How to Suck at Database Administration
Tara Kizer outlines 15 telltale signs that you aren't a very good senior DBA.
2018-02-26
5,733 reads
Additional Articles
"But It Worked in Development!" - 3 Hard SQL Server Performance Problems
You’ve been performance tuning queries and indexes for a few years, but lately, you’ve been running into problems you can’t explain. Could it be RESOURCE_SEMAPHORE, THREADPOOL, or lock escalation? These problems only pop up under heavy load or concurrency, so they’re very hard to detect in a development environment.
2018-02-23
7,201 reads
Degree of Duplication
Technology is constantly moving forward, but it is also helpful to understand how we arrived where we are today. Joe Celko reminisces about the history of database design and how it relates to the concept of ‘Degree of Duplication’ in this article.
2018-02-22
3,419 reads
SQL Server Reporting Services 2017 Tutorial
SQL Server Reporting Services has been the go to reporting solution for SQL Server for almost a decade now. In many organizations, the ease of development, web front end and security make SSRS the tool of choice.
2018-02-21
4,545 reads
How to Move a TDE Encryption Key to Another SQL Server Instance
If you have a database backup of a Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) enabled database, the database backup will contain encrypted data. Because the database backup contains encrypted data you can’t just restore it to any instance. You can only restore the database backup to an instance that contains the same certificate used to originally encrypt the database.
2018-02-20
2,970 reads
Questions about Data Governance that You Were Too Shy to Ask
A company’s data is one of its most valuable and important resources. Managing and protecting that data are big responsibilities, and a data governance processes must be put into place to avoid misuse and to meet regulations. In this article, William Brewer answers questions you may have about data governance but were too shy to ask.
2018-02-19
4,962 reads
When Does Index Size Change Index Choice?
Erik purposely fragments indexes trying to slow down queries.
2018-02-15
3,508 reads
SQL Server Machine Learning Services – Part 4: Finding Data Anomalies with Python
Python is widely used to analyze data. One such use is to find anomalies or outliers. In this article, Robert Sheldon demonstrates how to create a support vector machine (SVM) to score test data so that outliers can be viewed on a scatter plot.
2018-02-14
3,434 reads
Updating an expired SQL Server TDE certificate
Simon Liew explains how to generate a new TDE certificate to replace the previous, and also looks at the steps needed if the database is in an Availability Group.
2018-02-13
2,865 reads
How to Implement Dynamic Data Masking in Azure SQL Database and SQL Server
Anoop Kumar shows you the SQL Commands (T-SQL) to secure PII/PHI data using the SQL Server Dynamic Data Masking (DDM) feature and explores DDM's built in functions to mask all critical data elements. DDM restricts unauthorized users from accessing critical data with no changes in the application.
2018-02-12
2,929 reads
Blogs
SQL Server 2025 RegEx and AI
By Steve Jones
One of the language changes in SQL Server 2025 that I’ve seen a lot...
T-SQL Tuesday #192: SQL Server 2025 Backup Changes
By Steve Jones
I hosted this month, but I decided to put my own entry in as...
Why Databases Still Fascinate Me
By Chris Yates
I get asked a lot about why or how I began working with databases...
Forums
How do you approach engineering services consulting?
I’ve been thinking a lot about the role of consulting in engineering projects. Having...
Columnstore index question
Hi experts, I’ve been going through several articles and videos about Columnstore indexes, but...
Transactional Replication
Recently stood up a 2022 Enterprise server. Have 8 publications with subscriptions on a...
Question of the Day
Identify a Slipstream Installation
I get a new SQL Server instance from my build team. How can I tell if the instance was installed using a slipstream installation later?
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