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

IBM Db2 Query Optimization Using AI 02/18/2019

IBM’s machine learning is being used to improve the performance of analytical queries as well as operational queries and their associated applications. This requires management attention, as you must verify that your business is prepared to consume these ML and AI conclusions. Learn more…

Oracle's Interesting Treatment of IN-LISTS 02/13/2019

Whether it's a bug or by design Oracle's 1000-element in-list restriction isn't always enforced.  Read on to see what conditions can bypass this limitation.

New Truncation Error Message in SQL Server 2019 02/07/2019

A new error message in SQL Server 2019 will make your life much easier!? Learn more...

Getting Approximate Count in Microsoft SQL Server 02/04/2019

Sometimes performance is more important than exact accuracy. Learn how to get an approximate count in SQL Server with better performance.

Top 10 Databases for 2019 01/31/2019

A look at ten top databases fighting for mind-share in 2019.

Is UNION The Best Choice When Joining Result Sets? 01/29/2019

It's common practice to use UNION when joining result sets from different tables, but there may be times when that isn't the best choice. Read on to see why.

Understanding Metadata Management 01/24/2019

Why should you manage metadata, which are the various facets of information? What are those facets? How are they managed? Is it only for big companies? Continue on to explore the key categories of metadata: Descriptive, structural, and administrative.

Generate Dynamic MySQL Multi-row INSERT Statements 01/21/2019

Discover how to generate a multiple-row insert statement dynamically using the programming language of your choice.

Handling Disaster Recovery When Using Oracle Managed Files 01/16/2019

Standby databases are used in most, if not all, Data Recovery configurations, and init.ora files and control file creation scripts are usually generated on the primary. Read on to see why, when using Oracle Managed Files, they need to be created on the standby.

HTAP - Hybrid Transaction and Analytical Processing 01/10/2019

The IT enterprise has grown, databases are bigger, companies have more product lines, more services, more customers and more transactions. Business analysts used to be satisfied with subsets of only certain data elements for their queries, and now they want it all. Now they want more....

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.