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

Kafka Integration with HDInsight 04/23/2018

Microsoft HDInsight is the cloud service that deploys and provisions Hadoop clusters on the Azure cloud. It's a completely managed, open source analytics service to support enterprise needs and supports a wide variety of scenarios with the help of open source frameworks like Hadoop, Storm, Spark, R Server and Hive. Read on to learn more.

5 New Features for Db2 12 for z/OS 04/19/2018

IBM presents version 12 of its flagship database product Db2 as, "The ultimate enterprise database for business-critical transactions and analytics". What does this mean? In this slideshow we dive into the most critical changes in this version of Db2, including improvements for application enablement, DBA functions, on-line transaction performance and query performance.

Does Your Oracle Table Really Need 255 or More Columns? 04/16/2018

Tables with 255 or more columns are not uncommon but Oracle introduces some interesting performance changes when dealing with them.  Read on to see what can happen for such tables.

Web-based Database Management 04/12/2018

Web-based database admin consoles have been somewhat limited, with the vast majority of tools aimed at specific database types, including phpMyAdmin (MySQL), Microsoft SQL Web Data Administrator (SQL Server), and various cloud services proprietary web consoles. Rob Gravelle takes a look at one web based-database tool named DBHawk.

Introduction to Azure SQL Managed Instance 04/05/2018

Microsoft currently offers two built-in methods of running production SQL Server databases in Azure. The first relies on the ability of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) Azure virtual machines to host a variety of on-premises workloads, including SQL Server instances. The second one leverages Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS)-based Azure SQL Database. With the introduction of the Azure SQL Managed Instance service, you have a third option, which combines the benefits of its two predecessors.

How to Programmatically Identify When Your SQL Server Was Last Started 04/02/2018

Greg Larsen shows you a quick trick to programmatically script a way to identify when SQL Server was last started.

How to Show the Execution Plan of a Running Query 04/02/2018

By looking at a query execution plan, you can determine which steps are used to resolve the query. But what if you just want to find out what the query plans are for only the queries that are currently running?

Put Your Oracle Database In the Oracle Cloud 03/26/2018

It may no longer be true that an on-premises database is faster than one in the Cloud.  Oracle Cloud offerings are varied, so read on to see the available options to migrate to the cloud.

Monitor Query Performance Using Query Store in SQL Server 03/19/2018

The Query Store captures a history of queries, execution plans, and runtime statistics, which persist within SQL Server and can be reviewed later. Read on to learn more.

Modern Database Disaster Planning 03/15/2018

What elements comprise current day disaster recovery planning, and how are large mainframe and big data applications recovered?

How to Programmatically Identify When Your SQL Server Was Last Started 04/02/2018

Greg Larsen shows you a quick trick to programmatically script a way to identify when SQL Server was last started.

How to Show the Execution Plan of a Running Query 04/02/2018

By looking at a query execution plan, you can determine which steps are used to resolve the query. But what if you just want to find out what the query plans are for only the queries that are currently running?

How to Send a TDE Encrypted Backup to Someone Outside Your Organization 03/01/2018

Once you enable your database to be encrypted with Transparent Data Encryption (TDE), the physical database files, and the database backups are encrypted.  If your database and database backup are encrypted, then how can you send the encrypted backup to a person outside your organization?

What is the State of My Transparent Data Encrypted Database? 03/01/2018

When using Transparent Data Encryption, you might wonder “What is the state of my transparent data encrypted database?” Read on to learn the many different states that a transparent data encrypted database might go through.

How to Enable Transparent Data Encryption 02/01/2018

By default, SQL Server does not encrypt data in a SQL Server database in an encrypted format. When SQL Server 2008 was introduced, Microsoft implemented Transparent Data Encryption (TDE). When TDE is enabled on a database SQL Server will encrypt the database as data is written to the disk. Read on to learn more...

How to Move a TDE Encryption Key to Another SQL Server Instance 02/01/2018

If you have a database backup of a Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) enabled database, the database backup will contain encrypted data. Because the database backup contains encrypted data you can’t just restore it to any instance. You can only restore the database backup to an instance that contains the same certificate used to originally encrypt the database.

Has Your Database Been Backed up in the Last 24 Hours? 01/02/2018

As a DBA your #1 responsibility is to make sure that each of your SQL Server databases are backed up. This tip provides a couple of TSQL scripts that will identify the last backup of each database.

How to Change the Default Backup Directory 01/02/2018

When you install a SQL Server instance you have the opportunity to identify the default location for your instance database backups. Overtime you might decide you want to change the default location for database backups. This tip shows you two different ways to change the default location for your database backups.

How to Turn on Instant File Initialization 12/04/2017

Not having instant file initialization turned on slows down the process of adding pages to your database, because prior to allocating the data pages to your database, SQL Server needs to zero out the newly allocated pages. Read on to learn more...

Quickly Restricting Database Access 12/04/2017

There may be times when you need to perform maintenance against a database that requires you to keep normal database users from connecting to your database while the maintenance is being performed.  You want to stop users from connecting right away, but you want the database to be in a state that you can perform maintenance.  Read on to learn how.