Speaking Internationally at SQLBits

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  I am very excited and lucky to be speaking at my very first international conference, SQLBits. SQLBits, the largest SQL Server conference in Europe, held in Manchester England February 27- March 2nd. It is a conference for leading data professionals with over 70 sessions from speakers all over the world. I commonly speak at User Groups, SQL Saturdays and other Data Conferences here in the United States and have always wanted to broaden my reach to other countries. I am very much looking forward to seeing how or if conferences differ in Europe.  It is a huge honor to… Continue Reading

What is Azure Key Vault?

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Keys and secrets (AKA passwords)  are an essential part of data protection management not only on-premises, but within the cloud as well. One of the many advantages of cloud is the ability to have a secure, persisted key store. If you have used a password manager like Keepass or 1Password, you can consider Azure Key Vault to be an enterprise level password manager, but also a lot more. One of the functions that Azure Key Vault supports is for you to keep small secrets such as passwords, tokens, connection strings, API keys as well as encryption keys and certificates in… Continue Reading

Azure Advisor

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Azure offers a lot of value-added services included with the price of what you pay . One of the things really, I like is Azure Advisor. this service provides information about your entire Azure landscape. It gives you a complete overview of your system needs including possible ways to save money. High Availability shows you ways to improve the continuity of your business-critical applications. Security detects threats and vulnerabilities that might lead to security breaches. Performance shows you ways to speed up your applications. Cost give you ways to reduce your overall Azure spreading. As you can see from the… Continue Reading

Scheduling things to Run in SQL Server

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A key part of the SQL Server Agent is the ability to schedule jobs. While you can create one schedule for each agent job, frequently with applications like Reporting Services, users use Shared Schedules across multiple jobs. For instance, you can set a schedule to run at 8 am on week days or run every 2 hours or pick from a predefined list of schedules that already exist in the MSDB database. These are very convenient. However, if you choose to use these be sure you are keeping track of what is running for each of these shared schedules. You… Continue Reading

Approximate COUNT DISTINCT

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We all have written queries that use COUNT DISTINCT to get the unique number of non-NULL values from a table. This process can generate a noticeable performance hit especially for larger tables with millions of rows. Many times, there is no way around this. To help mitigate this overhead SQL Server 2019 introduces us to approximating the distinct count with the new APPROX_COUNT_DISTINCT function. The function approximates the count within a 2% precision to the actual answer at a fraction of the time. Let’s see this in action. In this example, I am using the AdventureworksDW2016CTP3 sample database which you… Continue Reading

Static Data Masking (SSMS 18.0 Preview)

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Ever need to have a test database on hand that you can allow others to query “real like” data without actually giving them actual production data values? In SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) 18.0 preview Microsoft introduces us to Static Data Masking. Static Data Masking is a new feature that allows you to create a cloned copy of your database and replace sensitive data with new data (fake data, referred to as masked). You can use this for things like development of business reports and analytics, trouble shooting, database development and even sharing data with outside teams or third parties.… Continue Reading

SQL Server Vulnerability Assessment

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SQL Server Vulnerability Assessment (VA) in SQL Server Management Studio 17.4 or later lets SQL Server scan your databases for potential security vulnerabilities and can be run against SQL Server 2012 or higher. If you are not on a newer version on SSMS, don’t worry, you can download it here. Running any kind of scans against data always concerns me as performance impacts can really ruin your day. Luckily VA is light weight and runs without performance impacts while still giving you an in-depth view of where you could improved your SQL Server’s security. The process is designed to meet… Continue Reading

SQL Data Discovery and Classification in SSMS 17.5

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Data exploration and documentation can be cumbersome, classifying data can be one of those tedious but necessary things. With the introduction of such things as GDPR there is an ever greater need to classify and label your sensitive data. Microsoft attempts to help us out with this in the new SQL Data Discovery and Classification feature in SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS). This a new feature is available in Azure SQL Database and SSMS 17.5 and higher. It can be used against databases in SQL Server 2008, compatibly mode 100, and greater. This feature will scan through your database tables… Continue Reading

New Resumable Online Index Create SQL Server 2019

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SQL Server 2019 brings a very exciting new feature that, is long overdue. Resumable online index create is one of my favorite new things. This paired with the Resumable Index Rebuilds introduced with SQL Server 2017 really gives database administrators much more control over index processes. Have you ever started to build a new index on very large table only to have users call and complain their process is hung, not completing, or system is slow? That’s when you realize you’re the cause because you tried to sneak in a new index. I have many times, because creating a new… Continue Reading

How Much Will Compression Really Gain Me in SQL Server?

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Did you know compression can gain you more than just space on a disk, it can allow you to fit more data into the buffer pool? That means queries have faster and more efficient reads which can help reduce I/O. It is a performance tool I highly recommend you consider for your environments. But how do you know how much compression savings you can gain? SQL Server gives you a handy system stored procedure sp_estimate_data_compression_savings that will help you calculate compression gains. It’s a great tool to use when trying to decide if compression is right for your environment and… Continue Reading