Database maintenance is very important, a critical part of our database administrators’ daily tasks. However, this aspect is frequently underestimated which could lead to performance problems and respectively angry, unhappy customers. In this article, we will take a look at the different maintenance operations we have in SQL Server and how we can optimize them […]
One of the more difficult challenges we face when analyzing data is to effectively identify and report on boundaries. Data sets can contain any number of significant starting and stopping points that may indicate significant events, such as missing data, important business events, or actionable changes in usage. Regardless of the use case, knowing how […]
Introducing the Problem Gaps existence in automatic sequenced columns occurs all the time. Missing identity values (or other sequencing values) occur for a variety of Reasons. The most common reasons include: roll backed transactions, failed inserts and Deletes, large row deletes after delete commands that occur after many inserts to a sequenced table and so […]
Introduction Many times the people focus on the user databases to improve the performance, but sometimes the problem is not the user database itself. Sometimes the problem is the tempdb. In this article, we will give a brief introduction about the tempdb database, show how to create some temporary objects there and show how to […]
Introduction One of the primary functions of a Business Intelligence team is to enable business users with an understanding of data created and stored by business systems. Understanding the data should give business users an insight into how the business is performing. A typical understanding of data within an insurance industry could relate to measuring […]
When talking about performance and scalability inside SQL Server, I don’t see anyone missing out on the fact to mention how locks get involved. I often see DBA’s complain to developers that their code is not scalable and they are experiencing heavy locks in the system because of the way the code has been written. […]
The Problem Checking the many SQL Servers health conditions is one of the DBA basic tasks. Monitoring many servers and databases, day after day can be a very tedious job. There are many aspects to look for when checking the server performance figures. Such aspects include among others: CPU, Read and Write Disk counters, Various […]
Introducing the Problem We have a series of views in our organization’s application database. The views definitions are all static queries that consist of few or many condition clauses. When the application first started with the initial data, the views operated normally, but after a while, after a period where data volume increased, the application’s […]
Introduction Working as a DBA, the simplest task requested from you is installing SQL Server. As a start you will check the server’s hardware and software specs to make sure that you can start the installation, checking which services will be installed and the security authentication type required. After this pre-installation plan, you will start […]
Introduction In a previous chapter, we learned how to use the Tuning Advisor to analyze queries and receive recommendations about indexes, partitions and statistics. In this new chapter, we will learn how to use the command line tool called DTA. The DTA is the command line of the Tuning Advisor. The DTA is a very […]
This article is a continuation of a guide where we are checking all the available backup preferences for a database contained in an Availability Group.
Introduction The indexes in many cases are great solutions to solve performance problems. For some problems, they are magical and very cheap solutions. In this chapter, we will show a demo of the SQL Server Tuning Advisor, which is a tool that comes with the SQL Server Installation. We will also use the SQL Server […]
SQL Server replication is a relatively old high-availability solution part of the Microsoft world. In fact, there have not been any significant changes to this solution in the recent versions SQL versions, but it is still a widespread mechanism for distributing objects from one database to another and synchronize them. Replication is very useful when […]
Introduction The Query Store is a new feature in SQL Server 2016 that will greatly improve the process of performance tuning! The biggest limit of the query plan cache and the dynamic management views that relates to it is that it is very temporary. Queries are only accessible for as long as they are in […]
Along with the release of SQL server 2016 CTP 3 now comes the preview of a brand new feature for on premise databases – the Query Store. This feature enables performance monitoring and troubleshooting through the log of executed queries. This blogpost will cover the following aspects of the Query Store feature: Introduction How to […]
Here we are with the last part of this series of articles! In this article we are going to see two curiosities: How does in-memory OLTP work with Availability Group? Can I migrate from Log Shipping or Database Mirroring to Availability Groups? So, let’s start!
Introduction In this chapter, we will work with Visual Studio to connect to SQL Databases in Azure. The first part of this chapter will be to create a Database in the Azure Portal and the second part will be to connect in Visual Studio and create some Database Objects.
Introduction In this new chapter, we will show how to use the Microsoft Portal to monitor the Virtual Machines with SQL Server Installed. We will show how to do it with the current Portal and the New Microsoft Azure Portal. We will check how to monitor performance, watch the logs, review the settings and change […]
With the release of SQL Server 2016 also comes a great new feature to get a live view of the current execution plan for an active query. This blogpost will cover the aspects of this new feature including: Introduction How to activate How to use and read the output Downsides – if any
We all love Availability Groups! Since its introduction in the SQL Server 2012, some things changed. In the beginning it was seen as “just a replacement for the database mirroring”, but when we discovered that this would support readable secondary’s, the possibility of having a listener and get rid of the shared storage – even […]
We already talked a lot about Azure and hybrid deployments on this. In order to better understand this article I suggest the reading of the article “Azure Blob Storage – Placing database files in the cloud”, as the presented solution will be based on the same approach.
With the release of SQL Server 2016 comes many great new features. One of these is the implementation of row level security in the database engine. This blogpost will cover the aspects of this new feature – including: Setup Best practice Performance Possible security leaks
Let’s continue the hybrid saga! After two articles talking about the Azure Blob Storage and what we can do using it, it’s time to check an alternative solution, that does the same of what was presented in the last article (a Hybrid Database used as archival solution for who didn’t read). This time we are […]
In continuation to our hybrid deployment series, we will check few more options in order to integrate on-premises and Azure, using of course SQL Server. In the last article we talked about Azure Blob Storage and how to use this service to store a SQL Server database entirely there. Meaning that we can have our […]
Do you know that since SQL Server 2012 you can have your entire database stored in Azure, even if you have your server on-premises? This article will introduce you to this capability, showing the basic steps to allow your instance to be in contact with your Azure Blob Storage Account.
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