DTA and Hypothetical Indexes
For those of you that don’t know DTA stands for Database Engine Tuning Adviser and is available from the Tools menu in Management Studio. This tool was first introduced in SQL Server 2005 and has been...
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Object Qualification
I came across an interesting issue recently with NHibernate, now it is widely known I despise ORM’s, in my experience they do a pretty mediocre job at best and at times can be absolutely horrific. The...
View ArticleDedicated Administrator Connection (DAC)
We all dread the scenario whereby SQL Server is under so much load and has a complete lack of resources that no further connections can be made. Although extreme and a situation I have never been in...
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Baseline SQL Server with SQL Sentry Performance Advisor
Baselines can be any set of metrics that have been recorded to give you an understanding of what is the norm. Having a baseline gives you another piece to the puzzle when troubleshooting performance...
View ArticleFirst Time Speaker
So this week was another first for me, I finally bit the bullet and gave a talk at the Leeds SQL Server User Group and it was great, I thoroughly enjoyed it!Public speaking is something that I have...
View ArticleDisaster Recovery - Part 1 - Possibly Almost Everything But the Kit
Over the years I have been fortunate or unfortunate enough, depending on who you are to have experienced several disasters along with a couple of very near misses. In this post I am going to explore...
View ArticleWindows Failover Cluster Monitor
Windows Failover Clusters are fantastic, they provide High Availability for mission critical SQL Server instances and make my life as a DBA better in so many ways. Can they though, sometimes be too...
View ArticleTrigger Status
Have you ever spent hours looking at an issue only to have your investigation hindered by a trigger? I know I have and on more than one occasion! This little script can be added to a SQL Agent Job...
View ArticleBank Holiday Fun - DDL Trigger
Following on from my previous post on triggers, I had made a mental note to make sure I did a post about a DDL trigger I use. As a DBA I am a gatekeeper to the companies SQL Server estate, I would...
View ArticleFree Tools For The DBA
In this post we will look at 5 free tools that I use on a daily basis, I'll give a little bit of detail about them, why I find them useful and the links for you to download them.1 - Maintenance Scripts...
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Encryption Decryption Routine
In this post we will look at a complete end to end routine for encrypting, storing, decrypting data in SQL Server and just how easy it is to set-up and maintain. SQL Server encrypts data with a...
View ArticlePASS Summit
It's that time of year again, the annual PASS Summit is under way in Charlotte, NC!For those of you who don't know, PASS Summit is the world's largest and most intensive technical training conference...
View Article2013 - The Year of Community Speaking
So, the end of 2013 is upon us and what a year it has been. The SQL Server 365 blog saw the number of site hits double from last year, which I am thrilled with. The biggest personal achievement this...
View ArticleVolunteers Needed For PASS SUMMIT
Last night I submitted my application to volunteer for the 2014 PASS Summit Program Committee.Not know what PASS is? head over to the website and check it out. You can also get involved on twitter I...
View ArticleTables without a Clustered Index
Yesterday while adding some new logic to an existing process I noticed an unacceptable level of performance degradation with the routine. Investigation led me to find that a new table had slipped...
View ArticleTables without a Primary Key
As well as creating the script for yesterday’s post on finding Tables without a Clustered Index I tweaked the script slightly to get all tables without a primary key. A Primary Key constraint enforces...
View ArticleActive Directory Group Membership and Powershell
I’ve done my fair share of work with Active Directory over the years and LDAP has helped immensely, it did however let me down recently. Well when I say LDAP let me down it was probably my knowledge...
View ArticleSQL Server 365 - Fantastic First Year In Numbers
So, tomorrow marks one year since I started blogging here on SQL Server 365 and what a year it has been. I can honestly say that I have taken a great deal away from this experience which has been so...
View ArticleReplication Latency
I've used Replication a lot over the years and contrary to the opinions of most DBA’s I know, I think it is a brilliant feature. Replication I feel gets a bad reputation for causing a number of...
View ArticleScript Replication with PowerShell
I promised you some PowerShell scripts this year and this post is the first one. I can see the value PowerShell can bring, but find it equally frustrating. I don’t know the syntax very well or all...
View ArticleT-SQL Gotcha
I came across an interesting issue a few days ago that I thought I would blog about. The issue is replacing NUL characters from values in SQL Server, more specifically usingREPLACE(). Take the below...
View ArticleFun with dates
Every year me and a group of friends attend the Royal International Air Tattoo (RIAT) at RAF Fairford, for us it is a long weekend where we camp close to the airfield and get to take in three full days...
View ArticleCost Threshold for Parallelism
Parallelism, where to start? Well let’s start right at the beginning shall we with the question, what is parallelism? Simply put it is a feature of SQL Server which allows queries to utilize more...
View ArticleIndex Tuning
This week I've been carrying out some performance tuning of some of the more intensive procedures in one of our environments. Using SQL Sentry Performance Advisor I highlighted four or five procedures...
View ArticleSQL Server Hardware and Acronyms
Over the weekend I finished reading yet another Red Gate book, this one was SQL Server Hardware by Glenn Berry (t - b). Having earned my crust as a Windows Engineer before honing my SQL Server Skills...
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