The Complete Weekly Roundup of SQL Server News

Hand-picked content to sharpen your professional edge

I was discussing the PASS Summit with someone and they were wondeirng about building their schedule. Actually, they wanted to pick sessions, but see the choices in a calendar format, but the schedule wasn't out. My suggestion was to just build the schedule and then sort out conflicts later.

A few people have mentioned over the years that they want to build a schedule and be ready for the event to maximize their experience and be efficient. I think that's a common, normal, technical person thing to do. We're Type-A, we like knowing and having a set schedule. The problem is that we might not be able to build the exact schedule we want, given the times and topics, which can be frustrating. Perhaps more importantly, there are often too many choices, which makes it difficult to keep all the information in our head and build (from our view) the perfect schedule.

The problem is that we don't have perfect information. Even if the descriptions and abstracts included perfect information about the agendas, what is covered, and to what depth, including demos, we'd still not necessarily assimilate and recognize all that data. We'd think a session on database design covered fourth normal form, even when the text said third normal, or we'd expect that an SSIS data load talk included something on CSVs when the presenter described the talk as being with flag text files.

We're human, and that means we have flaws in how we deal with the world. This includes the ways in which we model and analyze data. While we can make mistakes in our analysis, we often may simplify our view of a problem to the point where our analysis is inherently flawed.

I try to remember this when I write reports from systems that others will use. I won't have every piece of information that might affect a system, but I try to ensure I have the most important, or significant, data. At least, the data I (and the users) feel is significant. The important thing to remember is that out data is always incomplete, and it's entirely possible that we have missed a valuable piece of data.

When that happens, we have to adapt and adjust our systems, just like our conference schedule. We'll learn more across time and we can use that information to change our system. I know that my view of a conference like the PASS Summit today, or even a week before the event, will be different than what I know, and how I feel, at the event. I should have a plan, but be willing to flex as circumstances change.

Steve Jones from SQLServerCentral.com

» Join the debate, and respond to today's editorial on the forums

All the headlines and interesting SQL Server information that we've collected over the past week, and sometimes even a few repeats if we think they fit. These headlines are gathered throughout the week and are posted in real time at the website. Check there for information throughout the week or enjoy this weekly summary of the SQL Server world.

Webinars

Gene Kim joins Redgate to discuss The 2018 Accelerate State of DevOps Report - Microsoft MVP Steve Jones is joined by acclaimed author and researcher Gene Kim to discuss the latest in all things DevOps. They offer a closer look at the key findings in the 2018 Accelerate State of DevOps Report, and investigates the growing importance of the database in successful DevOps and IT performance....(more)

How to create a living SQL Server data catalog - Protecting data can be difficult. With data often spread across a growing number of different environments, it's hard to know what to restrict and where it's located. In this session you’ll learn about practical steps you can take to create a durable and living record of what you hold in your SQL estate....(more)

SQL in the City Streamed - The theme for September 2018's SQL in the City Streamed is Adapt and thrive as a data professional. Microsoft MVPs, Kathi Kellenberger, Grant Fritchey, Steve Jones and Rob Richardson will head up the speaker line-up, and will be joined by members of the team at Redgate and other technical experts....(more)

Vendors/3rd Party Products

SQL Prompt Code Analysis: Avoid using the ISNUMERIC Function (E1029) - Avoid using the IsNumeric() function, because it can often lead to data type conversion errors, when importing data. SQL Prompt Code Analysis rules include an Execution rule, E1029, which will alert you to use of this function, in your T-SQL. If you’re working on SQL Server 2012 or later, it’s much better to use the Try_Convert()or Try_Cast() function instead. On earlier SQL Server versions, the only way to avoid it is by using LIKE expressions....(more)

Creating Multiple Masked Databases with SQL Provision - Sometimes developer teams need access to a copy of the database containing live data. However, if that database contains sensitive or personal data, then it cannot be used for testing and development work, unless all appropriate security measures are in place. The data protection regulations make no distinction between development and production databases, in the event of a data breach....(more)

T-SQL

SQL SERVER – UDF – User Defined Function to Extract Only Numbers From String - In my old post SQL SERVER – UDF – User Defined Function to Extract Only Numbers From String, I showed you User Defined function which can be used to extract only numbers from the given string. In this post, I am going to show you another method of extracting ......(more)

Ignoring NULLs with FIRST_VALUE - Watch this week’s episode on YouTube. The SQL Server FIRST_VALUE function makes it easy to return the “first value in an ordered set of values.” The problem is that if that first value happens to be a NULL, there is no easy, built-in way to skip it. While ......(more)

Generating a Constrained Random Date–#SQLNewBlogger - Another post for me that is simple and hopefully serves as an example for people trying to get blogging as #SQLNewBloggers. There have been lots of posts on the topic of generating random values, and some great articles. One of my favorites is Jeff Moden’s ......(more)

SQL Puzzle: Advent of Code - A few years back someone started the Advent of code. If you aren’t familiar with it, it’s an advent calendar of coding puzzles. Each day of December before Christmas there are two puzzles (with very Christmasy descriptions). You can do them with any ......(more)

Tools

Copying formatted text out of a grid column. - I was reading a post today by Bert Wagner (b/t). Displaying Long Variable Values in SQL Server By the way, if you haven’t seen any of Bert’s vlog posts before they are well done and highly entertaining. Anyway, Bert was having difficulties displaying ......(more)

The Lighter Side

Infiniti looks to an all-electric future with the Prototype 10 concept - It's almost the end of August, and that means it's time for Monterey Car Week. Ars won't be there on the ground this year—why yes, I do have a bad case of FOMO—but that won't stop us from bringing you some of the cooler news as it happens. Multimillion-dollar ......(more)

Audi’s new electric sports car concept, the PB18 e-tron - Audi Earlier on Thursday, we took a look at an all-electric concept from Infiniti that just broke cover. Now, it's Audi's turn. The car maker has chosen Monterey Car Week to make a statement about the future, and that statement is called the PB18 e-tron. ...(more)

In 2017, four US states generated more than 30% of their electricity from wind - Enlarge / Wind turbines on private working ranch land on August 1, 2017 near Kevin, Montana. (credit: Getty Images / William Campbell-Corbis) Last week, as President Trump made bizarre and wandering remarks about "windmills" being an inferior source ......(more)

SQL Server Security

Encryption & Key Management for SQL Server - Definitive Guide - Microsoft SQL Server users can leverage encryption and key management to achieve better security and meet compliance requirements (PCI DSS, HIPAA, etc.). This definitive guide covers the critical issues involved in getting encryption right with SQL S ......(more)

SQL Server on Linux

How to Linux for SQL Server DBAs — Part 1 - Walt Whitman said “Simplicity is the key to harmony” as it is for technology, too. As more companies speed up their development cycle with DevOps, elimination of complexity is among the top priorities to accomplishing this. Windows is still the champion ......(more)

Installing SQL Server 2017 for Linux on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS - Prior to SQL Server for Linux 2017 CU10 the package dependencies prevented install on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. The SQL Server 2017 installation packages have updated use the libssl1.0.0 package, allowing installation to occur on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS installations. Ubuntu ......(more)

SQL Server News

Cumulative Update #13 for SQL Server 2014 SP2 - The 13th cumulative update release for SQL Server 2014 SP2 is now available for download at the Microsoft Downloads site. Please note that registration is no longer required to download Cumulative updates. To learn more about the release or servicing ......(more)

Cumulative Update #10 for SQL Server 2017 RTM - The 10th cumulative update release for SQL Server 2017 RTM is now available for download at the Microsoft Downloads site. Please note that registration is no longer required to download Cumulative updates. To learn more about the release or servicing ......(more)

Security news and thoughts

Microsoft obliquely acknowledges Windows 0-day bug published on Twitter - Here is the alpc bug as 0day: https://t.co/m1T3wDSvPX I don't fucking care about life anymore. Neither do I ever again want to submit to MSFT anyway. Fuck all of this shit. — SandboxEscaper (@SandboxEscaper) August 27, 2018 A privilege escalation flaw ......(more)

The adventures of lab ED011—“Nobody would be able to duplicate what happened there” - Enlarge / The University Politehnica building that hosts the Automatic Control and Computer Science (ACCS) program. (credit: Adi Dabu) BUCHAREST, Romania—At the edge of Europe, Romania’s University Politehnica of Bucharest has long been the most prestigious ......(more)

Product Upgrades and Releases

Early technical preview of JDBC 7.1.0 for SQL Server released - We have a new early technical preview of the JDBC Driver for SQL Server. Precompiled binaries are available on GitHub and also on Maven Central. Below is a summary of the new additions to the project, changes made, and issues fixed. Added Added support ......(more)

Product Reviews and Articles

Avoid running out of Disk Space ever again using SQL Monitor - If your SQL Server runs out of disk space, and it is running a database for an enterprise’s trading application, then the company can’t take money until the DBA fixes the problem. Even the worry of that ever happening is enough to keep a DBA up at night. ...(more)

Pseudonymizing a Database with Realistic Data for Development Work - For this demonstration, we will take AdventureWorks and produce a pseudonymized copy for development work. The aim is to surgically alter just the data that can identify individuals but leave everything else intact. I’ve shown how to do something similar ......(more)

PowerShell

a few other community tools - Last night’s #PSPowerHour made me realize I should highlight a few awesome projects I’ve come across recently. PSDatabaseClone PSDatabaseClone was created by Sander Stad. PSDatabaseClone is a PowerShell module for creating SQL Server database images ......(more)

Introduction to PowerShell with SQL Server Using Invoke-SQLCMD - PowerShell is the preferred scripting tool used by Windows and Active Directory administrators. It can also be used to administer SQL Server or even just export data. In this article, Greg Moore demonstrates how to use the PowerShell cmdlet Invoke-SQLCMD to export data from SQL Server....(more)

PowerPivot/PowerQuery/PowerBI

Maps in Power BI. Do I really need them? - (2018-Aug-30) While preparing for a recent Power BI Toronto meetup session, I found a very valuable whitepaper on Maps in Power BI written by David Eldersveld from the BlueGranite consulting company, and I had used some of the ideas and examples from ......(more)

Using Html.Table() To Extract URLs From A Web Page In Power BI/Power Query M - Last year I blogged about how to use the Text.BetweenDelimiters() function to extract all the links from the href attributes in the source of a web page. The code was reasonably simple but there’s now an even easier way to solve the same problem using ......(more)

Power BI Custom Visuals Class (Module 117 – Multi KPI) - In this module you will learn how to use the Multi KPI. The Multi KPI is great for displaying multiple KPI values in a single visual. Module 117 – Multi KPI ......(more)

Time intelligence in Microsoft Power BI - Every Microsoft Power BI model has dates and the need for calculation over dates to aggregate and compare data, like year-to-date, same period last year, moving average, and so on. Quick measures and DAX functions can help, but how do you manage holidays, ......(more)

Power BI- Loading PBI Log Files - There’s a reason that log analytics programs, like Splunk, Data Dog and Sumo Logic are so popular.  Even Microsoft has a Log Analytics product, but the important message here is log data is massive and parsing through it to find important information ......(more)

Beautify M Script and Extract Row Level Security with Power BI Helper Version 4.0 - Power BI Helper is getting new features every time, and this time, we got some exciting features; You can now get your M (Power Query script) code beautified and colorful with version 4.0 of Power BI Helper. We also get the row-level security information ......(more)

Power BI Embedded Multigeo, Python, gateway and more… (August 27, 2018) - Fun with DAX – Mission Impossible (@PhilSeamark) Basics of Python in Power BI (@ToufiqAbrahams) Python Episode 1 – A New hope On-premises data gateway August update is now available Multi-geo support (preview) for Power BI Embedded in Azure BONUS ITEMS: ......(more)

Performance Tuning SQL Server

SQL SERVER- High CPU and Transaction Type WorkFileGroup_fake_worktable and Workfile - As a part of my  SQL Server Performance Tuning and Optimization consultancy, I face interesting situations and every time I am able to resolve them. This was one of the more interesting ones where I was not getting any hint from the internet. Since it ......(more)

What Kind Of Statistics Updates Invalidate Plans? - Basics If you update statistics when the underlying objects haven’t been modified, plans won’t be invalidated. That makes total sense if your statistics update doesn’t also change the statistics.  But what about when they do? That seemed like a no-brainer ......(more)

Index and Execution Plan Basics - If you are a developer or new SQL Server DBA and have never really worked with query tuning, this post is for you.  If you are an experienced DBA/Tuner and want to nit-pick me saying field vs. column, feel free to leave a comment that I will delete or ......(more)

Microsoft News : Patches, Bugs

Microsoft Rescinds, Replaces Security Cumulative Update KB4293807 - Even for organizations not experiencing any problems, the recommendation is to replace the Cumulative Update with KB4458621. ...(more)

Streamlining Microsoft Windows 10 Updates Package Downloads - Monthly Windows 10 Updates are getting more streamlined and smaller in overall size. For companies that manage a vast array of hardware, this can make a huge difference in bandwidth costs. Also this week: ways for mobile admins to manage mobile data, ......(more)

MDX/DAX

Optimizing nested iterators in DAX - This article describes possible optimization approaches to improve the performance of nested iterators in DAX. One of the possible reasons the execution of a DAX expression can be slower, is the presence of nested iterators. The real issue is not the ......(more)

Hardware News

Solid State Storage Advances with Intel's New High-Density, High-Performance SSD - The new solid stage storage drive is the size of a 12-inch ruler and can store 32 terabytes of data. ...(more)

The Samsung Portable SSD X5 Review - Thunderbolt 3 and NVMe in a Premium Enclosure - Samsung is launching their first Thunderbolt 3 SSD, the Portable SSD X5, today. It places an OEM version of their 970 EVO NVMe SSD behind an Alpine Ridge controller in a stylish bus-powered magnesium-heavy enclosure. Claimed performance numbers are reads ......(more)

Dell Unveils Precision 2-in-1 5530 Workstation: 15.6-inch Kaby Lake-G with Pro WX - Dell on Wednesday introduced its first convertible mobile workstation, the Precision 2-in-1 5530. The new system is based on Intel’s newly introduced Kaby Lake-G processors with Radeon Pro WX Vega M GL graphics that is certified to run professional applications. ...(more)

Dell Refreshes XPS 13 2-in-1: Amber Lake 5W CPUs with Thunderbolt 3 - Dell on Wednesday upgraded its XPS 13 2-in-1 convertible laptops with Intel’s latest codenamed Amber Lake-Y processors. The new systems retained chassis and displays used on the previous-generation XPS 13 2-in-1, but because of the new CPUs they now ......(more)

Acer Launches Lightest Ever 15-inch Notebook: Swift 5 at 990 grams / 2.2 lbs - Everyone loves the lack of weight. Carting around a trade show, at least for me, helps the less I’m carrying, and so my work device has transitioned from a clunky beast into a light 13-inch thin-bezel with as much power and battery as I can put into ......(more)

Spectre and Meltdown in Hardware: Intel Clarifies Whiskey Lake and Amber Lake - With the launch of Intel’s latest 8th Generation Core mobile processors, the 15W Whiskey Lake U-series and the 5W Amber Lake Y-series, questions were left on the table as to the state of the Spectre and Meltdown mitigations. Intel had, previously in ......(more)

Acer’s Swift 3 Laptop Gets 13.3-Inch Display, Slimmer Chassis, LTE Modem - Acer on Wednesday introduced its most portable Swift 3-branded laptop to date. The new Swift 3 notebook features a 13.3-inch display and uses a thinner & lighter chassis than its 14-inch predecessors. Furthermore, premium versions of the laptop include ......(more)

Prices for Intel's 9th Generation CPUs Surface Online - Pricing for Intel Core 9000-series processors show up at different retailers around the world. ...(more)

MSI’s PS42 Business Laptop Now Available: 14-Inch Quad-Core Ultrabook - MSI has started to ship its ultrathin Prestige-series laptops that it introduced in early June. The new PS42 models feature a 14-inch display, a quad-core CPU, and a discrete GPU in select models. MSI positions the new notebooks primarily for business ......(more)

AMD Slashes Prices of First-Gen Ryzen Threadripper CPUs: Starting at $300 - Following the launch of its second-generation Ryzen Threadripper processors earlier this month, AMD quietly began to slash prices of its first-gen Ryzen Threadripper CPUs. Right now, the most affordable Threadripper (1900X) costs around $300, whereas ......(more)

ETL/SSIS/ELT

Terminology Check - What are Data Flows? - It's another terminology post! Earlier this week I was having a delightful lunch with Angela Henry, Kevin Feasel, Javier Guillen, and Jason Thomas. We were chatting about various new things. Partway thru our conversation Jason stops me because he thought ......(more)

DevOps and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD)

It’s official: database development is now part of DevOps - You’ll probably have heard of the Accelerate State of DevOps Report from DORA. Now in its fifth year and backed by rigorous research involving 30,000+ professionals worldwide, it has consistently shown that higher software delivery performance delivers ......(more)

Redgate Lives DevOps - At Redgate, we release a lot of changes to our products. In fact, this is the “About Redgate” slide I’ve been using in talks related to the company. If you look in the lower right, you’ll see product releases from last year (2017). We have 30-ish products, ......(more)

Database Design, Theory and Development

Do You Have Tables In Your Tables? - This Isn’t A Trick Question Hopefully it’ll get you thinking about your tables, and how they’re designed. One of the most consistent problems I see with clients is around wide tables. I don’t mean data types, I mean the number of columns. Going back ......(more)

Natural Keys, Surrogate Keys and GDPR - The GDPR's "right to be forgotten" mandate gives rise to the discussion of natural keys. ...(more)

DISTINCT and ORDER BY Are Not Relational - “One of the things that confuse SQL users all the time is how DISTINCT and ORDER BY are related in a SQL query ... most people quickly understand:    SELECT DISTINCT length FROM film[that] returns results in an arbitrary order, because the database can ......(more)

A software architect replaces a relational database with a relational database - Content warning: This is the second (and final) rebuttal essay about why someone is wrong on the Internet. It is no doubt biased. It might go into technical detail. Parts of it may be wrong. It may contain flippant remarks and editorialising. There are ......(more)

Data Privacy, Complianace, and GDPR

Introduction to HIPAA and SOX - Despite the attention to data privacy and protection caused this year because of the GDPR, regulations governing how data is handled are nothing new. In this article, Robert Sheldon provides an overview of two US regulations, HIPAA and SOX, and explains how these regulations affect DBAs....(more)

Data Mining/Data Analysis

It’s Time to Build a Cohesive Data Strategy - George Yuhasz works for Keystone Foods, the company that invented chicken nuggets. Now he’s helping the business to innovate in another direction: building a rich Data Strategy by holistically and concurrently bringing together Analytics, Data Governance, ......(more)

Democratizing data - Tracy Teal explains how to bring people to data and empower them to address their questions.Continue reading Democratizing data. ...(more)

Conferences, Classes, and Events

MN SQLSaturday #796 Schedule Posted – Oct 6 - The schedule has been posted for this year’s Minnesota SQLSaturday event which will be held on October 6 at Saint Paul College.  I will be speaking in the afternoon on Power BI: Dashboard in an Hour Walk-Through. This session will provide a walk-through ......(more)

SQLintersection Fall 2018 (no clash with PASS this year!) - As we head towards our 12th SQLintersection in December, I’m excited to say that it’s once again our most diverse, complete, and information-packed show yet! For the first time in 4 years we have a new hotel contract that doesn’t have our show landing ......(more)

Azure Every Day, Azure Data Week, and More Azure - As you likely know, I am a Principal Consultant at Pragmatic Works. This year we have been doing some great things with Azure for our customers. Beyond that we have produced a lot of content and have an event coming up that I want to talk about. So, ......(more)

Computing in the Cloud (Azure, Google , AWS)

How Do Azure Subscriptions Work? - In this Azure Every Day installment, I’d like to talk about your organization’s subscription hierarchy. When working with Azure, it can get confusing with talk of tenants, subscriptions and user accounts. There are some key components to understanding ......(more)

What’s Different About SQL Server in Cloud VMs? - When you start running SQL Server in cloud VMs – whether it’s Amazon EC2, Google Compute Engine, or Microsoft Azure VMs – there are a few things you need to treat differently than on-premises virtual machines. Fast shared storage is really expensive ......(more)

Advantages of Azure Resource Manager (ARM) Deployment Model - Are you just starting out with Azure and wonder: What is Azure Resource Manager (ARM) Deployment Model? Or what’s the difference between ARM and Classic? Whether you’re just starting out with Azure or have been using it for some time, but you’re still ......(more)

How Azure Storage Kick Starts Your Big Data Projects - So, your boss says, ‘Let’s do big data!’ And you think: ‘I don’t even know what that means or what I have to do. Do I need big data? Do I need a bunch of servers?’ These are the questions we hear all the time. A simple intro into the big data world is ......(more)

Azure SQL Database Reserved Capacity - Last week I posted about the Azure Reserve VM Instance where you could save some money in Azure. Another similar way to save is with Azure SQL Database Reserved Capacity. With this you can save 33% compared to license included pricing by pre-buying SQL ......(more)

Advantages of Azure Resource Manager (ARM) Deployment Model - Are you just starting out with Azure and wonder: What is Azure Resource Manager (ARM) Deployment Model? Or what’s the difference between ARM and Classic? Whether you’re just starting out with Azure or have been using it for some time, but you’re still ......(more)

Career Growth

Care and Feeding of your DBA - The care and feeding of a DBA Everyone in your organization is important, of course. You should take good care of your humans, because…they are humans. Not desks, not slave labor, not assets, not even resources. Gold and Oil are resources. Your team ......(more)

Azure SQL Managed Instance

Create linked server to readable secondary replica in Managed Instance Business Critical service tier - Azure SQL Database Managed Instance is a fully managed SQL Server Database Engine hosted in Azure cloud that provides most of the Azure SQL Pass and SQL Server functionalities, such as linked servers and built-in free secondary read-only replicas. In ......(more)

Azure SQL Database

Azure SQL Database disaster recovery - My last blog post was on Azure SQL Database high availability and I would like to continue along that discussion with a blog post about disaster recovery in Azure SQL Database.  First, a clarification on the difference between high availability and disaster ......(more)

Azure CosmosDB

Developing Client Applications Using the SDK and Azure Cosmos DB Emulator - The Azure Cosmos DB Emulator can be used to develop Cosmos DB applications without a cost for the Azure service. In this article, Suhas Pande demonstrates several common tasks using C# and the emulator: creating databases, collections, and documents....(more)

AI/Machine Learning/Cognitive Services

Putting AI to Work: Where Are We Now? - Click to learn more about author Ben Lorica. Back in May, I wrote an article for DATAVERSITY® Despite Investment in Deep Learning, AI Talent Pool is Shallow that explored how companies are putting Artificial Intelligence (AI) to work through Deep Learning. ...(more)

Cognitive Services Labs: Experimental Tools to Explore - In addition to the primary Cognitive Services tools that BlueGranite has previously explored – Search, Vision, Speech, Language, and Knowledge – Microsoft has experimental APIs under the name of Cognitive Services Labs. While you should not use these ......(more)

Machine learning and AI technologies and platforms at AWS - Dan Romuald Mbanga walks through the ecosystem around the machine learning platform and API services at AWS.Continue reading Machine learning and AI technologies and platforms at AWS. ...(more)

Disease prediction using the world's largest clinical lab data set - Cristian Capdevila explains how Prognos is predicting disease.Continue reading Disease prediction using the world's largest clinical lab data set. ...(more)

Self-driving cars will destroy a lot of jobs—they’ll also create a lot - Enlarge / A technician inspects a Waymo vehicle. (credit: Waymo) Many people worry that the development of self-driving technology will put taxi drivers and truck drivers out of work. What often gets missed is that self-driving technology companies ......(more)

Administration of SQL Server

Extended Security Updates: No More Freebies - As data professionals, we should always strive to keep our systems updated and patched to ensure proper security of our environments.  Microsoft has moved away from releasing service packs to releasing just cumulative updates and the occasional hotfixes.  ......(more)

The Hidden Costs of Infrastructure and Application Monitoring - The true cost of infrastructure and application monitoring can vary significantly from your expectations. Here's where to look for the hidden costs. ...(more)

ALTER DATABASE SET QUERY_STORE command is blocked - If you are trying to execute an ALTER DATABASE command to change a Query Store option (e.g. turn it off, change a setting) and it is blocked, take note of the blocking session_id and what that session_id is executing.  If you are trying to execute this ......(more)

The unwanted Side Effects of enabling Read Committed Snapshot Isolation - (Be sure to checkout the FREE SQLpassion Performance Tuning Training Plan - you get a weekly email packed with all the essential knowledge you need to know about performance tuning on SQL Server.) A lot of developers are approaching me very often, and ......(more)

SQL SERVER – Unable to Attach Database Files – The PageAudit Property is Incorrect – Ransomware Attack - Recently one of my clients contacted me after reading my blog above Ransomware on the SQL Server machine. In this blog, we would learn about error The PageAudit property is incorrect. Here is my earlier blog on the ransomware topic. SQL SERVER – How ......(more)

Why I Love Extended Events, Reason 394: Customize Live Data - There are so many reasons to love Extended Events that it can really be overwhelming, but, one more reason that I love them are the ability to customize Live Data. More importantly, you can share that customization with others or move it between machines. ...(more)

MAX DOP calculator - Every time I conduct a SQL Server health check, it’s pretty common for me to find wrong configurations at instance level. But one of the most common mistakes I see on the wild, is SQL instances having the “max degree of parallelism” (MAXDOP) set to “1” ......(more)

using dacpac functions to clone sql server databases - Hey all! Kirill Kravtsov, here. I’m a SQL Server DBA that is passionate about automation and Powershell. I’m also a major contributor to dbatools and creator of the dbops module, which provides continuous database deployments at any scale. This week, ......(more)

SQL SERVER – FIX: CREATE FILE Encountered Operating System Error 5 (Access is Denied.) - One of my existing clients performed migration of disk in SQL Server failover cluster. After completing their planned activity, they found that SQL Server was not coming online in the cluster. In this blog, we would learn how to fix error CREATE FILE ......(more)

SQL SERVER – How to DROP or DELETE Suspect Database? - One of my clients contacted me when there was business down situation. They had one of their production databases in suspect state and unable to drop it also. In this blog, we would learn about how to drop a suspect database. When they contacted me, ......(more)

Why I Love Extended Events, Reason 394: Customize Live Data - There are so many reasons to love Extended Events that it can really be overwhelming, but, one more reason that I love them are the ability to customize Live Data. More importantly, you can share that customization with others or move it between machines. ...(more)

Is SQL Job Required to Maintain Indexes for TFS databases - The recommendation from the Product Group is to not run a separate index maintenance job as the Optimize Databases TFS job will handle updating of indexes for TFS related databases (Config/Collection DBs). The stored procedure prc_OptimizeDatabase goes ......(more)