a server hardware/environment question..

my network admin gives me two servers to set up for sql2k.
one will be for dev/testing qa, and one will be for production (mostly
reporting , not business operation type of stuff)
one server is good (raid 5), and the other is very good (raid 10).
the type of development will be in VB and data warehousing areas with
about 5 developers. the audience for the production reports can range
from a few people to a couple of hundreds of employees.
what would make the most sense in terms of server allocation?
should i give the best server to dev/testing? or to production (mainly
for reports)?
thank you.I tend to always give production the edge when building a dev server
(if I ca't have identical boxes); it will be more likely that
performance issues will show up on the weakest server, and I would
prefer to deal with them during development rather than production.
What would make this question interesting would be the processor and
memory specs as opposed to just the hard drive allocations...
HTH,
Stu|||On the development server when designing queries and report design
templates, you will probably want to work with more manageable subsets of
data, so the lessor equipped server should suffice. My development server is
typically just my PC with a local intall of SQL Server Developer edition.
"=== Steve L ===" <steve.lin@.powells.com> wrote in message
news:1121891806.861200.159450@.g49g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> my network admin gives me two servers to set up for sql2k.
> one will be for dev/testing qa, and one will be for production (mostly
> reporting , not business operation type of stuff)
> one server is good (raid 5), and the other is very good (raid 10).
> the type of development will be in VB and data warehousing areas with
> about 5 developers. the audience for the production reports can range
> from a few people to a couple of hundreds of employees.
> what would make the most sense in terms of server allocation?
> should i give the best server to dev/testing? or to production (mainly
> for reports)?
> thank you.
>|||> What would make this question interesting would be the processor and
> memory specs as opposed to just the hard drive allocations...
Yes, definitely if you can, have more than one processor in dev if your
production machines have > 1.
(Often problems due to parallel processing / plans can be missed because the
first time the queries have a chance to utilize that hardware is in
production.)
Also, try to have the same amount of memory, e.g. if production uses AWE
then you should have the same settings in dev (for the same reasons as
above).

a question for using bcp in stored procedure..

background: sql2k, nt5
is it possible to write a sp to do the following:
within the sp, create a #temp table
bcp a table from a mdb (Access) file to that #temp table directly (assuming
table structure would be the same).
or one has bring the Access table into sql server as a static table first?
would appreicate some sample (or psudo code). thank youYou could create a atored procedure that executes a DTS package via DTSRUN. The DTS package would be setup with the Access DB and specific Access table as the dats source and the SQL table as the destination

a price range dimension question

I'm using sql2k.
I'm providing a simplified scenario here.
I'm trying to build a fact table on sales (ie. item, price, quantity,
price*quantity).
I'd like build a cube that I can look up the price by range ($0-$5,
$5-10, $10-$15, etc...).
What's the best way to handle this? do i need a price range
dimension? or should i keep the price range in fact table?
I can't predict what new price will be added to sales, it could be
from 1 cent to any pricing, so if I were to build a price range
dimension, how would it look like?=== Steve L === wrote:
> I'm using sql2k.
> I'm providing a simplified scenario here.
> I'm trying to build a fact table on sales (ie. item, price, quantity,
> price*quantity).
> I'd like build a cube that I can look up the price by range ($0-$5,
> $5-10, $10-$15, etc...).
> What's the best way to handle this? do i need a price range
> dimension? or should i keep the price range in fact table?
> I can't predict what new price will be added to sales, it could be
> from 1 cent to any pricing, so if I were to build a price range
> dimension, how would it look like?
>
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I believe the price range would be considered more a criteria than a
dimension. The only price-range dimension table I could come up w/
would be something like this:
CREATE TABLE PriceRange (
range_code INT NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY,
start_value DECIMAL (11,2) NOT NULL,
end_value DECIMAL (11,2) NOT NULL
)
The fact table would hold the range_code. When you made the CUBE you'd
include the range_code. It might be faster to use range_codes if all
you're doing is a retrieval of data based on ranges. Probably, you
could include both range_code and price in the cube.
But, it make more sense to only use the price in the CUBE then you could
do SUMs and change the price range criteria for each query. Using the
PriceRange dimension - what happens when you want to change the range
criteria of a query? The PriceRange dimension would have to be rebuilt,
then the cube. Are you always going to be using the same price ranges?
--
MGFoster:::mgf00 <at> earthlink <decimal-point> net
Oakland, CA (USA)
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aJ07XYAO+lukEymGqGnn8aQe
=E0wk
--END PGP SIGNATURE--|||Hi Steve ,
This might solve your problem
Here the gap is 10 ,You can easily make it 5 ,qty can be changed to
price
SELECT LowRange,HiRange,COUNT(*)
FROM (SELECT lowRange = ((qty - 1) / 10) * 10 + 1
,HiRange=((qty - 1) / 10) * 10 + 10
FROM sales) AS ds
GROUP BY lowRange ,HiRange
Please let me know if it solved your purpose
With warm regards
Jatinder

a msde question (maintenance plan)...

can one use the maintenance plan to do a scheduled backup job for a
msde (sql2k) database? i tried to do it, but there is no schedule
availalbe under the complete backup tab. thank youWhat OS are you running on?
Andrew J. Kelly SQL MVP
"=== Steve L ===" <steve.lin@.powells.com> wrote in message
news:1112997703.048071.30180@.g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> can one use the maintenance plan to do a scheduled backup job for a
> msde (sql2k) database? i tried to do it, but there is no schedule
> availalbe under the complete backup tab. thank you
>|||OS is win2k, just like other servers, except on this box, only msde for
sql was installed.|||I assume you are using enterprise manager. Are you sure you have the msde
instance registered under an account with sa privileges? Is SQL Agent
running? Other than that I don't know why it wouldn't show up.
Andrew J. Kelly SQL MVP
"=== Steve L ===" <steve.lin@.powells.com> wrote in message
news:1113232709.552087.257980@.z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com...
> OS is win2k, just like other servers, except on this box, only msde for
> sql was installed.
>|||yes, i was running EM from the other server which has a full install of
sql2k.
the msde (and its sql agent) is running under a domain acct with sa
privileges.
i can create a scheduled backup job thru backup wizard, but am
wondering if anyone can do that thru creating a maintenance plan,
because the calendar function under the maintenance is not working, i
don't know if that's the limitation of msde since i have never dealt
with it before (i have always used the full version of sql in the
past).
thank you|||Got me too. I rarely deal with MSDE but I thought you could create a MP
with no problems.
Andrew J. Kelly SQL MVP
"=== Steve L ===" <steve.lin@.powells.com> wrote in message
news:1113255355.743242.110980@.o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com...
> yes, i was running EM from the other server which has a full install of
> sql2k.
> the msde (and its sql agent) is running under a domain acct with sa
> privileges.
> i can create a scheduled backup job thru backup wizard, but am
> wondering if anyone can do that thru creating a maintenance plan,
> because the calendar function under the maintenance is not working, i
> don't know if that's the limitation of msde since i have never dealt
> with it before (i have always used the full version of sql in the
> past).
> thank you
>