Gregory Larsen

Have you ever wanted to be able to see the actual transactions that are contained in the transaction log file?  Well there is a way to read the transaction log file using an undocumented function.   In this article, I will show you how to browse the transaction log using this undocumented function. To read the […]

If you are running Windows 8 and above, you might have found out that you can’t find SQL Server Configuration Manager in the list of installed applications.   This is because SQL Server Configuration Manager is not a stand-alone program, and therefore doesn’t appear as an application in newer versions of Windows.   The SQL Server Configuration […]

In this short tip, I will show you how to set variables in your calling T-SQL code when using sp_execute sql. Suppose you want to set a variable in your calling T-SQL Code with the sum of the TotalSales for all 2011 sales records in the AdventureWorksCTP3.Sales.SalesOrderHeader table. To meet that requirement all you need […]

Have you ever started a database backup or a restore process that runs a long time then wanted to know when it will complete?   If you have then there is an easily way to do this.  Knowing when a database backup or restore operation will completes provides you valuable information, especially when you need to […]

There may be a time when you want to move a table from one file group to another.  There could be lots of different reasons for wanting to move your data file.  One of the reasons why you might want to do this is to improve performance.  It is easy to move a table from […]

Have you ever wanted to know who made a schema change to your database?  If so, that information is tracked in the default trace.  The default trace is just a server-side profiler trace that gets started when SQL Server starts up, provided the default trace is enabled.  If the default trace is enabled, then it […]

In order to do accurate performance testing between multiple runs of a SQL Server command or scripts you need to remember to clean the buffer, procedure and system cache between each test run.  Without cleaning the buffer and caches between runs, your test query may run faster because some or all of the data needed […]

Have you ever wondered how to find the worst performing TSQL queries on your instance?  If you have, you are not alone.  SQL Server maintains query statistics as TSQL commands are run.  These query statistics can be returned by using the Dynamic Management Objects provided in SQL Server. The Dynamic Management Objects sys_dm.exec_query_stats returns a […]

There are times where you might want to programmatically determine which edition of SQL Server is running.  When I say “Edition” I don’t mean are you running SQL Server 2012, 2014, 2016, or some other major release of SQL Server.   What I mean is are you running standard, enterprise, or developer edition.   To get the […]

If you are using row level security in SQL Server 2016 you might find users are updating or inserting rows of data that keep them from seeing the row after they have performed the update or insert statement.  This happens when a user updates or inserts a row that doesn’t pass the filter rules for […]

Have you ever had a need to place some simple row level security on a SQL Server table?  Meaning you only want certain people to select or update a row.  Well now you can do that in SQL Server 2016 by using row level security.  To implement row level security all you need to do […]

Is your msdb database growing bigger every day?  If so you might want to consider purging some of the history records from the msdb database.  One of those types of history records that are stored in the msdb database are records associated with using database mail.  If you are sending email using database mail and […]