When one considers the amount of time and effort that Unit Testing consumes for the Database Developer, is surprising how few good SQL Server Test frameworks are around. tSQLt , which is open source and free to use, is one of the frameworks that provide a simple way to populate a table with test data as part of the unit test, and check the results with what should be expected. Sebastian Meine and Dennis Lloyd, who created tSQLt, explain
If you truly desire to be an effective SQL Server Database Administrator then you absolutely must have a buddy.
SQL Server...
Would you want to be a data scientist? Are you one now? Steve Jones talks about this skill that we might appreciate in our daily work.
While the system procedure sp_MSforeachdb is neither documented nor officially supported, most SQL Server professionals have used it at one time or another. This is typically for ad hoc maintenance tasks, but many people (myself included) have used this type of looping activity in permanent routines. Sadly, I have discovered instances where, under heavy load and/or with a large number of databases, the procedure can actually skip multiple catalogs with no error or warning message. Since this situation is not easily reproducible, and since Microsoft typically has no interest in fixing unsupported objects, this may be happening in your environment right now
The new SQL University Logo
Welcome back students! We’re very excited to start up a new semester and SQLU is back and...
The growth of ETL processes and secondary systems for reporting, decision support and other analysis creates an issue. Steve Jones points out that we ought to be remembering that security needs to be applied to data, not just systems.
SQL University is kicking off their spring semester, and Steve Jones is looking to motivate you to participate.
31 Days of SSIS
Day thirteen and we are trucking along with the 31 Days of SSIS blog series. The last...
As a guideline, clustered Indexes should be Narrow, Unique, Static and Ever Increasing (NUSE). Michelle Ufford Explains why.
A free day of training in Louisville, KY. Come and learn more about SQL Server from a variety of experts.
A nightly load into sales_fact fails. Ask an orchestrating agent to break down the...
By Steve Jones
It’s been some time since I provided a car update, so I decided to...
By James Serra
An architecture scenario Imagine separate Sales, Finance, Shared Data, and Executive Analytics workspaces. Sales...
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Managing Incidents and Fighting Fires
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In SQL Server 2025, I have a database with a Database Masker Key (DMK). I want to back up this key and keep a copy offline. When do I have to open this key before running the backup?
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