The Java HashCode method is used to determine uniqueness or similarity of strings. While implemented in Java, there can be many benefits of creating a similar or customized version of this method.
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SQL Server database migration best practices for low risk and downtime
December 27, 2016Introduction
The main goal of many organizations, today, is reducing costs while maintaining the highest degree of stability and efficiency. To this end, we should think out of the box about how we can help to achieve this as DBAs. The approaches include:
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What is a SQL Server Data Dictionary and why would I want to create one?
December 26, 2016A database
A SQL Server database can be thought of, in and of itself, as a data dictionary. It is self-describing, in that objects can be scripted into Data Definition Language aka DDL scripts to view all attributes, quickly and easily.
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Increase your Coding Speed in SQL Server Management Studio
December 23, 2016Every developer wants to be productive and get more things accomplished during their day to day work. Given a choice between working harder and working smarter, you will most likely choose the latter. But the big question is – How do you boost your productivity? How do you reduce your development time? How do you increase your coding speed?
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FAQ about Dates in SQL Server
December 22, 2016Introduction
In this article, I compiled a list of FAQs and Answers about dates.
- Which function should I use to get the current date in SQL Server?
- How can I get the current time in the format hh:mm:ss?
- How can I calculate my age in SQL Server with a birth date?
- How can I insert the current time by default in a SQL Server table?
- How can I check the total time that the employees of my company worked per day?
- How can I get the time of a specific region?
- How can I get the time of a specified Standard time?
Why is my CTE so slow?
December 22, 2016Introduction
Have you ever written up a complex query using Common Table Expressions (CTEs) only to be disappointed by the performance? Have you been blaming the CTE? This article looks at that problem to show that it is a little deeper than a particular syntax choice and offers some tips on how to improve performance.
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Using SSMA v7.1 for Oracle to migrate into SQL Server
December 21, 2016Introduction
This is a second article that is a continuation of the Microsoft SQL Server Migration Assistant (SSMA) v7.1 for Oracle. In my first article, I wrote an overview of the tool and how to install it. In this second article I will write about how to use it to migrate data and objects from an Oracle database to a SQL Server database.
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Handy features of the dbatools Read-DbaBackupHeader command
December 21, 2016If you haven’t heard of dbatools, it’s an open source project out on GitHub dedicated to making life easier for Data Professionals. If you have an idea that you don’t see a command for, you can build it and contribute it to the project. Or you can ask if someone has time to write if for you.
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SQL Server performance myth busters
December 21, 2016Introduction
In this article, we will verify if the following statements are true or they are just myths:
- Truncate is faster than a delete and it consumes less space in the logs
- Do not use cursors to Create or drop multiple objects because it is very slow
- Do not use cursors to convert or process row values because it is very slow
New features and enhancements in SQL Server 2016 SP1
December 20, 2016SQL Server 2016 SP1 is released as announced by Microsoft. It comes with a bunch of new features and enhancements as a result of customer and community feedback. In this article, I will introduce you to these new features and enhancements.
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Top 5 New SQL Server 2016 DMVs for DBAs
December 20, 2016Since its initial release that was part of SQL Server 2005, Dynamic Management Views (DMV) changed – mostly for the better – the role of database administration (DBA) within SQL Server-based environments. They improved the efficiency of DBAs regarding database server monitoring, issue diagnoses, and subsequent performance optimisation. As a result of this positive reception, it has become customary that some of the highly anticipated items in every release of SQL Server includes discovering what new DMVs will be added. In this article I take you through my favourite top 5 DMVs to come out of SQL Server 2016.
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Reporting in SQL Server – Using calculated Expressions within reports
December 19, 2016Introduction
Late in October, I received an unusual request from the head of sales within one of my client sites. Sales sells three articles: bread, perfume, and Jaguar motor cars. Now the reader will note that one of these items is a staple and the other two are for those folks with considerable disposable income. Management within the firm had increased the salesmen’s bonuses for those folks that managed to sell perfume and/or Jaguars along with the standard loaves of bread. The summary report may be seen below showing the final bonus rate for each sales order booked during the month.
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How to configure Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) in SQL Server
December 19, 2016Introduction and Overview
Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) was introduced in SQL Server 2008. Its main purpose was to protect data by encrypting the physical files, both the data (mdf) and log (ldf) files (as opposed to the actual data stored within the database). Transparent Data Encryption Encrypts SQL Server, Azure SQL Databases, and Azure SQL Data Warehouse data files.
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Point in Time Recovery with SQL Server
December 19, 2016Introduction
How often are you working with multiple environments? For example, if you are a database administrator who is responsible for a production environment as well as another environment, it most likely that you will be working with both environments simultaneously. What is the probability that you will execute a script on production, which actually needs to be executed on the other environment? I would say it is high. To prove this point let me present you an example.
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Introduction to SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) monitoring
December 15, 2016When it comes to monitoring of SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) performance, as it relates to the database engine, there are several categories that should be mentioned and compared.
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Microsoft SQL Server database deployment process
December 14, 2016Introduction
Database deployments are critical tasks that can affect negative in on performance in production. In this article we’ll describe some performance related best practices for database deployments.
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How to use SQLCMD commands in the SSMS query editor
December 13, 2016SQLCMD Mode allows creating, testing, executing SQLCMD commands or scripts in SQL Server Management Studio directly in the query editor. This option is available since SQL Server 2005.
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Creating a “smart” trigger based audit trail for SQL Server
December 12, 2016Introduction
Audit tables are used to track transactions for a particular table or tables. For every important transaction table, it’s important to create an audit table. Auditing can be helpful if you need to track who is Inserting/Updating and Deleting data on a sensitive table and/or view before and after data change information.
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Microsoft SQL Server Migration Assistant (SSMA) v7.1 for Oracle
December 12, 2016Introduction
SQL Server Migration Assistant (SSMA) is a free supported tool from Microsoft that simplifies and automates database migration processes (assessment analysis, necessary conversions, data migration and tests) from Microsoft Access, MySQL, Oracle, Sybase and DB2 to SQL Server, Azure SQL DB and SQL Server vNext (at the time I’m writing this article, SQL Server vNext stills in CTP1 version, so being a technical preview version it should not be used for production migrations).
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How to use Expressions within SQL Server Reporting Services to create efficient reports
December 9, 2016Introduction
As many of you by now know, I am a fan of utilizing expressions within Reporting Services reports to add additional flexibility. Recently I received a client request to create a stacked bar report which in turn would provide access to the underlying data the made up the bars on the chart. My client sells two articles: “Whigs” and “Tories”. Many people like to “buy” them.The idea is to display the aggregated data as may be seen below (gray black and turquoise) and depending on which bar and color is selected( clicked upon), to drill down and to display the underlying detailed data (see below).
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How to setup SQL Agent Job alerts to include SSIS catalog errors
December 7, 2016I must have been one of the first people who abandoned BIDS as soon as SSDT was first introduced. Although I have never regretted that decision, I do sometimes feel that SSDT has introduced an unnecessary additional layer of troubleshooting package execution failures. Regardless of whether your SSIS packages are deployed using BIDS or SSDT, the common scheduling mechanism used to run those packages is usually the SQL Server Agent. This is where you are likely to encounter additional layers of troubleshooting SSDT-deployed packages. This is because unlike BIDS where package execution details were stored in the same database (msdb) as were the execution details of SQL Server Agent job, the advent of SSDT came with an introduction a new database – SSISDB – which is used to, amongst other things, store package execution details. Subsequently, in order to retrieve details of package execution, we ought to query the SSIDB database.
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SQL Server consolidation – Hosting multiple databases on a single SQL Server instance
December 2, 2016Introduction
Consolidating SQL Server databases and instances is a practice which, under certain criteria, allows organizations to benefit as they can reduce licensing costs, and if properly designed, hardware costs.
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Deep dive into Nonclustered indexes for In-Memory OLTP tables
December 2, 2016With the introduction of Microsoft’s new In-Memory OLTP engine* (code name Hekaton) a new type of nonclustered index was introduced to help you search the in-memory tables based on a range of values. Although the name is similar it does differ from the one we have in the traditional disk tables.
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How to use SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) query results in Excel with Power Pivot
December 2, 2016Prerequisites for using query results from any Analysis Services model database in Excel through Power Pivot add-in are SQL Server 2014 or higher with installed Analysis Services Tabular instance (Multidimensional is installed by default), deployed Multidimensional or Tabular model database (for data source) and Power Pivot add-in for Excel 2010 or higher (Power Pivot is native add-in in Excel 2016).
In this article, the custom SSAS Tabular model database will be used (“AW Tabular”) as an external data source.
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How to see the schema of a result set before running a query
November 30, 2016Introduction
Suppose you’ve been asked to run a query against some SQL Server database but you don’t know anything more than the name of a stored procedure that you need to call. If you are going to do anything with the result set, you need to know at least the names and types of the columns to expect. This is actually a problem faced by many applications, including SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) and SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS).
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