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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The SQL Server community is vibrant, caring, and close-knit. Now, with recent news about the future of SQLSaturday, we can add resilient to that list. The gift of SQLSaturday If you’ve been around SQL Server very long, you know just how wonderful the SQL Server community is. People around the world regularly and selflessly share…
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Some things are scary. Other things are dangerous. And in SQL Server, you can have both scary and dangerous at the same time. Scary, that we can deal with. But dangerous, particularly things that are deceptively dangerous, is bad. Scary things Let’s start with scary. Some things give us pause. We see them, think about…
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The end of Mainstream Support. Is that really as dire as it sounds? Because it sounds like I’ll be completely on my own. No support. At least no “mainstream” support, whatever that means. What happens if something goes wrong?
“The server is seriously slow! Can’t we add memory or something?” We’ve all heard this before. You may have even thought it yourself. Adding resources could be an easy fix to a troublesome performance problem. After all, SQL Server hungers for memory. The more the better. And a side of processor goes a long way,…
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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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“Do I really need the SQL Server Enterprise Edition license? Or will SQL Server Standard Edition work for us?” That’s a question most every CFO, CIO, VP, and Director with a SQL Server environment and budgetary responsibilities has asked. The reason is obvious. SQL Server Enterprise Edition is expensive. How expensive? According to Microsoft’s web…
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We’ve made it! The start of a new year. Now is a great time to reflect on what you’d like to accomplish over the next 12 months at work, and more specifically, what you would like to do with your SQL Server environment this year. To help with that, here are five activities or goals…
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In SQL Server, when someone creates a database, they own it. That means they have elevated permissions on the database. The SQL Server database owner can change configuration parameters, perform maintenance, and grant permissions on the database to other users. The database owner can even drop the database altogether. In highly secure environments (and what…
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