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

A GUI Might Not Be An Oracle DBA's Best Friend 11/20/2018

Oracle DBAs should know how Oracle behaves and should also be able to address issues without the aid of a flashy graphical user interface (or GUI). Are you a DBAs who would be lost without applications interfaces to help you with tasks? 

Hybrid Histograms in Oracle 18 11/15/2018

iOracle version 12 introduced the hybrid histogram as a performance improvement. Learn about a change in Oracle 18 that can cause histograms to break. 

A Guide to MySQL Prepared Statements and Parameterized Queries 11/05/2018

A prepared statement, or parameterized query, is used to execute the same statement repeatedly in an extremely efficient manner. In today's article, Rob Gravelle demonstrates how to use prepared statements within a stored procedure as well as using a programming language.

Overview of Azure SQL Database Information Protection 11/01/2018

Information protection becomes one of the dominant factors that drive modern database design and implementation. This becomes particularly evident when operating in a cloud computing environment, with Azure SQL Database serving as one of the prime examples of this trend. Microsoft delivers relevant features by leveraging several different security-related Azure services. In this article, we will provide an overview of this functionality.

Oracle OEM Agent 13c and Perl 10/25/2018

Perl can sometimes 'misbehave' with the Oracle Enterprise Manager (OEM) agent for version 13c.  Read on to see what issues it can create and how to correct them.

SQL Server on Amazon Web Services (AWS) 10/22/2018

Relational Database Service (RDS) and Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) are two different approaches, with their own advantages and limitations, for making Microsoft SQL Server (MS SQL Server) available and maintaining MS SQL Server databases on Amazon Web Services (AWS).

IBM Offers AI-Assisted SQL Tuning 10/18/2018

A new separately-priced software offering from IBM on z/OS systems uses machine learning and artificial intelligence to assist the Db2 optimizer in choosing high-performance access paths for SQL statements.

Oracle Network Encryption 10/15/2018

Oracle provides a method of encrypting networked database connections, with a few caveats.  Read on to see how this  is configured and what settings will ensure encrypted communication.

Managing Users and Roles in Oracle's MySQL Cloud 10/11/2018

Rob Gravelle shows you how to create and manage user accounts in Oracle's MySQL Cloud Service.

Installing SQL Server 2019 CTP 2.0 10/08/2018

Greg Larsen offers detailed instructions on how to install SQL Server 2019 CTP 2.0.

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.

Databases with MAXSIZE Set 06/04/2018

When a database grows to the MAXSIZE the database will not grow anymore and if someone tries to add more rows they will get an error saying the database is full. Greg Larsen shows you how to find all database files that have their max_size set.

Indexes That Have Not Been Used but Are Being Updated 06/04/2018

We all know indexes are important for improving your query performance, but to store and maintain indexes SQL Server requires disk space and compute resources. If you have indexes that are not being used, they are costing you valuable resources and causing your update statements to run longer. Those updates run longer because they have to maintain those unused indexes. If your application is not using an index, then there is no value in having that index. Read on to learn more.