Arshad Ali

Introduction There are several high availability solutions that can be used with SQL Server, like AlwaysOn, Fail-over clustering, or Database mirroring. While these high availability solutions ensure maximum uptime for your databases, you need to setup backup and restore strategies to recover the data or minimize the risk of data loss in case a failure […]

Introduction Have you ever wondered, especially in the case of a data warehousing scenario, why the transaction log file grows bigger and bigger and sometimes even much bigger than your actual database’s data files? What caused it to happen? How do you control it? How does the recovery model of a database control the growing […]

Introduction In my most recent articles, I’ve talked about encryption in detail and demonstrated its usage at the entire database level with Transparent Data Encryption and at the column level with granular\cell level encryption. In this article, I am going to discuss hashing in SQL Server and how it is different from encryption. Encryption vs. […]

Introduction Encryption brings data into a state that cannot be interpreted by anyone who does not have access to the decryption key, password, or certificates. Though encryption does not restrict the access to the data, it ensures in case of data loss, then that data is useless for the person that does not have access […]

Introduction Encryption brings data into a state that cannot be interpreted by anyone who does not have access to the decryption key, password, or certificates. Though encryption does not restrict the access to the data, it ensures that if data loss happens, then in that case data is useless to the person who does not […]

Introduction Microsoft Excel is one of the most widely used tools across the globe. Microsoft empowers Excel users to create Business Intelligence reports quickly in Excel itself with Power BI. Power BI is a familiar, intuitive and cloud based self-service BI (Business Intelligence) solution for all your data needs in your very own Excel, which […]

Introduction PowerShell provides a command-line shell and scripting language (built in the .NET Framework) especially designed for administrative task automation and configuration management. PowerShell includes commands (called cmdlets) to administer SQL Server along with having cmdlets for administering other Microsoft server products. This gives administrators a common scripting language across servers’ platforms. As PowerShell provides […]

Introduction In my last article of this series, I talked about Change Data Capture feature of SQL Server to capture DML changes happening on the tracked table and explained how it works. Then I talked about how it differs from Change Tracking. In this article, I am going to demonstrate practically how this feature can […]

Introduction There are two approaches  to loadrefresh data from a source system to a data warehouse; the first approach is to load the full set of data every time and the second approach is to load the full set of data for the first time and then subsequently load only the changed data set as […]

Introduction Power Map is an Excel add-in under the Microsoft Power BI umbrella that extends the capability of Power View by enabling end users to visualize data in a 3D visualization format. It lets you plot geographical and temporal data visually, analyze it in 3D visualization format and create an interactive, guided cinematic tour to […]

Introduction Power Query is an Excel add-in that can be used for data discovery, reshaping the data and combining data coming from different sources. Power Query is one of the Excel add-ins provided as part of Microsoft Power BI self-service solution. You can think of an ETL tool built into your familiar Excel to search […]

Introduction Microsoft Power BI is a familiar, intuitive and cloud based self-service BI (Business Intelligence) solution for all your data needs in your very own Excel, which users have been using for decades. It includes different tools for data discovery, analysis and visualization. This article discusses Microsoft Power BI, different tools under the Microsoft Power […]