SQL Server with Mr. Denny:

Database


March 13, 2013  2:00 PM

Deleting LOB Data and Shrinking the Database



Posted by: Denny Cherry
Andre Kamman, Database, Database Administration, DBCC PAGE, Mladen Prajdić, Paul Randal, SQL Saturday, SQL Saturday 194, SQL Server, SQL Server 2005, SQL Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 R2, SQL Server 2012, System Objects, Tables

While attending SQL Saturday 194 in Exeter over in England one of the attendees came to Mladen Prajdić, Andre Kamman and myself with an interesting problem.  She had a database table which was about 200 Gigs in size which she wanted to...

February 28, 2013  9:00 AM

Get a discount when attending the SQLPASS BA Conference



Posted by: Denny Cherry
Database, PASS, PASS SIG, SQL PASS, SQL PASS 2013, SQL PASS BA CON 2013, SQL Server

The SQLPASS BA Conference is coming up in April, just a few short weeks from now.  At this conference you'll see some of the best and brightest minds in Business Analysis and Business Intelligence all in one conference.  This includes...


January 23, 2013  9:00 AM

NOLOCK is not a turbo button



Posted by: Denny Cherry
CREATE INDEX, Database, Execution Plans, Indexing, SELECT statement, SQL Server, T/SQL, Tables

All to often when talking to developers they put the WITH (NOLOCK) table hint in place to speed up queries without understanding what the table hint does.  I've even run across companies that have policies in place that every select statement must have the WITH (NOLOCK) table hint. The WITH...


January 2, 2013  2:00 PM

Blog Year 2012 In Review



Posted by: Denny Cherry
Community, Database, Social Commentary, SQL Server

Welcome my friends to the first official work day of the year 2013.  You enjoying that hangover yet?
It is time again to take a little peak at the last year (as far as my blog goes) and see just what was the most popular posts, and what just sucked so that hopefully for...


December 26, 2012  2:00 PM

Cross Database Chaining



Posted by: Denny Cherry
Data Security, Database, Database security, Security, SQL Server, SQL Server 2000, SQL Server 2005, SQL Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 R2, SQL Server 2012

Cross database chaining in SQL Server is actually a fairly old feature, first introduced in SQL Server 2000 SP3.  However this feature isn't often understood mostly because it isn't often used. Database chaining is when permissions cascade from one object to another because they are used by the...


December 19, 2012  2:00 PM

Moving a Sharepoint Site Between Farms With Different Templates



Posted by: Denny Cherry
Backup & recovery, BACKUP DATABASE, Database, PowerShell, SharePoint, SharePoint 2012, SQL Server

A client came to be with a pretty scary problem.  Their SharePoint site was totally down.  The databases were there but the actual SharePoint farm was totally dead.  All of the SharePoint tools said that the farm wasn't configured yet so there were some pretty big problems.  Thankfully they had...


December 12, 2012  2:00 PM

The Least Expensive SQL Server 2012 High Availability Solution



Posted by: Denny Cherry
Database, Database Administration, Microsoft Cluster Service, Microsoft Windows, MSCS, SQL, SQL Server, SQL Server 2012, Storage

As we all know by now AlwaysOn Availability Groups are an enterprise edition feature and SQL Server Clustering is a standard edition feature.  Butt what happens when you have a small business that is running its apps on SQL Server Express.  Can't SQL Express have any sort of high...


December 5, 2012  2:00 PM

Databases With Large Tables Should Use Auto Stats Async Update Feature



Posted by: Denny Cherry
Auto Update Statistics Asynchronously, Auto Update Stats, Database, Database Administration, SQL, SQL Server, Statistics, Tables

A pretty cool feature that was introduced in SQL Server 2008 R2 SP1 is the ability to change the auto stats algorithm from the default of 20%+500 rows to a sliding scale. ...


November 21, 2012  9:00 AM

Fixing a table that has overflowed its primary key



Posted by: Denny Cherry
Clustered Index, Data Types, Database, Database Administration, Database Design, SQL, SQL Server, Stored Procedures, T/SQL, Tables

During TechEd Europe I got a very scary phone call.  A very large table was throwing errors that the value being inserted into the primary key column was overflowing the data type that makes up that column.  In this case the data type in question was INT, so we were trying to stick the number...


November 17, 2012  2:00 PM

Backup Databases on Creation



Posted by: Denny Cherry
Backup & recovery, BACKUP DATABASE, CREATE TRIGGER, Data Loss, Database, Database Administration, DDL Trigger, Recovery, SQL Server, SQL Server 2008 R2, SQL Server 2012, T/SQL, Transactions, Trigger, xp_create_subdir

One of the companies which I work with has the occasion to create new databases when they do releases of their software.  Normally this isn't a problem, except that they are setup to use maintenance plans to handle the backup and pruning of their transaction logs.  As all the new databases are...