SQL Server management, tutorials, scripts, coding, programming and tips for database administrators

MS SQL

Getting Started with Azure SQL Data Warehouse - Part 1 01/23/2017

As the demand for data analytics grows so does the need for a technology or platform to process large amounts of different types of data in timely manner. Azure SQL Data Warehouse is a new enterprise-class, elastic petabyte-scale, data warehouse service that can scale according to organizational demands in just a few minutes. Read on to learn more about this data warehouse-as-a-service offering from Microsoft.

Introduction to SAP HANA on Azure 01/05/2017

Microsoft and SAP share a long history of working together on a variety of interoperability solutions, including SAP Fiori and Office 365. In recent years, this trend has been exemplified by advancements in support for SAP-based solutions on Microsoft Azure. Marcin Policht provides an overview, focusing in particular on support for SAP HANA on Azure.

Simple Row Level Security for SQL Server 2016 01/03/2017

Have you ever had a need to place some simple row level security on a SQL Server table? Well now you can do that in SQL Server 2016 by using row level security.

Using A Block Predicate to Restrict Row Updates and Inserts 01/03/2017

If you are using row level security in SQL Server 2016 you might find users are updating or inserting rows of data that keep them from seeing the row after they have performed the update or insert statement. If you want to prevent this from occurring, you can use a blocking predicate.

Getting Started with R Services in SQL Server 2016 – Part 2 12/27/2016

SQL Server 2016 brings native support for doing advanced analytics, using R Services, in the database itself. Arshad Ali takes a look at a detailed conceptual execution flow, executing R scripts from SQL Server Management Studio and other R client tools.

SQL Server in Azure Virtual Machines - Performance Optimizations 12/05/2016

When deploying SQL Server in an Azure virtual machine, you can take advantage of several Azure Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) features that enhance performance of the SQL Server database engine. We will explore a couple of these enhancements in this article. In particular, we will focus on increased I/O throughput facilitated by the Solid State Drive (SSD) storage available on most Azure virtual machines (VMs).

Identifying Last Night’s SQL Agent Job Failures 12/01/2016

Finding the nightly job failures is just one of a DBA's morning rituals. It is fairly easy to scan all the email with a number of creative search criteria, but what if you would like a more automated approach? Read on to learn how to find and report all job failures using a script.

Removing Email from msdb Database 12/01/2016

Is your msdb database growing bigger every day? If so you might want to consider purging some of the history records from the msdb database. If you are sending email using database mail and you are not periodically purging email information, then you might find out this is one of the reasons your msdb database is growing bigger.

Getting Started with R Services in SQL Server 2016 – Part 1 11/28/2016

SQL Server 2016 brings native support to advanced analytics in the database itself, using R Services. Learn what R is, what the on-premise advanced analytics options from Microsoft are, and how to get started using R Services with SQL Server 2016.

Azure SQL Database - Authenticating Application Access by Using Azure AD Tokens 11/07/2016

Learn how to leverage Azure Active Directory when connecting to Azure SQL Database from applications or services in a non-interactive manner, by relying on token-based authentication.

How to Get the Output of a Stored Procedure into a Table 11/03/2016

Putting the output of a stored procedure into a table provides you multiple options for parsing and using the output with other TSQL commands. Read on to learn more.

Which Indexes are not Used? 11/03/2016

During the development cycle, indexes will be placed on SQL Server tables to speed up performance when searching for records. Lots of thought probably has gone into creating just the right mix of indexes based on how developers think customers will use the system. But how do you tell if all the indexes are being used once your database has been implemented into production?

Real-time Operational Analytics in SQL Server 2016 - Part 3 10/24/2016

SQL Server 2016 introduces the Real-time Operational Analytics feature, which allows you to run both transactional/operational and analytics workloads on the same system. Read on to learn how to create a filtered, non-clustered columnstore index.

Azure SQL Database - Implementing Azure AD Authentication 10/06/2016

Marcin Policht focuses on the specifics of using Azure Active Directory to authenticate to Azure SQL Database.

Reading Backup History Information for a Database 10/03/2016

There are times when you might want to read backup/restore history information to identify a backup’s start and finish date/time, the location where the backup was written, the size of the database backup, etc. Greg Larsen shows you how to do this in SQL Server.