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Technical Article

Webinar - Redgate DLM Demo (with TFS, TFS Build & Microsoft Release Management)

Redgate’s Arneh Eskandari and Microsoft SQL Server MVP, Steve Jones, will show you how Redgate’s DLM (Database Lifecycle Management) solution works to improve your database development and deployment processes. Today 12noon EDT

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2016-03-29

5,329 reads

External Article

SQL Server Metadata Functions: The Basics

To be able to make full use of the system catalog to find out more about a database, you need to be familiar with the metadata functions. They save a great deal of time and typing when querying the metadata. Once you get the hang of these functions, the system catalog suddenly seems simple to use, as Robert Sheldon demonstrates in this article.

2016-03-28

6,652 reads

External Article

When AUTO_UPDATE_STATISTICS Doesn't Happen

When your SQL Server database is set to have its statistics automatically updated, you will probably conclude that, whenever the distribution statistics are out-of-date, they will be updated before the next query is executed against that index or table. Curiously, this isn't always the case. What actually happens is that the statistics only gets updated if needed by the query optimiser to determine an effective query plan.

2016-03-25

4,726 reads

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Symmetric Key Encryption

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Question of the Day

Symmetric Key Encryption

If I run this statement in SQL Server 2025, how is the password encrypted?

CREATE SYMMETRIC KEY MySymmetricKey
WITH ALGORITHM = AES_256,
KEY_SOURCE = 'My secret key source passphrase',
IDENTITY_VALUE = 'My secret identity value'
ENCRYPTION BY PASSWORD = 'S&perS#cretP@ssword7';
GO

See possible answers