[dba-SQLServer] SQL Server 2005 unresponsive

jwcolby jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com
Fri Sep 4 15:26:06 CDT 2009


Francisco,

Thanks for the suggestions.

 > It's not Sql Server ALLOWING the ODBC call to send it to turtle mode, it's ODBC, that library is 
inherently slow, and has problems with larger datasets.

Yes but - how can it cause SQL server to lock it up?  All that is going on is that Access is running 
Stored procedures.  Now these stored procedures do big operations, but still...

I thought that SQL Server would magically prevent anyone from bringing it to it's knees.  Naive I know.

You may very well be right of course.  I have so much data to store that I have been concentrating 
on size instead of "spindles".  I have some spare drives I can use.  I will throw those on there 
Raid 0.  I doubt seriously that the CURRENT bottle neck is the controller, though it may very well 
change to that if I do a what we are discussing.

Actually I do have a spare card hanging around.  In fact i put it in my other server (just to see if 
it could be used simultaneously) and when I took it back out the raid software puts up a "raid 
missing" message at boot up.  I cannot get rid of that message.

Anyway... I could put that in and throw some extra drives on that controller.  My bigger problem 
really is a another power supply.  That server currently has 11 hard drives in it.

I will definitely do that though just to see what that gets me.  I have to do something!.

John W. Colby
www.ColbyConsulting.com


Francisco Tapia wrote:
> It's not Sql Server ALLOWING the ODBC call to send it to turtle mode, it's
> ODBC, that library is inherently slow, and has problems with larger
> datasets.
> 
> If you are seeing slowness on your SQL Server you'll need to fine tune a few
> things
> 
> 
> First check the size of of your transaction logs, whenever they exceed 50%
> of the data file size, then you can begin running into some performance
> problems.  (normally i see this if my transaction log file is 2x or more
> than my data file.)
> 
> also check the tempdb
> 
> When you are MOVING a lot of data around, the way you are, you want to have
> each data partition on it's own set of spindle disks, this applies largely
> to your transaction logs, because you don't want to loose the data but you
> want the system to process extremely quick, you should look into raid 10 if
> you can afford it. For TempDB it's possible to squeeze a lot of performance
> on the disks, first tempdb is always rebuilt when the server comes back up,
> and all data is just temporary, so you could go with a pair of raid 0
> drives, possibly 3 spindles if you need the extra speed.  Striping is the
> fastest possible solution to speeding up IO,  ideally of course you'll want
> to have this on it's own separate i/o card and own channel if possible.
> 
> benchmark your system by running it through the paces of the SQLIO
> benchmarking tool from MS
> http://www.microsoft.com/DOWNLOADS/details.aspx?familyid=9A8B005B-84E4-4F24-8D65-CB53442D9E19&displaylang=en
> and benchmark as you move towards faster drives to see the new throughput.
> In your case you might be easily impressed by moving the tempdb to a set of
> raid 0 drives.
> 
> 
> -Francisco
> http://sqlthis.blogspot.com | Tsql and More...
> 
> 
> On Fri, Sep 4, 2009 at 10:12 AM, jwcolby <jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com>wrote:
> 
>> Jim,
>>
>> Thanks for the response.  I have to agree, it does seem to be something
>> ODBC / Access related in
>> that pretty much everything I do directly inside of SQL Server works just
>> fine.  It is annoying that
>> SQL Server would ALLOW an ODBC call from Access to cause it to go into
>> turtle mode though.
>>
>>  > Have you tried .Net?
>>
>> Oddly enough I have, but it was some time ago.  I was doing this stuff in
>> VB.Net / ADO, but I was so
>> slow at the .Net development that when I needed to "get something done" I
>> just went back to Access.
>>  I cannot make any valid comparisons however as back when I was doing the
>> .Net work I also was a
>> complete nube at the SQL Server stuff as well, couldn't even write a SP.
>>
>> I am taking a C# class now and will be moving squarely into C# in the
>> future.  I have pretty much
>> made a decision to make that my future.  But in the here and now...
>>
>> John W. Colby
>> www.ColbyConsulting.com
>>
>>
>> Jim Lawrence wrote:
>>> I think the issue is Access related and not MS SQL. Had exactly the same
>>> issues when connected to an Oracle DB. I ended up writing code that would
>>> save my results to a temporary table, in the Oracle DB and then would
>> have
>>> Access just retrieve the table results.
>>>
>>> The single process step of gathering the data and downloading a
>> recordset,
>>> via ADO would sometimes cause a hang up. If I used ODBC, it would always
>>> cause a hold up especially on larger data sets.
>>>
>>> Have you tried .Net?
>>>
>>> Jim
>>
>>
> _______________________________________________
> dba-SQLServer mailing list
> dba-SQLServer at databaseadvisors.com
> http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-sqlserver
> http://www.databaseadvisors.com
> 
> 



More information about the dba-SQLServer mailing list