Ahmad Yaseen
SQL Server Always on Failover Cluster topography

SQL Server Transaction Log and High Availability Solutions

March 21, 2019 by

In the previous article of this series on the SQL Server transaction log, we discuss the SQL Server database recovery models, Full, Simple and Bulk-Logged, and the how the recovery model option of the database affects the way the SQL Server Engine works with the transaction logs. In this article, we will discuss the different types of high availability and disaster recovery solutions and the role of the SQL Server transaction log in these technologies.

Timothy Smith
Our CSV file returns with the Export-CSV function that catches the output from the select

Working with PowerShell’s Invoke-SqlCmd

March 18, 2019 by

PowerShell features many one-line commands for working with SQL Server, one of which is Invoke-SqlCmd. This tool can be useful in many development contexts where we need to quickly execute scripts or test code and it helps to know some of the parameters we’ll often use. In addition, because we may want a custom script using some of the underlying .NET objects, we’ll look at an alternative where we will be able to create a custom PowerShell script that connects to SQL Server in order to run commands. The latter can be useful because one-line scripts have a tendency to change in future versions of PowerShell and working with the library directly can sometimes avoid this challenge.

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Esat Erkec
SQL Unit testing - - tSQLt extended properties

SQL unit testing with the tSQLt framework for beginners

March 18, 2019 by

tSQLt is a powerful, open source framework for SQL Server unit testing. In this article, we will mainly focus on how to create and run SQL unit testing with help of the tSQLt framework. Before we begin to learn tSQLt framework details, let’s discuss essentials and importance of the database unit testing approach, in general. SQL unit testing is a vital and inseparable part of the modern database development approach and it makes possible to prevent errors before producing the release deployment process. Some database developers are still discussing the needs of the SQL unit testing concept; however, database unit testing is very significant to control and check the behavior of the individual parts of the database. For this reason, we cannot ignore the need to write unit test cases.

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Sreekanth Bandarla
Add Roles and Features Wizard - Remote access

Simulating a Multi Subnet cluster for setting up SQL Server Always On Availability Groups – lab setup

March 14, 2019 by

In this article, we are going to see how to create a multi subnet cluster spanning across multiple subnets for lab purposes. Creating such an environment should help creating Availability groups simulating a far replica residing in a different Data Center (Subnet) acting as a disaster recovery site in your lab for learning/experimenting real world scenarios.

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Rajendra Gupta
SQL FILETABLE root folder structure and child folder mapping with SQL Server FILETABLE

SQL Server FILETABLE – the next generation of SQL FILESTREAM

March 11, 2019 by

This SQL Server FILETABLE article is the continuation of the SQL Server FILESTREAM series. The SQL Server FILESTREAM feature is available from SQL Server 2008 on. We can store unstructured objects into FILESTREAM container using this feature. SQL Server 2012 introduced a new feature, SQL Server FILETABLE, built on top of the SQL FILESTREAM feature. In this article, we will explore the SQL FILETABLE feature overview and its comparison with SQL FILESTREAM.

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Timothy Smith

DevSecOps: Security Testing Around Builds and Shared Information

March 11, 2019 by

One big component of DevSecOps surrounding security testing involves how we build and deploy with shared information access of details that may be valuable to an attacker. In order to understand these risks, we must think like attacker who wants to compromise an environment that is focusing on quickly writing code, building the code, testing it, and deploying it across multiple environments. An attacker’s ultimate target will be the highest environment – often a production environment, but some attackers may target lower environments because they may be able to inject code that is deployed to production. In addition, an attacker may only be trying to learn about how an environment is laid out to attack in other ways, such as using social engineering with key information.

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Timothy Smith

DevSecOps: Developing with Automated Security Testing

March 6, 2019 by

A key component of DevSecOps and identical to running unit tests to validate code after a build, running automated security testing after an application has been deployed (such as automated penetration tests) can provide us with a tool that identifies security risks. As we’ve seen recently, there’s been a growth of many companies experiencing information being compromised and with the development culture of “move fast and break things”, I expect this trend of successful attacks will continue. Before we look at our options for automating this testing, we want to be aware of its limits, evaluate the requirements, and consider common designs that are useful.

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Rajendra Gupta
Importing compressed data into SQL Server: Add an OLE DB destination

Importing Data into SQL Server from Compressed Files

March 5, 2019 by

Introduction

I have seen many organizations receive data from various sources and import into SQL Server. You might receive data in various formats and want to import into SQL Server. We can prepare a ETL (Extract-Transform-Load) process to import data into the SQL Server. In doing so, might receive data in a compressed file, which helps to send data over the network using a ZIP file format because it reduces the file size significantly. If we are receiving a ZIP file to import into SQL Server, we need to unzip it and then only we can import data. We might need to create a ZIP file as well from the existing files.

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Rajendra Gupta
SQL FILESTREAM demo backup

Transaction log backups in a SQL FILESTREAM database

March 5, 2019 by

In the continuation of our SQL FILESTREAM article series, we’ll be covering transaction log backups

In SQL Server, we take transaction log backups regularly to have a point-in-time recovery of a database. It is essential to define the backup policy with the combination of full, differential and transaction log backups. A standard configuration of backups for large databases in the production database environment is as follows.

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Nikola Dimitrijevic

SQL Server trace flags guide; from -1 to 840

March 4, 2019 by

SQL Server trace flags are configuration handles that can be used to enable or disable a specific SQL Server characteristic or to change a specific SQL Server behavior. It is an advanced SQL Server mechanism that allows drilling down into a hidden and advanced SQL Server features to ensure more effective troubleshooting and debugging, advanced monitoring of SQL Server behavior and diagnosing of performance issues, or turning on and off various SQL Server features

Rajendra Gupta
Execcute and monitor status of SQL Server Python SSIS package

Using Python SQL scripts for Importing Data from Compressed files

March 4, 2019 by

Using Python SQL scripts is a powerful technical combination to help developers and database administrators to do data analytics activities. Python provides many useful modules to perform data computation and processing of data efficiently. We can run Python scripts starting from SQL Server 2017. We can create the ETL solutions to extract data from various sources and insert into SQL Server.

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