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Discovering Symantec NetBackup
I have worked with a large organization (150,000+ employees). This organization has a central location and hundreds of subordinate sites. Headquarters (HQ) has dictated that the Symantec NetBackup MS SQL Client will be used for all SQL Server backups. Each site has local backup appliances which are replicated to off-site locations for more redundancy. At one of […]
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Implicit Conversion Mine Field: Blowing SARGability away!
Implicit conversions are convenient. Implicit conversions are EVIL! When talking to professionals about implicit conversions, I’ve heard a few different comments, such as: (a developer) Don’t waste time converting if the engine does it for you. (a DBA) Sure it probably adds a little bit of overhead but I’ve never found it to be severe […]
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Trace flags every DBA should know about
I have compiled a list of trace flags which I recommend enabling by default on all of you SQL Server instances and ones which are simply, useful. Check out the page and bookmark it for reference as I will be updating it periodically. Derik’s Favorite Trace Flags It will also be available on the home […]
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Do not use percentage based auto-growth
Having autogrowth enabled on your SQL Server instance is great! Even in IT shops where you diligently right-size your database files (which is a good idea), autogrowth is the perfect emergency feature. It will increase the size of your files, as needed, until you run into an external blocker such as limited disk space. What is a bad […]
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Fast, light-weight, row counts
Often we need to know the number of records in a table. If you are looking for something very specific, such as the number of non-NULL values in a particular column, learn how to use COUNT() correctly with this post here. If you are looking for a basic record count for the entire table, however, […]
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Synchronizing Server Objects for Availability Groups
Updated: 9/8/2017 In addition to the release based method demonstrated below. I created a SQL Agent job based method using dbatools here. This method was created in response to a lot of feedback from DBAs like you. Original After we create a strategy for synchronizing our data for disaster recovery, we then need to consider […]
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It is who you know, or is it?
I have spent a lot of time learning about how to effectively network and the benefits that it can bring to my life and career. What I find interesting, however, is that there is a negative connotation revolving around the good ol’ boy club which networking seems to relate to. Everyone has heard the saying, “it’s not what […]
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Writing Repeatable T-SQL
Writing code for a database is more of a challenge than writing for applications. Before the developers bite my head off, I do not mean that the languages, such as T-SQL, are more difficult or that applications are any less sophisticated than database management systems (DBMS). An important difference, however, is that the state of […]
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SQL Server SCHEMABINDING
SCHEMABINDING is an option that is available for objects in T-SQL which contain user defined code. Examples include, stored procedures, indexes, and functions. Straight from MSDN, SCHEMABINDING… Specifies that the schema is bound to the database objects that it references. This condition will prevent changes to the schema if other schema bound objects are referencing […]
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Row Level Security in SQL Server 2016 CTP2
Earlier this year Microsoft Azure implemented Row-Level Security (Brent’s announcement). In following Microsoft’s cloud-first release concept, this great feature is now part of SQL Server 2016 CTP2, and expected to be included in the RTM version. When I first saw the feature and decided to blog on it, my mind jumped to the performance cost […]