Jefferson Elias

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Living in Belgium, I obtained a master degree in Computer Sciences in 2011 at the University of Liege.

I'm one of the rare guys out there who started to work as a DBA immediately after his graduation. So, I work at the university hospital of Liege since 2011. Initially involved in Oracle Database administration (which are still under my charge), I had the opportunity to learn and manage SQL Server instances in 2013. Since 2013, I've learned a lot about SQL Server in administration and development.

I like the job of DBA because you need to have a general knowledge in every field of IT. That's the reason why I won't stop learning (and share) the products of my learnings.

View all posts by Jefferson Elias

Latest posts by Jefferson Elias (see all)

How to perform a performance test against a SQL Server instance - September 14, 2018
Concurrency problems – theory and experimentation in SQL Server - July 24, 2018
How to link two SQL Server instances with Kerberos - July 5, 2018

SQL Server Audit feature – DDL event auditing examples

April 10, 2017 by Jefferson Elias

Introduction

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.

SQL Server Audit feature – discovery and architecture

April 10, 2017 by Jefferson Elias

Introduction

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.

How to discover and handle orphaned database users in SQL Server

March 30, 2017 by Jefferson Elias

Introduction

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.

How to retrieve information about SSIS packages stored in MSDB Database

February 21, 2017 by Jefferson Elias

Introduction

Nowadays, most mid-size companies have implemented a Data Warehouse (DWH) solution. This DWH can be designed using a set of tools (or features) from Microsoft SQL Server. One of them is SQL Server Integration Services, also known as SSIS.

Link a SQL Server to an Oracle database

August 15, 2016 by Jefferson Elias

There are some cases in the wild where we want to get back data from an external database without additional coding in an application and just write a T-SQL query that will do all the job for us. That’s why Microsoft provides the « linked server » feature.

How to take advantage of the SQL Server’s transaction log?

April 11, 2016 by Jefferson Elias

Introduction

SQL Server keeps track of all database modifications and every database transaction. This is done in a file called the transaction log or TLOG. This transaction log is particular to a SQL Server database and there is, at least, one transaction log per SQL Server database.

As explained on MSDN, the transaction log is a critical component of the database and, if there is a system failure, the transaction log might be required to bring your database back to a consistent state. The transaction log should never be deleted or moved unless you fully understand the ramifications of doing this.

How to install and use Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer (MBSA)

March 25, 2016 by Jefferson Elias

Introduction

Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer is one of the tools provided by Microsoft to help administrators to scan systems (local and remote) for missing security updates and common security misconfigurations. It can scan the server operating system and SQL Server but also other products as well, such as Microsoft web server IIS.

Managing untrusted foreign keys

March 17, 2016 by Jefferson Elias

Introduction

Intended audience

This article is intended for application developers and database administrators who plan to develop, deploy, and/or assess solutions for Microsoft SQL Server on a Microsoft Windows platform.