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TheSqlPro.com - Ayman El-Ghazali

Ayman is a passionate SQL Server DBA, Developer, and Business Intelligence Developer. His passion for technology started when he was a young boy playing DOS games on his father's computer. From there, he moved up to computer programming in high school and went on to get B.S. and M.S. degrees in Information Systems from Drexel University in Philadelphia. He has worked with the SQL Server product since 2006 and has experience with SQL 2000 through SQL 2012. He holds a MCITP SQL 2008 DBA certification and is also a Microsoft Certified Trainer (MCT. He has been active with the virtual chapters of PASS, participating in online training and also giving presentations. Ayman has lived in many different countries around the world including the U.S., U.K., Egypt, Saudi Arabia and speaks fluent Arabic. He is huge football(soccer) fan and is always looking forward to learn more about SQL Server, SQL Server BI, and technology in general. www.thesqlpro.com

SQL Server Management Studio Rainbow Edition

Ever wanted to know the reason behind the Database color scheme in SQL Server Management Studio? I have always wondered why all the Databases in management studio were Yellow (Online), Grey (Read-Only), Lighter Yellow with text next to it (something like Restoring), or Yellow with a Red Icon (Offline). Have…

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0 comments, 160 reads

Posted in TheSqlPro.com - Ayman El-Ghazali on 12 June 2013

How to Avoid a Database “Heart Attack”

For the past couple of months I have been working with Ben Weiss a Digital Marketing Strategist at Infusive Solutions (http://www.infusivesolutions.com/). Our partnership was based on a mutual understanding that there is much needed career growth and guidance among IT Professionals. Since my background is primarily with Database Management Systems…

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0 comments, 175 reads

Posted in TheSqlPro.com - Ayman El-Ghazali on 5 June 2013

Email Response: SQL Server 2012 Planning and Architecture

I received an email from a connection on LinkedIn seeking some advice for architecture on a new reporting system. Although I don’t know the gentleman personally, he is a SQL Server professional and I felt obliged to help out a fellow colleague in the field. The email is included below…

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4 comments, 180 reads

Posted in TheSqlPro.com - Ayman El-Ghazali on 15 May 2013

Estimate Table Size based on the Metadata from INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS

A problem I face often is not knowing the size of a new table that I’m creating. I put some basic code together that pulls the column information from INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS and with some basic math gets the approximate size of the table based on the estimated number of rows. The…

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4 comments, 151 reads

Posted in TheSqlPro.com - Ayman El-Ghazali on 24 April 2013

Free SQL Server 2012 Installation Guide

Everyone’s favorite four letter word is back, FREE! Yes, it is time I gave back to the community since I’ve been mooching off them them for so long. I’ve put together a short Installation Guide for those interested in getting their feet wet with SQL Server. I’m trying to encourage…

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0 comments, 43 reads

Posted in TheSqlPro.com - Ayman El-Ghazali on 15 April 2013

SQL Server 2012 Virtual Lab with Clustering using Hyper-V

After having a great opportunity to attend a Beta course for Hyper-V with Windows 2012 at Learning Tree, I decided to finally do what I have been planning to do for a while; build a fully working SQL Server Clustered Virtual Lab. I had been practicing with Hyper-V before I…

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2 comments, 311 reads

Posted in TheSqlPro.com - Ayman El-Ghazali on 13 March 2013

SQL Agent and the case of the missing job owner…

One fine morning as I’m sitting at my desk doing my work I review some emails about cleaning out some old data from a table that stored webpage session information. I’m given hints about first checking out a job that supposedly purges the data automatically. With my first clue, the…

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5 comments, 209 reads

Posted in TheSqlPro.com - Ayman El-Ghazali on 20 February 2013

SQL Server Backup and Recovery Fundamentals Presentation

SQL Server Backup and Recovery Fundamentals – February 5th, 2013 A copy of the recording is available here. Code and slides are under the Presentations section of this website. Correction:Compression on Backups is available on the Standard Edition of SQL 2008R2 and SQL 2012 but not SQL 2008. Thanks to…

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4 comments, 242 reads

Posted in TheSqlPro.com - Ayman El-Ghazali on 22 January 2013

SQL Saturday in Washington D.C. December 8, 2012

This is my first time attending a SQL Saturday event and I’m quite excited. If you live in or near the D.C. Metro area I hope to see you there. If you have not registered, you still have a chance: http://sqlsaturday.com/173/eventhome.aspx I’ve put together a short list of the sessions…

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2 comments, 313 reads

Posted in TheSqlPro.com - Ayman El-Ghazali on 30 November 2012

What if your database server was hacked and all your data was deleted?

Recently in the news an article circulated about a coordinated attack by a team of hackers known as Anonymous. Information about this incident is all over the internet here is one article with details RT News. Part of that attack included deleting a database belonging to the Israeli Foreign Ministry.…

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1 comments, 203 reads

Posted in TheSqlPro.com - Ayman El-Ghazali on 19 November 2012

SQL Server Parallel Data Warehouse (PDW) and SQL Server Fast Track Data Warehouse

The SQL Server Parallel Data Warehouse and SQL Server Fast Track Data Warehouse are very high end builds of Microsoft’s SQL Server 2008R2 product; and SQL 2012 in the future. I’ve been intrigued by these products so I’ve started to learn about it. They have both been on the market…

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0 comments, 334 reads

Posted in TheSqlPro.com - Ayman El-Ghazali on 14 November 2012

SQL Server 2012 Service Pack 1 available for RTM

SP1 for the RTM of SQL Server 2012 has been announced during PASS Summit 2012. It can be downloaded here: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=35575 Don’t worry, it’s not for the CTP as I posted a some weeks back Filed under: Database Administration, SQL Server 2012 Tagged: LinkedIN, SQL Server 2012, sqlserverpedia

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1 comments, 360 reads

Posted in TheSqlPro.com - Ayman El-Ghazali on 9 November 2012

Listing server and database roles for all logins and users in SQL Server – Part 3 – Using SSRS Reports to Monitor and Fix security problems

Finally the epic conclusion to my three part series about listing server and database roles. In this post I will show you how to create SSRS report to use for regular tracking or auditing purposes. This is a much easier and cleaner way of looking at the data and you…

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0 comments, 258 reads

Posted in TheSqlPro.com - Ayman El-Ghazali on 23 October 2012

Listing server and database roles for all logins and users in SQL Server – Part 2 – Remote Servers

Building upon the code in my previous post, I will be retrieving permissions information from remote servers that I have access to. This was a little more difficult to accomplish because security is different on different servers and I did not want to create Linked Servers with escalated permissions. Read…

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1 comments, 95 reads

Posted in TheSqlPro.com - Ayman El-Ghazali on 15 October 2012

Listing server and database roles for all logins and users in SQL Server – Part 1 – Local Server

I was approached with a unique problem to solve; find out who has what permissions on my Database Servers.  This is the first post in a three part series about finding all user permissions on your SQL Server instance. The next posts will build upon this and introduce a way…

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2 comments, 101 reads

Posted in TheSqlPro.com - Ayman El-Ghazali on 8 October 2012

Finding and removing hidden characters in your data using dynamic T-SQL

It has been a long morning for me. It was supposed to be a standard run for our quarterly data aggregations but one of the data import SSIS packages kept failing. The problem was a conversion problem from varchar type to float and I kept getting the following error: Msg…

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4 comments, 152 reads

Posted in TheSqlPro.com - Ayman El-Ghazali on 5 October 2012

Running a SQL Server Environment at Home Using Native Boot Virtual Hard-Drives (VHD)

I’ve run into a road block. As a Microsoft Certified Trainer, I have all the software I need to get hands on with SQL Server. I even have Virtual Hard Drives (VHDs) that I can download directly from Microsoft; there are even publicly available ones HERE. My problem is on…

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8 comments, 178 reads

Posted in TheSqlPro.com - Ayman El-Ghazali on 17 September 2012

Free Second Shot offer for Microsoft Certification Exams

Nothing for me to really say except if you mess up, you get a free second chance Click HERE to see the details. So get started on your certifications with the confidence of having a second shot just in case you don’t do so well the first time. Take a…

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3 comments, 212 reads

Posted in TheSqlPro.com - Ayman El-Ghazali on 29 August 2012

Create a SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) Catalog Report in 15 Minutes

One big question I have gotten often is “I need data, what kind of reports do you have?” It is a valid question from a user, especially with a server that may gave hundreds of reports. The solution? Create a Reports Catalog Report. I have provided the simple instructions and…

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0 comments, 116 reads

Posted in TheSqlPro.com - Ayman El-Ghazali on 27 August 2012

8 Habits/Skills/Traits of Highly Effective DBAs

The whole “7 Habits” title is so cliché so I decided to make it eight! Plus that will probably relieve me from any copyright violations as well. So anyway, these are the eight habits/skills of Highly effective Database Administrators in my humble opinion. Although I come from the Microsoft SQL…

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0 comments, 70 reads

Posted in TheSqlPro.com - Ayman El-Ghazali on 20 August 2012

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