Even if you are a SQL veteran, actually especially if you are, you sometimes get really stuck doing something in the old way not realizing that in newer versions of SQL Server some handy functions have been added that can make your life easier.
In this article, I will mention a couple of these which appeared in SQL Server 2008 or later versions or might have even been there before but most people just didn’t know about.
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SQL Server 2016 introduces a new type of table that is designed to keep the full history of data changes, where row validity is managed by the system. This new table type is called a System-Versioned Temporal Table. In earlier SQL Server versions, user tables would enable you to hold only the most recent copy of the row, without being able to query the value before the UPDATE or DELETE operations. Using a Temporal Table, you will be able to query the recent state of the row as usual, in addition to the ability to query the full history of that row, which is fully managed by the SQL Server Engine, as you can’t define the rows validity period explicitly.
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In SQL Server 2000, the sample databases were pubs and northwind. They contained sample information to learn SQL Server.
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In this article, we will show how to create a simple SQL Server Reporting Services report from a SSAS Tabular model database as a data source, using DAX query, and then deploy it.
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In SQL Server Reporting Services Native mode, a report server has a role of a stand-alone application server, that provides all viewing, processing, delivery, and management of reports and report models. This is the default mode for SSRS instances.
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When a new row is inserted or an existing one is updated in your database, the SQL Server Database Engine will keep that change in the buffer pool in the memory first, without applying each change directly to the database files for IO performance reasons. These data pages located in the buffer pool and not reflected yet to the database files are called Dirty Pages. The SQL Server Database Engine uses a special kind of processes to write these dirty pages to the data and log database files periodically. These processes are called Checkpoints. The Checkpoint creates a mark that is used by the SQL Server Database Engine to redo any transaction that is committed, written to the database transaction log file without reflecting the data changes to the data files due to an unexpected shutdown or crash. Also, this recovery point that is created by the Checkpoint will be used to roll back any data changes associated with uncommitted transaction, by reversing the operation written in the transaction log file. In this way the SQL Server Engine will guarantee the database consistency. The time that is taken by the SQL Server Database Engine to redo and undo the transactions is called the Recovery Time. All information about the Checkpoints will be written to the database boot page to identify till which point the database files are synchronized with the buffer pool when the system wakes up after crash or shutdown.
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After receiving new additions to backup and restore capabilities of SQL Servers like file and page restores, I thought that nothing will surprise me anymore, but well, here it is; SQL Server file-snapshot backups in Azure.
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For the purpose of this article, Bitbucket is chosen as a Git hosting service. In order to prepare the “communication” between Git hosting service and your application, the following steps need to be performed:
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Many of us have been given the opportunity to run or help plan a SQL Saturday or another SQL Server event. This conclusion will dig much deeper into the nitty-gritty, such as planning food and budgeting. No two events are the same, and as such, not everything here will be the same for you. Consider these experiences a tool and list of ideas to pull from when deciding how to structure, divide, and conquer your conference!
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Retrieving information from a Tabular database is easy – just query it with some basic DAX functions! In this article, we will learn how to query a Tabular model with some of MDX expressions, examine the results from DAX querying and analyze data from the tables.
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SQL Server 2016 provides great enhancement capability features for troubleshooting purposes. Some of the important features are:
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Many of us have been given the opportunity to run or help plan a SQL Saturday or another SQL Server event. This is an intro to everything I’ve experienced and learned over the past 7 years planning, attending, and volunteering at a variety of SQL Server conferences.
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There are many reasons for terminating a long running SSIS Package. Picture a scenario whereby an inexperienced DBA/developer accidentally kicks-off a monthly job instead of a daily job, inadvertently impacting SQL Server performance. Whatever the reasons, you are more than likely to encounter a situation in which you have to temporary stop a long running process.
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The xp_cmdshell is a very powerful extended procedure used to run the command line (cmd). This is very useful to run tasks in the operative system like copying files, create folders, share folders, etc. using T-SQL.
In this new article, we will show some useful examples about how to use it.
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SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) is part of Microsoft SQL Server services since version 2000. If you are an ordinary user with a basic knowledge of SQL, this article will help you in creating your first SSRS report.
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The Stretch database is one of the latest and most-exciting features that has been released with SQL Server 2016. In the previous article, we examined the concept behind it, the steps to implement it, monitor it and how it can be disabled. As a natural follow-up, we will explore the backup and restore topic when it comes to those kind of databases.
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A few weeks back, I was approached by a client who lives in Cape Town, South Africa. The data that he wanted to insert into Master data services was far from clean and he was wondering if there was any way have a positive influence on the data quality.
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Microsoft has recently launched SQL Server 2016 with lots of new features like row level security, always encrypted, stretch database, PolyBase, R Services, hybrid cloud capabilities, Dynamic Data Masking, query store, etc. There is a rich set of business intelligence, security features, and high availability solutions.
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To make the first steps into the BI world easier, you just need to build one SSAS Tabular model database. In this article, we will learn some basics of querying a SSAS Tabular model database with simple DAX queries, starting with a theoretical approach, and then retrieve data and analyze it.
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SQL Server is one of the world’s leading data platforms. It is being broadly used hosting millions of databases. These databases store data. This data are each organization’s most valuable asset. It is with this data that organizations run their everyday operations and processes. This fact makes it a necessity to efficiently secure your SQL Server instances, in order to protect your databases and consequently your data. This article suggests a list with the top 10 security considerations based on which you can efficiently secure your SQL Server instances.
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