xp_cmdshell is an extended SQL stored proc that allows users to run Windows command prompt commands from within SQL. Sound scary? It might, but is xp_cmdshell really a security...
2023-04-26 (first published: 2023-04-12)
511 reads
SQL doesn’t really give us too many tools out of the box to allow us to spot when someone may be up to no good. We can look at...
2023-04-12 (first published: 2023-03-29)
452 reads
The question of encryption seems to be coming up a lot recently. I’ve had a number of people asking me about how to go about encrypting SQL Server. SQL...
2023-01-25 (first published: 2023-01-17)
363 reads
Here’s a quick one for today and is an issue that had me stumped for a while. It’s not one that I’d come across before and there isn’t really...
2022-11-28 (first published: 2022-11-16)
192 reads
This was an interesting question that I was asked yesterday and something that I’d never really thought of before. Can you delete the top x number of rows based...
2022-09-30 (first published: 2022-09-15)
835 reads
Have you ever had the need to attach a large number of database in one go? There’s no way to attach multiple databases in SSMS or via script, so...
2022-08-24 (first published: 2022-08-15)
259 reads
Sometimes I find remembering where a particular server sends its backups to a nightmare. You might have servers backing up to different locations, you might have different locations for...
2022-06-16
17 reads
Imagine that we’re seeing very heavy load on our SQL server, be it CPU or IO and we need to find out which database is the driver. I’m sure...
2022-05-11 (first published: 2022-05-03)
595 reads
I’m going to assume that most people will have at least heard of Brent Ozar’s brilliant First Responder Kit. If you haven’t then you’ve been missing out on some...
2022-02-09
52 reads
Spinlock contention is always a real headache to deal with. I recently saw an issue when spinlock contention on SOS_CACHESTORE was making the server virtually unresponsive. The issue was...
2021-11-15 (first published: 2021-11-03)
282 reads
One of the nice things about the Microsoft Connector for Oracle is that it...
By Steve Jones
I get asked questions by salespeople all the time. Usually this is because a...
By Steve Jones
jouska – a hypothetical conversation that you compulsively play out in your head –...
I've noticed in one of our applications a cursor uses operation 40 and that...
Ok, need someone to talk me off the cursor ledge on this one. I...
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