This article explains lock issues in SQL Server with DDL statements including SELECT INTO clause.
Use of explicit transaction is common in SQL Server development. Sometimes a developer might inadvertently specify a Data Definition Language clause within a long running explicit transaction, similar to the structure below, within a SQL Server object such as a stored procedure.
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In a previous article “SQL Server Audit feature – discovery and architecture“, we’ve seen the basics to build an auditing system based on SQL Server Audit feature. In the introduction, we talked a little bit about the « General Data Protection Regulation » a.k.a. GDPR that allows personal data circulation (in Europe) that is a subject in the mouth of a lot of IT professionals.
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Intended audience
This document is intended for database administrators who plan to develop, deploy, assess or implement auditing solutions in Microsoft SQL Server on Microsoft Windows platform.
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This is the second article in a continuing series on the many system tables, views, procedures and functions available in SQL Server. In the first part of this series, Discovering SQL server instance information using system views, you learned how to discover many attributes of a SQL Server instance you have been given access to. In this part, we will continue the journey and see what else we can find.
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This is the first article of a series dedicated to discovering geographic maps in Power BI using Bubble Map and Filled Map.
My goal is to illustrate to you the different visuals available in Power BI for making maps. Remember that Power BI is a product undergoing constant evolution; new features are added every month at a fast pace. And over time Power BI has gained more mapping capabilities compared to the starting point.
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Before jumping into creating a cube or tabular model in Analysis Service, the database used as source data should be well structured using best practices for data modeling. Some might say use Dimensional Modeling or Inmon’s data warehouse concepts while others say go with the future, Data Vault. No matter what conceptual path is taken, the tables can be well structured with the proper data types, sizes and constraints.
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As a Microsoft SQL Server Database Consultant, I have to visit multiple companies with variety of SQL Server versions and patch level. Generally speaking, we need to analyze the environment of these clients and get information about the infrastructure. To do so, we have to run multiple scripts and tools on almost all the machines at client. Though it’s a part of our job but at times it takes hours to get even the basic information about the SQL Server versions, patch level, configuration and small details which even client does not have.
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Many DBA’s and database developers aren’t very familiar with DBCC commands (aka Database Console Commands) because they don’t always have the chance to work with them. In this article, we’ll provide a simple primer on DBCC commands with specific examples
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Context
As SQL Server database administrators, we should all know that, most of the time, a database user is linked to a SQL Server login. We do this to tell SQL Server that a SQL login LoginA has access to database Db1 using the context and permissions of UserA database user.
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Microsoft released many new features in Reporting Services with the SQL 2016 release.:
In the articles How to partition an SSAS Cube in Analysis Services Multidimensional and Benefits of Partitioning an SSAS Multidimensional Cube, the concept of measure group partitioning is introduced and the advantages are clearly illustrated. One of the biggest advantages of partitioning is partition elimination, where only the partitions necessary to satisfy the query are read instead of all the data.
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People love taking shortcuts because it’s the easiest way to do things faster; computers are no exception. Shortcuts, particularly ones performed by keyboard, can save you hours of time once applied properly. Learning keyboard shortcut saves you a lot of time; you’ll definitely notice a boost the productivity because you’re not unnecessarily reaching for a mouse all the time.
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There is a common need in reporting to aggregate or return data that is crunched based on date attributes. These may include weekdays, holidays, quarters, or time of year. While any of this information can be calculated on the fly, a calendar table can save time, improve performance, and increase the consistency of data returned by our important reporting processes. In my previous article, you could learn about designing of a calendar table.
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Whilst discussing the evolution of SQL Server Data Tools in my previous article, I touched on a new feature, Package Parts, which is available in SSDT 2015. This article takes an in-depth analysis of the Package Parts feature, particularly, as it relates to Data Warehouse development.
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The SQL Server Always On Availability Groups concept was introduced the first time in SQL Server 2012 as an enterprise-level high availability and disaster recovery solution that will replace the database mirroring feature. Always On Availability Group provides a high availability solution on the group level, where each group can contain any number of databases that can be replicated to multiple secondary servers known as Replicas.
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This article discusses a simple solution of how to monitor SQL service availability across multiple servers and reporting. To build this I’ll use SQL Server with simple PowerShell script and cmdlets which generate JSON data and displays results in HTML
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The title of this post should have been “How to implement wildcard search functionality with Always Encrypted, make deterministic encryption safer, and load initial data using SqlBulkInsert”, but as you understand, that’s just too long for a title.
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There is a common need in reporting to aggregate or return data that is crunched based on date attributes. These may include weekdays, holidays, quarters, or time of year. While any of this information can be calculated on the fly, a calendar table can save time, improve performance, and increase the consistency of data returned by our important reporting processes.
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In my previous two articles on SQL Server integration Services (SSIS), Parameterizing Database Connection in SSIS and Deploying Packages to SSIS Catalog (SSISDB), packages were developed, deployed and configured in the SSIS Catalog. Now, it is time to execute the packages with various options. There are a couple of ways to do this, but we need to be able to change the parameter values as well as monitor for failures or successes.
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CHECKSUM is an option for page verification that is available at the database instance level and we can see what level of verification each of our databases are currently using by the following query:
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Starting with SQL Server 2016 and Windows Server 2016 there have been numerous cloud related enhancements, most of them are tightly related to Microsoft’s Azure like the ‘Cloud Witness’ but there are others that can be implemented within other public or private clouds.
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SQL Server 2016 is the most advanced version of Microsoft’s Data Platform released yet. This is obviously my favorite one as it has tremendous capabilities and enormous features. These new additions not only enhance the productivity of its users (Database Developer, DBA or Application Developer), but also enable the enterprise to use its data more effectively and efficiently.
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Standalone Managed Service Accounts, introduced a long ago with Windows Server 2008 R2, were a ray of hope for the database administrators. They promised to provide automatic password management and simplified SPN management, meaning that the time-consuming task of maintaining passwords would be a thing of the past (not to mention the required downtime for this).
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Microsoft Azure SQL Database is a managed cloud database for programmers/developers to develop their products easier due to less involvement in maintenance allowing the customer to concentrate on their products, because, most of the data maintenance or infrastructure is taken care by the cloud service providers.
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