Database Management & Programming News, Articles & Tutorials for Database Administrators

The Demise of Big Data 05/24/2019

Big data as an application (or as a service) is being supplanted by artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. Few new requirements for a big data solution have arisen in the past few years. All the low-hanging fruit (fraud detection, customer preferences, just-in-time re-stocking and delivery, etc.) have already been big data-ized. Is this the end of big data?

How to Eliminate Gaps in Identity Values in SQL Server by Disabling the Identity Cache 05/20/2019

Learn how to remove gaps in Identity values in SQL Server caused by Identity Cache.

How to Reseed Your Identity Column Value in SQL Server 05/14/2019

Have you deleted a bunch of rows from a table that has an identity column value and now thins aren't working quite right? If so, read on...

Introduction to the Cosmos DB Emulator 05/08/2019

Cosmos DB delivers a wide range of advantages over traditional SQL and NoSQL-based data stores, including support for multiple consistency levels, latency and throughput guarantees, policy-based geo-fencing, automatic scaling, and multi-master replication model. However, it is a significant departure from the traditional database management and development approach that most database administrators are familiar with. Discover the offerings that you can use at no cost to gain hands-on experience with Cosmos DB.

The Horror of NOLOGGING in Oracle 05/03/2019

Transactions using NOLOGGING can make a database unusable if recovery is necessary. Read on to see why and how to protect the database from unrecoverable transactions.

MySQL 8 Security Tips 04/29/2019

If data security is not a top priority at your organization, it's time to make it one. It's up to you to protect both your customers' sensitive data and your reputation.  Learn some tips and tricks for securing your MySQL or MariaDB databases!

Importing Data into Azure SQL Database 04/23/2019

Data imports represent some of the more commonly performed database management tasks. Learn about a number of traditional SQL Server data import techniques that you can leverage when importing data into Azure SQL Database.

IBM Improves IT Operations with Artificial Intelligence 04/18/2019

IBM has enhanced its Operations Analytics software on the IBM Z platform by leveraging IBM Watson Machine Learning (WML) for z/OS. WML is implemented as a service that interfaces with several varieties of data, creates and trains machine learning models, scores them and compares the models with live metrics. The operations analytics software then classifies and analyzes the results to detect and predict problems. Read on to learn more!

Single-column Primary Keys and Histograms in Oracle 04/15/2019

Does a single-column primary key need a histogram? That may not be as silly of a question as might appear. Read on to find out why.

Microsoft SQL Server: Current Identity Column Value in a Table 04/11/2019

Learn how to find the current identity column value in your Microsoft SQL Server tables.

New Preview of SQL Server Management Studio Available for Download 12/06/2018

On September 24^th Microsoft released the first Community Technical Preview for SQL Server 2019, which was CTP2.0. At the same time Microsoft pushed out a new preview for SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) known as version 18. Now is the time to download this new preview!

SQL Server 2019 Community Technical Preview (CTP) 2.1 is Available Now 12/03/2018

Microsoft announced the release or CTP 2.1 for SQL Server 2019. This is the second CTP released for SQL Server 2019, and it has lots of new exciting features, like " UDF inlining". Read on to find out more!

How Big is Your Transaction Log? 10/01/2018

If you are not managing the transaction log space used by a database, the transaction log might grow uncontrollably. With SQL Server 2017 there is a new dynamic management function (DMF) that exposes statistical information about a database transaction log. One of the things you can do with the information returned from this DMF is to determine how full a database transaction log file is.

SQL Server 2019 is Here 10/01/2018

On Monday, Sep 24, 2018, at the Ignite 2018 conference, Microsoft announced the first public preview of SQL Server 2019 (community technical preview (CTP) release of SQL Server 2.0).This new release of SQL Server is packed with many new features to improve performance, integrate your increasing volumes of corporate data, beef up security, and more. 

Line Numbers in SQL Server Management Studio 09/04/2018

Have ever tried to debug a chunk of TSQL code (like a stored procedure) and found yourself trying to figure out which TSQL statement is at a particular line number?  By default, SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) doesn’t display numbers.  But that is only the default, you can change it.

Displaying and Removing Unprintable Hexadecimal Characters from SQL Server Data 09/04/2018

There are times when you might need to look at your SQL Server data in hexadecimal format. Occasionally some string data will contain unprintable characters, which can cause downstream problems, if not detected and removed. Read on to learn how to display and remove unprintable hexadecimal characters from SQL Server data.

How to Resize tempdb 08/02/2018

When you are setting up a new SQL Server machine you need to determine how big you should make tempdb. To make sure you size tempdb appropriately you should monitor the tempdb space usage. If there are autogrowth events occurring after you have recycled SQL Server than you might want to increase the size of your tempdb data files. If tempdb never uses most of the tempdb space, then you might want to consider decreasing the size of tempdb.

How to Remove Transparent Data Encryption From a Database 08/02/2018

There may be a time when you want to turn off transparent data encryption on one of your TDE enabled databases. In this tip, Greg Larsen shows you how simple it is to remove Transparent Data Encryption.

Placing a Mark in SQL Server's Transaction Log for Fall Back 07/02/2018

How many times have you had a programmer come to you and say they want you (the DBA) to restore their database to sometime prior to when they accidentally corrupted it? If you are doing FULL transaction logging you can do a point in time recovery to restore the database to just prior to when the corruption occurred. But in order to do that you need to know exactly when the programmer corrupted the data, which in a lot of cases is not known down to the second.

Using SQL Server's Default Trace to Identify Autogrow Events in tempdb 07/02/2018

We all know that you should try to size tempdb appropriately, so it doesn’t need to autogrow shortly after starting up SQL Server. It isn’t always easy to do this. Therefore, when you first implement a new server and/or add new databases you should monitor the autogrowth events on tempdb. By monitoring the autogrowth events you can easily determine if you have sized tempdb appropriately.