Picking over the Bones of a SQL Injection Attack
The best way to learn how to protect your databases from SQL Injection is to see it in action. In this article, we attack a vulnerable SQL Server REST interface, explain how the attack unfolds, the mistakes that made it possible, and SQL Monitor’s vita …
SQL SERVER – How to Invoke SSMS Help From Command Prompt?
This particular question I just received in my recent SQL Server Performance Tuning Practical Workshop. It was a very interesting question and hence I am going to blog about it. The question which I received was – How to Invoke SSMS Hel …
Building SQL ConstantCare® Version 2: Easy-to-Afford Monitoring
tl;dr – SQL ConstantCare® is now just $59 per month, or $495 per year. As we were building SQL ConstantCare®, I wanted it to be mentoring, not monitoring. I wanted to take daily data samples, trend them over time, and give you b …
SQL Source Control v7 Enhancements
With the v7 release, SQL Source Control now enforces Git hooks, and provides full support for working with Git repositories hosted on Azure DevOps. It also comes with pre- and post-deployment scripts to make it easier to automate the build and deploy n …
SQL SERVER – Windows Authentication or System Admin Account (SA)
I like to say that I am SQL Server Performance Tuning expert but often during the conversation, I end up discussing security as well. Recently I was asked about my preference for Windows Authentication or System Admin Account (SA) during one of th …
How to Find Table Cardinality from the Execution Plan? – Interview Question of the Week #213
Question: How to Find Table Cardinality from the Execution Plan? Answer: During SQL Server Performance Health Check, I often get such questions, which are often very interesting. Let me answer this question in two different ways. However, before w …
PostgreSQL – Storing Unicode Characters is Easy
One of the interesting features of PostgreSQL database is the ability to handle Unicode characters. In SQL Server, to store non-English characters, we need to use NVARCHAR or NCAHR data type. In PostgreSQL, the varchar data type itself will store both …
Creating SQL Server Agent Job Schedules for Ola Hallengren’s Maintenance Solution
Data Platform MVP Ola Hallengren has created and maintained his free SQL Server Maintenance Solution script for over eleven years now. This script creates some objects in your master system database (by default), and it also creates and enables twelve …
[Video] How to Capture Baselines with sp_BlitzFirst
Everybody tells you to capture baselines – but what exactly are you supposed to capture? Which Perfmon counters matter? How do you track which data files are growing, and which ones are slow? How can you track which queries are using the most res …
SQL Provision and Azure SQL Database
More and more businesses already use, or plan to use, cloud-based infrastructure (PaaS) as their primary database solution. However, they still need to support on-premise or Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) VM-based workflows for Development and Test …
Script to Run DBCC CheckDB on Alternate SQL Server to Reduce Load on Primary Server
In this tip we look at some scripts you can use to automate running your DBCC CheckDBs on an alternate SQL Server instance.
SQL SERVER – Update Table Statistics in Parallel with FULLSCAN
SQL Server Performance Tuning is a much simpler job if you know exactly where to look for and how to tune the configurations. Here is the real world scenario which I encountered during the recent Comprehensive Database Performance Health Check. Du …
Should you run SSAS/SSIS/SSRS on the SQL Server?
When you’re building a new SQL Server, you’re going to see a few intriguing checkboxes during setup. It’s all free, right? Check everything! The services are all free, right? You can just check the boxes for Machine Learning Services, …
How to Apply Non-Standard SQL Formatting Using SQL Prompt
Like any good tool, SQL Prompt not only will format your code for you, but will also help you to format the code in an alternative manner, or to apply exceptions to certain parts of a SQL script, where the formatting applies by the current style isn’t …
Why Redgate is Running a Database Development Disasters Contest?
Kendra Little explains why Redgate would like to hear your stories of how the database has been left behind.