SelfTestAppendix•Appendix 115 A. ALTER PARTION FUNCTION… SPLIT B. ALTER TABLE … SWITCH C. ALTER TABLE … SPLIT D. Denormalize the table to 5 th Normal Form Answer A is correct. The partition function controls the boundary between partitions and will allow a new partition to be created. Alter table switch will transfer data, but won’t change the active partition for inserts. Alter table split is not a valid option. Schema changes are not necessary. 8. When a new SQL Server session is started that meets none of the criteria defined in the Classifier function, to which resource pool is the session assigned? A. Internal B. Default C. Custom-1 D. None The correct answer is B; all nonassigned sessions are executed by resources in the default resource pool. Internal is resource pool for SQL Server internal operations. Answers C and D are also incorrect. 9. You’re the Administrator for a SQL Server used by a number of departments within your organization. At the end of each month the Accounts department runs a number of reports that calculate complex ratios and analytics. During this time other users frequently receive timeouts and poor performance. What’s the best solution to limit the impact of these CPU-intensive reports run by Accounts? A. Implement table partitioning. B. Separate data and log files. C. Use Resource Governor. D. Request Accounting users run reports only at night. The correct answer is C. Use Resource Governor to configure a maximum CPU threshold for Accounting users. Answers A and B are good practice, but won’t necessary limit the impact of accounts’ reports. Answer D is a nice idea, but couldn’t guarantee this would actually happen. 116 Appendix•SelfTestAppendix 10. You’re a Systems Engineer responsible for SQL Server, and a case had been escalated via the helpdesk where a user reported an exception in an applica- tion—the error included deadlock victim. You’d like to implement monitoring to capture details of the deadlocked processes and locks held with minimum overhead. Should you: A. Start a SQL Profiler Trace. B. Capture Lock\Deadlocks per second with Windows System Monitor. C. Enable trace flag 1222. D. Review the sys.dm_tran_locks DMV. The correct answer is C; trace flag 1222 is the most lightweight method to capture the required information. SQL trace would provide this information, however there’s a performance impact when running a trace. Answers B and D are incorrect because neither will provide the required information. 11. A developer is using locking hints within a stored procedure and has some questions about lock escalation. You describe lock escalation as the time when SQL Server: A. Changes down from table locks to row locks. B. Changes from SHARED to UPDATE locks. C. Changes up from row lock to table locks. D. Changes from an UPDATE lock to EXCLUSIVE lock. The correct answer is C. Lock escalation occurs when SQL Server changes many fine-grained locks for fewer coarse grained locks, such as moving from many row locks to a single table lock. All other options are incorrect. 12. You’re working with an external vendor on a patch to their application. They’ve applied the patch to the test environment and would like to simulate some production-like workload to assess the success of the patch. You’ve decided to capture a SQL trace. Which trace template will you use? A. TSQL_Replay B. Tuning C. Standard (default) D. Capture_test_server The correct answer is A. The replay trace template was designed for capturing enough information to replay a trace on another server. SelfTestAppendix•Appendix 117 13. You’re responsible for SQL Server in the organization and the IT manager would like to forecast the remaining storage capacity that exists on the disk. Which SQL Server tools could help with capacity planning? A. SP_spaceused B. Resource Governor C. SQL Profiler D. Performance Data Collector Answer D is correct. The performance data collector tracks data and log file size and can help with capacity planning. sp_spaceused shows free space within a file, but doesn’t help in itself with capacity planning. Neither options B or C will help with capacity planning. 14. You’re responsible for SQL Server performance and one of the developers reports INSERTS are particularly slow. You suspect that a previous developer has created some redundant nonclustered indexes and these are hindering INSERT performance. How can you tell if an index is used? A. Sys.dm_db_index_usage_stats B. Sys.dm_db_index_request_count C. Sys.dm_redundant_indexes D. Sys.dm_db_missing_index_details Answer A is correct; index usage stats includes a count of user seeks and user scans, which can be useful to determine whether the optimizer has used an index since last restart. Options B and C are invalid DMVs. Answer D shows suggestions for new indexes to create, does not include details on usefulness of existing indexes. 15. There is blocking occurring on your production SQL Server, you’ve found the session at the head of the blocking chain, and retrieved the SQL_HANDLE. Now you need to find the query executed by the user. Which DMV can help? A. Sys.dm_exec_requests B. sys.dm_exec_sql_text C. sys.dm_db_query_plans D. sys.dm_stored_proc_text The correct answer is B; passing the SQL handle to this DMV will return the text of the actual query executed by the user causing blocking. Answer A can 118 Appendix•SelfTestAppendix be useful to find the user causing blocking, but not the query text. Neither options C or D are valid DMVs. 16. Which SQL Server versions can be monitored by the Performance Data Collector? A. SQL Server 2008 B. SQL Server 2005 C. SQL Server 2000 D. SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition The correct answer is A. The Performance Data Collector only works with SQL Server 2008 instances currently. 17. What’s the best method to run a SQL Trace with minimum overhead on the server being traced? A. Run SQL Profiler from your desktop. B. Run SQL Profiler from the server. C. Run a server-side trace to a database on the server. D. Run a server-side trace to a file on a fast local disk. The correct answer is D. The best method to minimize the overhead of running a SQL trace is to output the trace to a file on a fast local disk. Once the trace is stopped, the file can be copied to a workstation or another server for analysis. Answers A, B, and C are all valid options, but none are the best. 18. Which of the following collections could be monitored by the Performance Data Collector? A. SQL Trace B. T-SQL Queries C. Query Activity D. Client Response Statistics E. Performance Counters The correct answers are A, B, C, and E; all could be included in a custom data collection. Client response statistics could not be collected. SelfTestAppendix•Appendix 119 19. Which component of table partitioning determines the boundary between partitions? A. Partition function B. Partition scheme C. Partition index D. Partition view The correct answer is A. The partition function determines the boundary between partitions. 20. Which transaction property ensures changes are still present following a crash or system failure? A. Atomicity B. Consistency C. Isolation D. Durability The correct answer is D. Durability ensures all changes are written to the transaction log before being acknowledged to the application. Once written to the log, SQL Server guarantees durability of committed transactions. Chapter 14: Implementing Objects 1. You are creating a view named WeeklySales. This view is used to create a sales report that is presented to management at the beginning of each week. You want to ensure that the underlying tables on which this view is based are not accidentally modified causing the report to break. What is the easiest way to implement this? A. Use a CREATE VIEW WITH CHECK constraint to create a view. B. Use a CREATE VIEW WITH SCHEMABINDING statement to create the view. C. Do nothing. When a view is based on a table, the underlying table cannot be modified until the view is dropped. D. Use a DDL trigger to roll back any statement that attempts to modify the table that the view depends on. . DMVs. 16. Which SQL Server versions can be monitored by the Performance Data Collector? A. SQL Server 2008 B. SQL Server 2005 C. SQL Server 2000 D. SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition The correct. indexes. 15. There is blocking occurring on your production SQL Server, you’ve found the session at the head of the blocking chain, and retrieved the SQL_ HANDLE. Now you need to find the query. A. The Performance Data Collector only works with SQL Server 2008 instances currently. 17. What’s the best method to run a SQL Trace with minimum overhead on the server being traced? A. Run SQL