When backing up a database or transaction log, SQL Server needs to know two basic things: What information the backup should contain Where it's going to be written Many options exist to control the contents and behavior of a backup: whether it's full, differential, or a log, if it should be compressed, copy_only, …

Read More

It's 10PM*. Do you know who your sysadmin role members are? SQL Server's fixed server roles control incredibly broad permissions across your entire instance. For this reason, membership in these roles should be granted carefully and reviewed often. Fortunately, reviewing role membership is extremely easy, so you can …

Read More

This post is part of T-SQL Tuesday #52, which is being hosted this month by Michael J. Swart (@MJSwart). Michael is asking us to argue against a popular opinion, and I'm more than happy to do so, as this is a belief that I've kept to myself for quite a while. SQL Server's row compression feature can be an amazing tool. …

Read More

The ability to keep track of what's being executed on a SQL Server instance, or to create a read-only copy of a database at a specific point in time can be very valuable if required by the solution you are developing. But a lesser-known fact about SQL Auditing and Database Snapshots is that not only do they work well …

Read More

I'm very proud to have contributed a chapter to Tribal SQL, which is now available for purchase at Amazon and finer bookstores everywhere. This is the first book I've had any part in writing, something I never thought I would do. I always hated English and literature classes in school – if it wasn't math, hard science, …

Read More

When I'm presenting on SQL Server data compression, I frequently get asked if data compression and backup compression can be used together. I keep meaning to put together a blog post with a demo so I have something to direct people towards for further reading. So here we are – let's give it the old college try and find …

Read More

I was recently extremely honored to find out that I earned the Microsoft Certified Master (MCM) certification for SQL Server 2008. For me, this is a major milestone in a long, difficult, and costly journey. I have received several questions about it already, and while I can't answer everything, I am happy share as much …

Read More

It's once again the second Tuesday of the month, meaning it's T-SQL Tuesday! This month's topic comes to us from Jen McCown (blog | @JenniferMcCown). Jen is asking us to share our knowledge about filegroups, and it just so happens that I have a story about migrating to new storage that involved a large number of file …

Read More

I'm fortunate to be able to work with some rather large SQL Server instances on a daily basis, including databases over 25TB in size. Due to their bulk, "VLDBs" (Very Large Databases) present some challenges for DBAs: following best practices for small transactional systems might not be feasible on a VLDB. …

Read More

At work, a key function of my team is importing new systems into our data warehouse, most of which come from vendors. To do this we utilize many different methods depending on the capabilities of the source system and desired timeliness of the data. ETL through SSIS, snapshot replication, and transactional replication …

Read More