HELP - Agent has put me in a job overseas with no interview, and my skills don´t fit

[TimberWolf]

I haven’t used these products but is there an execution plan, and if so is it built some time before execution, or just prior? I’m wondering whether an execution plan might be different (carp) if run against small test datasets rather than a huge live one. That is, the order the joins are done might affect performance significantly, and I don’t recall a method of forcing the issue in SQL.

[Zorba]

There are but they don't like you mentioning it as it is something of a goldmine for them.

Nonsense. Besides, what he should be doing is rewriting it all in .Net. It's the future.

[KentPhilip]

Well I survived the short contract. Client now talking about possibly asking me back in the new year, but nothing definite.

What I did was to get on to rentacoder.com and post my problems there. I got a reply from a UK-based experienced SQL Server DBA, and he spent a couple of hours on the skype phone in the evening at the client going through and sorting the problems. Only 25 quid and hour he charged - he was trying to operate a business for multiple clients to escape IR35, so a win-win situation all round it seems.

Of course the way I played it with the client was that I was part of a consultancy, and "the service we offer you consists of input from me and our other experienced consultants"...

[Diver]

Well played. But time to bone up on it yourself now, don't you think

[BrowneIssue]

Well I survived the short contract. Client now talking about possibly asking me back in the new year, but nothing definite.

Sorted.

[NotAllThere]

Well I survived the short contract. Client now talking about possibly asking me back in the new year, but nothing definite.

What I did was to get on to rentacoder.com and post my problems there. I got a reply from a UK-based experienced SQL Server DBA, and he spent a couple of hours on the skype phone in the evening at the client going through and sorting the problems. Only 25 quid and hour he charged - he was trying to operate a business for multiple clients to escape IR35, so a win-win situation all round it seems.

Of course the way I played it with the client was that I was part of a consultancy, and "the service we offer you consists of input from me and our other experienced consultants"...

Well done! I suggest now you invest in a SAP Basis course. You've got the experience - so it's a good time to get the training.

[TimberWolf]

So what was the answer?

[KentPhilip]

Well done! I suggest now you invest in a SAP Basis course. You've got the experience - so it's a good time to get the training.

Well hmm I guess that SAP pays better than SQL, but two weeks experience, when I was working on the SQL Server not the SAP bit of it - would that count as "experience" as far as clients were concerned?

[KentPhilip]

So what the answer?

Quite prosaic really. The 9-table query that was taking 90 seconds to run was actually using a bad execution plan. I ran dbcc indexdefrag first - no fix. Then I ran dbcc dbreindex- no fix.
Finally I ran alter index all on <tablename> rebuild with (ONLINE = ON)
This query ran and ran, and I eventually had to manually kill it. But half way through I ran the original query, and it took only 4 seconds to run, with a radically different query plan.

The tempdb never filled up during the time I was there - so a SAP index error they had received, that I got them to resolve, must have been the problem.

As for the third problem, not resolved yet, but I'm writing them a script for reindexing (on more than 1000 tables - eek!), and if that doesn't work, will suggest more drives in the data drive SAN to increase disk io.

[wendigo100]

Well done.

How is your pimping going?