Samir Behara

10 SSMS Tips and Tricks to boost your Productivity

January 6, 2017 by

I have been using SSMS for a long time now, and over the period of time I have realized that it’s a very powerful IDE – however, there are lots of hidden features which are less known to lots of developers. In this article, I will be sharing some beneficial Tips and Tricks which will give you an extra edge in your day to day work, and in the process take your productivity to the next level.

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Manjuke Fernando

Native JSON Support in SQL Server 2016

January 6, 2017 by

With the introduction of SQL Server 2016, Microsoft introduced many new features which had taken SQL Server another step forward and they made sure that it stands in front among many major Relational Database Systems.

One such feature which has been lacking but desperately required was the native support towards JSON.

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Sifiso Ndlovu

Report Subscription Changes in SQL Server Reporting Services 2016

December 30, 2016 by

What makes SQL Server 2016 one of my favorite SQL Server release since the release of SQL Server 2012 is the increased number of exciting new features that have been introduced. Whilst my article Top 5 New SQL Server 2016 DMVs for DBAs reviewed some of these new features albeit from a DBA point of view, in this article I continue to review SQL Server 2016 but from the perspective of an SSRS administrator in relation to the changes in report subscriptions.

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Kimberly Killian

SQL Server Index vs Statistics a consultants woes…or rants

December 29, 2016 by

As a DBA, I am often asked why is something performing slow, what and why statistics need to be updated or what will cause them to be “off”. My initial question to clients when they pose these questions to me is what changed on your end? Did the data change significantly and did the rebuild or reorganize index job run? Before I get into the answers to these questions from my clients, let me give you some background. So, just to clarify, for most of my clients, I work as a remote part-time DBA, that being said, I manage their database from every aspect including setting up servers, backups/restore, troubleshooting, managing their index’s, etc. and again remotely. So normally, I have setup jobs that will manage their index’s ranging from a weekly rebuild or even sometimes I use one that I’ve designed that makes a choice to either rebuild or reorganize an index based on fragmentation level. The “general rule of thumb” is reorganizing the index for fragmentation from 5% to 29% and rebuild when 30% plus. Those are pretty standard numbers I did not make them up.

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Shawn Melton
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Introduction of Visual Studio Code for DBAs

December 29, 2016 by

Introduction

Visual Studio Code (Code), have you heard of this product yet? This is an open-source, cross-platform and extremely light weight code editor from Microsoft. You may see some folks explain this editor as the little brother to Visual Studio Community Edition (VS Community), but it is more compared to editors like Atom, Sublime Text or even Notepad++. It is not something you can use to compile program code, so it is for the less complex coding projects. I utilize Code as my editor of choice now with PowerShell, and even T-SQL at times. In this article, I wanted to walk you through using Code and note some specific extensions I use for PowerShell and SQL Server.

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Ahmad Yaseen

SQL Server Estimated Vs Actual Execution Plans

December 29, 2016 by

A SQL Server execution plan is the most efficient and least cost road map that is generated by the Query Optimizer’s algorithms calculations to execute the submitted T-SQL query. Execution plans are used by the database administrators to troubleshoot the performance of poorly performing queries to isolate the part of the query that is at the root of the performance issue.

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Kimberly Killian

How to Split a Comma Separated Value (CSV) file into SQL Server Columns

December 29, 2016 by

Receiving a comma delimited file is not new technology nor is it difficult to deal with in SQL Server. As a matter of fact, it is extremely easy. There are many cases as to why you would want to do this. For example, you have an external data source that needs to be imported into your database/table. There a couple ways to do this, however the quickest and easiest way is to use the native “import” feature within SQL Server Management Studio and you can even save it to an SSIS Package at the end of the process. The end result of using this method is that the external CSV file is loaded into a SQL Server table where columns are created and rows are populated.

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Ed Pollack

Java HashCode in TSQL

December 28, 2016 by

The Java HashCode method is used to determine uniqueness or similarity of strings. While implemented in Java, there can be many benefits of creating a similar or customized version of this method.

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Daniel Calbimonte

FAQ about Dates in SQL Server

December 22, 2016 by

Introduction

In this article, I compiled a list of FAQs and Answers about dates.

  1. Which function should I use to get the current date in SQL Server?
  2. How can I get the current time in the format hh:mm:ss?
  3. How can I calculate my age in SQL Server with a birth date?
  4. How can I insert the current time by default in a SQL Server table?
  5. How can I check the total time that the employees of my company worked per day?
  6. How can I get the time of a specific region?
  7. How can I get the time of a specified Standard time?
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Gerald Britton

Why is my CTE so slow?

December 22, 2016 by

Introduction

Have you ever written up a complex query using Common Table Expressions (CTEs) only to be disappointed by the performance? Have you been blaming the CTE? This article looks at that problem to show that it is a little deeper than a particular syntax choice and offers some tips on how to improve performance.

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Daniel Calbimonte

SQL Server performance myth busters

December 21, 2016 by

Introduction

In this article, we will verify if the following statements are true or they are just myths:

  1. Truncate is faster than a delete and it consumes less space in the logs
  2. Do not use cursors to Create or drop multiple objects because it is very slow
  3. Do not use cursors to convert or process row values because it is very slow
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Sifiso Ndlovu

Top 5 New SQL Server 2016 DMVs for DBAs

December 20, 2016 by

Since its initial release that was part of SQL Server 2005, Dynamic Management Views (DMV) changed – mostly for the better – the role of database administration (DBA) within SQL Server-based environments. They improved the efficiency of DBAs regarding database server monitoring, issue diagnoses, and subsequent performance optimisation. As a result of this positive reception, it has become customary that some of the highly anticipated items in every release of SQL Server includes discovering what new DMVs will be added. In this article I take you through my favourite top 5 DMVs to come out of SQL Server 2016.

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Steve Simon

Reporting in SQL Server – Using calculated Expressions within reports

December 19, 2016 by

Introduction

Late in October, I received an unusual request from the head of sales within one of my client sites. Sales sells three articles: bread, perfume, and Jaguar motor cars. Now the reader will note that one of these items is a staple and the other two are for those folks with considerable disposable income. Management within the firm had increased the salesmen’s bonuses for those folks that managed to sell perfume and/or Jaguars along with the standard loaves of bread. The summary report may be seen below showing the final bonus rate for each sales order booked during the month.

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Aamir Syed

How to configure Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) in SQL Server

December 19, 2016 by

Introduction and Overview

Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) was introduced in SQL Server 2008. Its main purpose was to protect data by encrypting the physical files, both the data (mdf) and log (ldf) files (as opposed to the actual data stored within the database). Transparent Data Encryption Encrypts SQL Server, Azure SQL Databases, and Azure SQL Data Warehouse data files.

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Dinesh Asanka

Point in Time Recovery with SQL Server

December 19, 2016 by

Introduction

How often are you working with multiple environments? For example, if you are a database administrator who is responsible for a production environment as well as another environment, it most likely that you will be working with both environments simultaneously. What is the probability that you will execute a script on production, which actually needs to be executed on the other environment? I would say it is high. To prove this point let me present you an example.

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