SQL Server Graph Databases – Part 1: Introduction
SQL Server 2017 now includes a new feature to represent complex relationships in data called Graph Databases. Robert Sheldon introduces Graph Databases in the first article of this new series.
How does GDPR impact your SQL Server Recovery Plans
With GDPR on the imminent horizon, there are many things that Data Platform engineers need to consider with regards to the rights of data subjects. Primary among these is understanding the impact of requests to be forgotten and updates to a person's data when it comes to restoring databases. If you have data that is within the scope of the GDPR then here are some thoughts on extra processes for your DR planning.
Small Changes and Big Impacts
Using new features and changing code can cause problems in your environment. Always test to be sure that the impact is acceptable.
SQL Server 2016 Availability Group - Automatic Seeding with SSMS 17.x
In SQL Server 2016 the availability group automatic seeding functionality is implemented. This article will detail the steps to use of SSMS with automatic seeding and its limitations.
How to Send a TDE Encrypted Backup to Someone Outside Your Organization
Once you enable your database to be encrypted with Transparent Data Encryption (TDE), the physical database files, and the database backups are encrypted. If your database and database backup are encrypted, then how can you send the encrypted backup to a person outside your organization?
So Many Choices with SQL Server
There was a day when you didn’t have many decisions to make about a new SQL Server instance. You had to choose from a few editions and two licensing models: per proc or server cal. It wasn’t long ago that SQL Server would almost always be installed on a physical server on premises, and the […]
SQL Server 2017 for Linux First Impressions
Microsoft has released a version of SQL Server 2017 for Linux.
READ COMMITTED SNAPSHOT ISOLATION and High version_ghost_record_count
Developer shops may decide to use Read Committed Snapshot Isolation (RCSI) to reduce contention, and possibly improve performance, but it is not without its own pitfalls. In this article, Uwe Ricken describes a situation where long running transactions caused a severe performance degradation when RCSI was in use.
Ad Hoc Logs
We often make changes to production systems in an ad hoc manner. Steve asks how much auditing we might have in place.
Blogs
A bespoke reporting solution doesn’t have to cost the earth
By ChrisJenkins
You could be tolerating limited reporting because there isn’t an off the shelf solution...
Presenting with Visual Studio Code
A while back I wrote a quick post on setting up key mappings in...
Advice I Like: In 100 Years
By Steve Jones
In 100 years a lot of what we take to be true now will...
Forums
AllocationType as ROW_OVERFLOW_DATA
Hello, I inherited a number of tables with like 20-30 column using nvarchar(256) in...
is it true we cant debug c# scripts in ssis anymore under vs
Hi, i'm running vs2022. I'm trying out a c# script that i'd like to...
Question of the Day
Missing the Jaro Winkler Distance
I upgraded a SQL Server 2019 instance to SQL Server 2025. I wanted to test the fuzzy string search functions. I run this code:
SELECT JARO_WINKLER_DISTANCE('tim', 'tom')
I get this error message:Msg 195, Level 15, State 10, Line 1 'JARO_WINKLER_DISTANCE' is not a recognized built-in function name.What is wrong? See possible answers