Dil se ...

Hindi Lyrics:
Ooo...
Ek sooraj nikla tha
Kuchh paara pighla tha
Ek aandhi aayi thi
Jab dil se aah nikli thi
Dil se re

Ek sooraj nikla tha
Kuchh paara pighla tha
Ek aandhi aayi thi
Jab dil se aah nikli thi
Dil se re

Dil se re dil se re
Dil se re dil se re
Dil se re
Dil to aakhir dil hai na
meethi si mushkil hai na
Piya piya
Piya piya piya na piya
Jiya jiya jiya na jiya
Dil se re

Dil se re dil se re
Dil se re dil se re
Dil se re
Dil to aakhir dil hai na
meethi si mushkil hai na
Piya piya
Piya piya piya na piya
Jiya jiya jiya na jiya
Dil se re

Ooo....
Do patte patjhad ke pedon se utrey thay
Pedon ki shaakhon se utrey thay
Phir utne mausam guzre vo patte do bechaare
Phir ugne ki chaahat mein vo sehraon se guzre
Vo patte dil dil dil thay
Vo dil thay dil dil dil thay
Dil hai to phir dard hoga
dard hai to dil bhi hoga
Mausam guzarte rehte hain
Dil hai to phir dard hoga
dard hai to dil bhi hoga
Mausam guzarte rehte hain
Dil se dil se dil se dil se
dil se re

Dil to aakhir dil hai na
meethi si mushkil hai na
Piya piya
Piya piya piya na piya
Jiya jiya jiya na jiya
Dil se re

Ooo...
Bandhan hai rishton mein
kaaton ki taarein hain
Patthar ke darwaaze deewaarein
Belein phir bhi ugti hain
aur guchchhe bhi khilte hain
Aur chalte hain afsaane
kirdaar bhi milte hain
Vo rishtey dil dil dil thay
Vo dil thay dil dil dil thay
Gam dil ke pak chulbule hain
paani ke ye bulbule hain
Bujhte hain bate rehte hain
Gam dil ke pak chulbule hain
paani ke ye bulbule hain
Bujhte hain bate rehte hain
Dil se dil se dil se dil se
dil se re
Dil se re dil se re
Dil se re dil se re

Dil to aakhir dil hai na
meethi si mushkil hai na
Piya piya
Dil to aakhir dil hai na
meethi si mushkil hai na
Piya piya piya na piya
Piya piya
Jiya jiya jiya na jiya
Piya piya piya na piya
Dil se re
Jiya jiya jiya na jiya
Dil se re
Dil se re dil se re
Dil se re.

Interviews

Interviews

Here are some of the rules of engagement (the full description of how to go about this has been uploaded to the Engineering website):

You must call your customer at least once a week to ask how they are doing
You must provide alternative contact details (e.g. home phone number) for when the customer has any kind of urgent questions and needs to contact someone from the Product Group. If you go on vacation, please provide your cell phone or hotel number.
Every 4 months you will be required to present a detailed overview of the customer, its operations and uses of SQL Server to our VP and the Senior Leadership Team. You will have 5 minutes each to do this, with a maximum of two slides – time is limited as they will have over 1000 presentations to sit through.
You will be going on-site with the customer twice or more during the year, depending on the customer. This may not be much fun for some of you but experiences may vary (e.g. Ryan's customer is Disney, so he will be living in DisneyWorld, Orlando during July and August this year – its unclear which Disney character suit he will be wearing. Rob's customer is Barnes and Noble, so you may spot him on the checkstands at B&N in Crossroads during the year. My assigned customer is the Renault Formula One team, so I'm going to be forced to go to all F1 races around the world this year – luck of the draw I suppose!)
You will be expected to support the customer by purchasing some of their products, and evangelizing their products to your friends and family, for a small percentage return on profits from sales. This may be easier for some than for others - e.g. Ryan will have no problem with Disney, but Kevin (who has Boeing) and Mike (who has Lockheed Martin) may have a lot more difficulty, but with a lot more to gain! Ingenuity will be rewarded!
For those (approx. 74) people who have offshore telecom companies (e.g. Brian who has Korea Telecom), you will be given a local telephone number in that country and should make all calls (including local calls) through that number. Your DSL service will also be routed through that country.
When representatives from the customers are visiting campus here in Redmond, it’s expected that you spend as much time with them as possible, including all meals. You should provide a personal airport shuttle service and if possible, arrangements should be made for them to stay at your house. You will be able to expense all costs involved with this, to a generous maximum of $35/day.
The spreadsheet with your customer assignments is at \\internalMSmachine\public\prandal\adopt\customers.xls
Please checkout the Engineering site for full details. Let me know if you have any questions, comments or concerns.

Backing up the tail of the log

Backing up the tail of the log 19th July

One of the first things you should always check when a database has been damaged and you're going to perform a restore operation is whether you need to back up the tail of the log.
The tail of the log contains the transaction log that's been generated since the most recent log backup was taken. If you want to be able to recover right up to the point of the disaster, you need to be able to get those log records so they can be part of the restore sequence.
There are two cases to consider here 1) the server is still available 2) the server is not available. For case 1, you can just perform a regular tail-of-the-log backup. For case 2, you'll need to hack-attach the log into another server to be able to back it up.
Case 1: tail-of-the-log backup when server is available
If the database is damaged but the server is still available, taking a tail-of-the-log backup is simple. The only exception is when there has been a minimally-logged operation performed in the BULK_LOGGED recovery model since the previous log backup - in that case a tail-of-the-log backup is not possible at all, and you'll have lost all transaction log generated since the last log backup. See A SQL Server DBA myth a day: (28/30) BULK_LOGGED recovery model for more details.
When the data files are damaged and you want to take a log backup, you'll get an error if you try to back up the log normally.
As an example, I'll create a database and put some transactions in it:

CREATE DATABASE DBMaint2008;
GO
USE DBMaint2008;
GO
CREATE TABLE TestTable (C1 INT IDENTITY, C2 CHAR (100));
GO
-- Take a full backup
BACKUP DATABASE DBMaint2008 TO DISK = 'D:\SQLskills\DemoBackups\DBMaint_Full.bck' WITH INIT;
GO
-- Insert some rows
INSERT INTO TestTable VALUES ('Transaction 1');
INSERT INTO TestTable VALUES ('Transaction 2');
GO
-- Take a log backup
BACKUP LOG DBMaint2008 TO DISK = 'D:\SQLskills\DemoBackups\DBMaint_Log1.bck' WITH INIT;
GO
-- Insert some more rows
INSERT INTO TestTable VALUES ('Transaction 3');
INSERT INTO TestTable VALUES ('Transaction 4');
GO

Now disaster will strike - I'll do the following to simulate a disaster:

1. ALTER DATABASE DBMaint2008 SET OFFLINE
2. Delete the data file

If I try to then access the database, I'll get:

ALTER DATABASE DBMaint2008 SET ONLINE;
GO
Msg 5120, Level 16, State 101, Line 1
Unable to open the physical file "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.1\MSSQL\DATA\DBMaint2008.mdf". Operating system error 2: "2(The system cannot find the file specified.)".
Msg 945, Level 14, State 2, Line 1
Database 'DBMaint2008' cannot be opened due to inaccessible files or insufficient memory or disk space.  See the SQL Server errorlog for details.
Msg 5069, Level 16, State 1, Line 1
ALTER DATABASE statement failed.

So I'll try a normal log backup:

BACKUP LOG DBMaint2008 TO DISK = 'D:\SQLskills\DemoBackups\DBMaint_Log_Tail.bck' WITH INIT;
GO
Msg 945, Level 14, State 2, Line 1
Database 'DBMaint2008' cannot be opened due to inaccessible files or insufficient memory or disk space.  See the SQL Server errorlog for details.
Msg 3013, Level 16, State 1, Line 1
BACKUP LOG is terminating abnormally.

It doesn't work - as the data files aren't all accessible.
The trick is to use the NO_TRUNCATE option, which allows the log backup even if the database files aren't there:

BACKUP LOG DBMaint2008 TO DISK = 'D:\SQLskills\DemoBackups\DBMaint_Log_Tail.bck' WITH INIT, NO_TRUNCATE;
GO
Processed 2 pages for database 'DBMaint2008', file 'DBMaint2008_log' on file 1.
BACKUP LOG successfully processed 2 pages in 0.010 seconds (0.972 MB/sec).

I can then use the tail-of-the-log backup as the final backup in the restore sequence, saving transactions 3 and 4 from above. Try it for yourself.
Case 2: tail-of-the-log backup when server is no longer available
This is the case where the server crashed and cannot be brought online. If you have access to all the data and log files for the database, you can attach it to another server and crash recovery will run automatically. If you only have access to the log file, you'll need to perform some extra steps to allow a tail-of-the-log backup to be performed - basically performing what I call a hack-attach.
Assuming I've run the script above to setup the database, this time I'll do the following to simulate a server-crash disaster:

1. ALTER DATABASE DBMaint2008 SET OFFLINE
2. Delete the data file
3. Copy the log file somewhere else
4. DROP DATABASE DBMaint2008

Now all I have is some backups and a log file. I'll need to attach the log file to SQL Server somehow so that I can perform the vital tail-of-the-log backup. The way to do it is:

1. Create a dummy database with the same name as the one that we're interested in (make sure you have instant file initialization enabled so the file creations don't take ages - see this blog post)
2. Set the database offline (or shutdown the server)
3. Delete all the files from the dummy database
4. Drop in the log file from our real database

Like so for steps 1 and 2:

CREATE DATABASE DBMaint2008;
GO
ALTER DATABASE DBMaint2008 SET OFFLINE;
GO

Now I'll perform steps 3 and 4.
I need to attempt to bring the database online again:

ALTER DATABASE DBMaint2008 SET ONLINE;
GO
Msg 5120, Level 16, State 101, Line 1
Unable to open the physical file "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.1\MSSQL\DATA\DBMaint2008.mdf". Operating system error 2: "2(The system cannot find the file specified.)".
Msg 945, Level 14, State 2, Line 1
Database 'DBMaint2008' cannot be opened due to inaccessible files or insufficient memory or disk space.  See the SQL Server errorlog for details.
Msg 5069, Level 16, State 1, Line 1
ALTER DATABASE statement failed.

And then I can perform the tail-of-the-log backup as before, and use it to recover everything up to the point of the disaster.
Note: This procedure does not work if I try to perform the hack-attach to a more recent version of SQL Server. I tried hacking a 2005 log into a 2008 server and taking the tail-of-the-log backup - which worked fine, but the tail-of-the-log backup could not be used in conjunction with the first set of backups from the 2005 server. The reason for this is that the database version number in the tail-of-the-log backup is 655 (SQL Server 2008) and those for the 2005 backups are 611 (SQL Server 2005). The database doesn't get upgraded when restoring on the 2008 server until the end of the restore sequence - so as far as the 2008 server is concerned, my 2008 tail-of-the-log backup can't be used in the restore seqeunce of a still-2005-really database. Hope that makes sense!
Summary
Checking whether a tail-of-the-log backup is required is essential during a disaster recovery, and it's not hard to do. As with any disaster recovery procedures, make sure you've practiced doing it in advance!