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Technical Article

Advanced Troubleshooting with Extended Events

SQL Server DBAs the world over have a problem that never seems to go away: troubleshooting, with the vast majority of troubleshooting being done to find a performance problem of some kind. Even the most carefully architected and tested application system will experience changes over time that can lead to significant performance issues.

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2008-12-17

1,974 reads

External Article

SQL Server 2008 Sparse Columns Identifying Columns For Conversion

SQL Server 2008 has introduced a new way to store data for columns that contain excessive NULL values called Sparse Columns. What this means is that when you declare a column as Sparse and any time a NULL value is entered in the column it will not use any space. Is there a way to identify what columns would make a good candidate for this without having to analyze each column individually?

2008-12-15

2,633 reads

Technical Article

SQLSaturday #10 - Tampa 2009

Looking for free SQL Server training?
Join over 250 SQL Server professionals in Tampa on January 24th, 2009 for SQL Saturday #10. Featuring 6 tracks and more than 36 SQL Server presentations, it's the biggest and best free SQL event available. Visit www.sqlsaturday.com to see event details and to register.

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2008-12-15

1,196 reads

External Article

Using SQL Server meta data to list tables that make up views

One of the issues I often face is the need to find views that are already established for certain tables. This maybe for other developers, end users or even for myself. I could search the system tables to find this or explore each view, but are there other ways to easily find a list of all tables that are used for a view or even a list of all views that a table is tied to?

2008-12-12

3,940 reads

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Symmetric Key Encryption

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

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The “Successful Login” Dilemma: Why Your Login Auditing Strategy Might Be Hurting Your Server

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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