It was 19 F at 5:15 AM as I laced up my hiking shoes. That’s cold for my part of the world. Each morning, I walk two to four miles to get the day started. Why? I’m preparing for my next 150-mile trek along the Appalachian Trail. I put in the time now so I…
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Do you schedule DBCC CHECKDB for all of your important databases? Scheduling database integrity checks ranks right up there with backing up your databases when it comes to glamorous activities in the life of a DBA. That is to say, it’s not glamorous at all. Integrity checks don’t bring the same internal swagger as say…
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How many tempdb data files should a SQL Server have? And where should they live? What about their growth settings? Should it be by percent? Or, should they grow by a certain size each time? Are there other tempdb configuration settings I should be concerned with? In short: how should I configure my SQL Server…
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You’re cleaning up some old usernames in a database. The users are no longer needed so you want to drop them and maybe even the server login. You issue the standard DROP USER username; command in the query editor and it immediately comes back with Msg 15138, Level 16, State 1, Line 1 The database…
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If your company uses SQL Server Reporting Services as part of it reporting infrastructure, you’ve probably been asked “What SSRS reports does this user subscribe to?” Often that’s due to a job or role change in the company. Sally is leaving the department and Jonathan is taking over her responsibilities. All of Sally’s reports now…
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When SQL Server is not as fast as users think it ought to be, how can you tell where the slowdown is? Where’s the performance bottleneck? Where’s the traffic jam? Is it waiting on CPU? Does it needs memory? What about the disks? Could SQL Server be slow because of disk latency? Could be. But…
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You’ve manually started DBCC CHECKDB to verify the integrity of a database. It churns. And churns. You check the Messages tab on Management Studio. Nothing. So, you start to wonder: Just how much longer will CHECKDB take to complete? A couple of minutes? A couple of hours? Who knows? How long will DBCC CHECKDB take?…
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The call comes in. “Something’s happened. We need to restore the production database. Can you do it? And how long will it take?” No DBA wants to receive that call but, frankly, answering those calls and the ensuing questions are part of a DBA’s job. And there’s no better way to know that you can,…
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Conserving energy is good. It’s good for the environment and it’s good for the bottom line. That’s why Windows Server has built-in power settings. But there’s a trade off. With reduced power comes reduced performance for most SQL Servers. The Windows Power Plan Setting Windows Server has three pre-defined power settings: Balanced, High Performance, and…
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Views in SQL Server are really just queries that have been given a name so that they can be referenced as if they are tables. This can be convenient, especially for code reuse. However, it can also have some unanticipated consequences. Let’s look at an example. Let’s consider the affect joining two views can have…
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