be provided, that for a given column will perform the size of data upgrade, and change negative dates to a user-provided date that needs to be positive. After this the query and index creation can be run.
Database upgrade with size of data upgrade for every XML column that can contain an xs: date or xs: dateTime value, affected XML indexes will be taken offline. As part of the upgrade process, negative dates are mapped to the smallest date 0001-01-01T00:00:00Z and the previous negative value will be logged. Users then can recreate the XML indices.

run the linked script on your SQL Server database instance.

Please run it under an account that has the most data visibility. You can run it in one of two ways:

run it to only gather metadata information. This is a short query looking at the catalog views and does not impact the system performance in a big way):
-- Just get the dependent columns per affected XML Schema Collection
exec DateTimeInvestigation 0
run it to gather metadata and data information. This may run a long time on the data and will most likely impact the system's performance, so please run it only after making sure that this cost is acceptable:
       -- Get the dependent columns per affected XML Schema Collection and
       -- the number of affected values
       exec DateTimeInvestigation 1
Please reply to this questionnaire by Monday, May 7 lunch time PDT providing your preferential ordering of 1.1 to 1.3 and attach the resulting XML document from run of 2. Note that we are of course still taking information from later runs but they may not be used for making this decision if they arrive too late.

I and the rest of the SQL Server team highly appreciate your help with this.

Best regards
Michael Rys
Principal Program Manager
SQL Server Engine Team

mrys at the microsoft place.

SQL Server 2005 SP2 has been released to the web

mrys — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 19:13:00 GMT

Today SQL Server 2005 SP2 has become officially available for download. It will be available on DVDs or CDs in March.

Besides fixing lots of issues that have been reported, SP2 also enables several BI functionalities of Office 2007.

Decimal data can now be stored as variable length in the SQL Server 2005 Enterprise and Developer Editions using the vardecimal storage format which can be used to minimize the disk space that is needed to store existing decimal and numeric data types. No application changes are required to use its benefits. It stores decimal and numeric data as variable length columns and can be enabled or disabled at a table level on new or existing tables. If you have declared a decimal or numeric column with high precision but most values in the column do not require many digits of precision, you can potentially save a large amount of the disk space that is needed to store the table. A new stored procedure is provided to estimate the reduction in average row size with the new storage format.

On the XML related front, we added a new table valued-function sys.dm_exec_text_query_plan to return text XML query plans that contain an XML nesting level greater than or equal to 128. If you are having many other areas where the current nesting depth limit in the XML data type is problematic, please let me know.

More details on what's new in SP2 can be found on the MSDN site.

The XML Team is asking for feedback for XQuery in .Net

mrys — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 20:50:00 GMT

Now that the W3C XQuery recommendation has been released, the XML Team, owners of MSXML and System.XML, are asking for feedback on a standalone XQuery implementation in .Net. If you have any opinion, wishes or use cases, please head over and let them know about it.

Very disturbing news: Jim Gray is missing!!!

mrys — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 16:28:00 GMT

According to the San Jose Mercury News:

A pioneering Bay Area computer scientist is missing after he left Sunday morning for what he told family was a day sailing trip to the Farallon Islands to dispose of his mother's ashes.

Jim Gray, 63, founder and manager of Microsoft's Bay Area Research Center, had left early Sunday in his 40-foot C&C yacht, Tenacious, from a marina near San Francisco's Fort Mason.

A U.S. Coast Guard spokeswoman said Gray called a family member on his cell phone about 10:30 a.m. to say he was sailing out of cell-phone range and would call when he returned in range. His wife reported him missing shortly after 8:30 p.m. Sunday when he did not show up and calls to his cell phone went unanswered.

I hope he is safe and will return. Jim is one of the sharpest mind and nicest person I had the pleasure to meet, and I would be a great loss to his friends and family and the community at large.

[Update 2007-02-01: Still no news :(. A friend at Oracle told me that they are providing satellite imagery processing to the search. I truely hope that he is ok and will be found.]

[Update 2007-02-01: Additional articles:

Coast Guard web site with info
Coast Guard search pattern (and Coast Guard map, less readable)
Coast Guard stops searching (more details and speculations too. And search continues today after all. Similar stories at SilliconValley.com)
Coast Guard extends searching after all

]

[Update 2007-02-03: Private search efforts and how you can help looking through satellite and plane images at Amazon's Mechanical Turk:

Jim’s friends and colleagues have gathered a large collection of satellite images from the search area. They need volunteers to look through the satellite images and flag an image if the image looks like it contains a boat.

If you’d like to help, here are the links to go look at the images http://skydev.pha.jhu.edu/szalay/tenacious/tiles/
they are also available on Amazon Mechanical Turk http://www.mturk.com/mturk/preview?groupId=J0XZ58STDWJZ5QY4F9M0
The following is the blog that they are using to coordinate the search efforts. http://openphi.net/tenacious/

]

[Update 2007-02-13: Go to the "Help find Jim" website for seeing how to help]

XQuery 1.0, XSLT 2,0 and XPath 2.0 have lift-off :)

mrys — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 03:41:00 GMT

Finally, after working on it for almost 8 years, XQuery 1.0, XSLT 2.0 and XPath 2.0 have finally been released as W3C recommendations. It has been a long and interesting journey for all involved and now we hope that people start to use it and provide us implementers with feedback on where we need to improve either our implementation or the language. Because the Working Group has started on gathering requirements for the next version of XQuery.

Here are the official W3C links:

the official W3C announcement
press release
testimonials (including one from yours truly)

And here are the links to the final documents:

Enjoy!

SQL Server 2005 SP2 CTP is available

mrys — Thu, 09 Nov 2006 11:52:00 GMT

As I sit in Schiphol in an area with a shaky wireless connection (so don't be surprised if it get sent when I am back home [as I feared, the network went down when I hit send]), travelling back from Convergence EMEA in Munich (while everyone else was able to enjoy Barcelona at TechEd Europe instead...), I got notice that the Community Tech Preview (CTP) of Service Pack 2 (SP2) of SQL Server 2005 has been made available for download.

You can find all the available links, docs, support instructions, & information on CTP2 at: http://www.microsoft.com/sql/ctp.mspx

Also note that in the context of XML processing, the major change happened in CTP1, where we added a dynamic management function to give you access to your open OpenXML handles.... A topic for a future blog post since they are boarding the plane now ;-)....

Report from the W3C XQuery and XSLT WG Meeting

mrys — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 18:46:00 GMT

Hello all

I hope I still have some readers... Sorry for having been quiet over the last year. I will post more what I have been up to in a later post. Today I am posting some good news from the W3C XQuery and XSLT working group meeting:

A year after going into Candidate Recommendation (and after we shipped SQL Server 2005), the working group just finished triaging the last feedback against the XQuery and XSLT family of specs. This means that the technical work for XQuery 1.0, XPath 2.0 and XSLT 1.0 has been completed (wink wink, nudge nudge - say no more ;-)).

What do you want to see regarding XML support in the next version of SQL Server?

mrys — Sat, 26 Nov 2005 09:20:00 GMT

Now that we have shipped SQL Server 2005, I would really like to hear from you what you want us to do regarding XML support in SQL Server 2005. Feel free to either contact me directly or even better, file a request at the Microsoft Connect Site.

[updated: 2007-01-23: added link to Microsoft Connect Site and removed request to add requests to comment section]

Watch out Europe - Here I come...

mrys — Sat, 26 Nov 2005 08:51:00 GMT

Tomorrow I will be on my way to Europe for the SQL Server Launch Events in Zurich and Lausanne (Switzerland) and Athens (Greece). In Switzerland I will be presenting a specially made presentation on "What's new in SQL Server 2005" that will be more technical than the general launch presentation that I am giving in Athens.

In addition, I will be visiting family, speak at the .Net User Group in Kuesnacht on XQuery and XML in SQL Server 2005, and will give two presentations on SQL Server in general and XML in particular at the Swedish SQL Server User group in Stockholm on December 8.

If you are around, feel free to stop by and say hi.

SQL Server 2005, MySpace.com and Quiznos: What do they have in common?

mrys — Wed, 16 Nov 2005 23:12:00 GMT

Now that we have shipped SQL Server 2005, I am happy to see that people are interested in using it. Today, I ask you the following riddle:

What does SQL Server 2005, MySpace.com and Quiznos have in common?

Well, here is the answer:

Here is a link to Rick Penwell's blog on the MySpace next generation project. Why is that interesting you ask? Because MySpace.com is among the top 10 most visited websites in the world and because he will be using SQL Server 2005 and the XML datatype for the next generation! And btw, Rick: You are very welcome! And feel free to contact me with any questions, issues, feedback and requests (as long as it is not overwhelming my inbox :-)).

So what about Quiznos? Well, I don't know what they use in their IT department, but a co-worker of mine recently went to a Bellevue Quiznos for lunch. Here is an excerpt from his email (posted with permission):

I was at Quizno’s subs for lunch today and I was wearing a SQL Server shirt. The guy that takes the money asks if I work for SQL Server and tells me how much he likes SQL Server 2005, particularly the XML stuff.

Man! If a guy working in a sub shop knows what SQL Server 2005 XML is, and what he can do with it, then somebody has done a really good job!

Great! I just hope that this will enable him to work on something else than the check-out counter at a fast-food place :-). So do this guy a favor and develop on SQL Server 2005! :-)

So here you have it: SQL Server 2005, MySpace.com and Quiznos have (at least at some level :-)) the XML data type in common!

International SQL Server Survey: Win a portable music player!

mrys — Mon, 14 Nov 2005 07:05:00 GMT

The Windows Server System team is doing a Learning and Help survey and need more SQL Server specific feedback.

If you live outside of the United States or Canada, we want to know more about your experience with SQL Server!

How did you initially learn to use SQL? What are your preferences for learning new topics?

What can we do to make SQL easier to learn and use?

Send e-mail to wssinfo@microsoft.com to obtain a secure code and link to the survey. Complete the survey for a chance to win a portable MP3 player!

(Please note the survey language in your mail: English, French, German, Spanish, Russian, Japanese, Korean, Chinese Simplified or Chinese Traditional).

---

In German:

Das Windows Server System team fuehrt eine Lern- und Hilfesystemumfrage durch und braucht mehr SQL Server spezifisches Feedback.

Falls Ihr ausserhalb der USA oder Kanada lebt, wollen wir mehr ueber Eure Erfahrungen mit SQL Server wissen!

Wie habt Ihr anfaenglich SQL gelernt? Wie lernt Ihr am besten neue Gebiete?

Wie koennen wir SQL einfacher zum Lernen und Benutzen vermitteln?

Sendet Email an wssinfo@microsoft.com, um den Sicherheitskode und den Link zur Umfrage zu erhalten. Fuellt die Umfrage aus und erhaltet die Moeglichkeit einen MP3 player zu gewinnen!

(Bitte gebt die bevorzugte Sprache in Eurer Email an: Englisch, Franzoesisch, Deutsch, Spanisch, Russisch, Japanisch, Koreanisch, Vereinfachtes oder Traditionelles Chinesisch)

SQL Server 2005 and Visual Studio 2005 Launches

mrys — Mon, 07 Nov 2005 16:35:00 GMT

Today is the big launch. Steve B. is giving the launch keynote in San Francisco. I am currently sitting in a meeting room at a competitor's place where I am at for a W3C XQuery meeting watching the live webcast during our lunch break :-). I already provided a list of many (but not all) of the new and improved features of SQL Server 2005. Today's launch has some additional cool tidbits:

We broken through the 10$/transaction cost on the TPC-H 100GB benchmark and are also on top in terms of performance.
We have achieved the best price/transaction on the TPC-H 1TB benchmark.
We have the lowest cost per transaction for TPC-C overall at 99cents per transactions.
We have achieved 93'000 certified concurrent users in the SAP benchmark (that is an order of magnitude bigger than the largest SAP installations today! And more than 3 times better than on SQL Server 2000 and the earlier hardware...). Even I was surprised to see how many new SAP installations are going with SQL Server now.

On the XML side, we have no benchmarks yet (we should probably design some). But we have several both internal and external customers that built and deployed applications with SQL Server 2005's XML features. One of our internal sites replaced a 4000 line FOR XML EXPLICIT query with a 300 line FOR XML PATH query. Several of the early adopters of SQL Server 2005 already make use of the new XML datatype for storing documents. Some have documents that conform to their respective industry standard schemas. Others use XML and XQuery to process data that quickly changes its shape or is provided by their customers. Since I have not asked for their permission to be named on my blog, I probably better don't give out their names. I will see, if we can show-case one or two over the next couple of months if there is interest. In any case, such real world customer scenarios are in the end much more important than artificial benchmarks. And your feedback on performance and functionality will help us give you an even better experience in future releases.

Some other noteworthy SQL Server 2005 tidbits from the launch:

The SQL Server 2005 Express Edition has a management tool! It is currently a CTP release, but mainly to be able to give it a beta cycle. It is available for download from the MSDN site for free (as are VS 2005 Express and SQL Server Express).
About 50 hosting services will provide support for VS 2005 and SQL Server 2005 starting today. Maybe I should find some spare time to build something myself :-).

As to my launch involvement: I will be speaking at the two Swiss launch events later this month and I will also give the launch keynote in Athens, Greece on December 6th. On the way back I got invited to speak at and meet with the Swedish SQL Server user group in Stockholm. If you hang out in any of these areas, I am looking forward to meet you!

XQuery 1.0 and XSLT 2.0 are now in Candidate Recommendation

mrys — Thu, 03 Nov 2005 15:17:00 GMT

Finally, after 6 years of hard work, the W3C has released the Candidate Recommendation specs for XQuery 1.0, XPath 2.0 and XSLT 2.0. Does this mean that the recommendations are done? No, not yet. But it means that we reached an important milestone. Now everyone is officially invited to implement the specs, run the test suite, and provide feedback. Within the next couple of months, we will see which ones of the features will have at least two implementations with the same result and what may be underspecified or will not find an implementation.

Here are the specs:

We also release a new working draft for the XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2.0 Full-Text part:

As Michael Champion mentioned, the design by committee approach to standardization is sometimes slow, especially if it is somewhat feature-driven and not date-driven, and it is frought with compromise decisions, but I think the XQuery, XPath and XSLT specs are actually in pretty good shape and provide lots of useful functionality.

Since we now ship SQL Server 2005 with its XQuery subset and are planning the next release, I would like to encourage you to check out the XQuery specs (including the Full-Text specs) and let me know what functionality you want us to implement with the highest priority in the next release of SQL Server.