SQL Server instances are generally poorly-documented. How easily can you tell if something has changed? How easily can you check that there is adequate space for growth? Are you up-to-date with licenses? What errors are happening? Who has accessing the system? Before PowerShell, it was difficult to be on top of all this. Now you can, with the help of Sander's database documenter.
Is it worth automating things? Many people say yes, but Steve Jones says it isn't just about time saved.
Whenever a query is executed in SQL Server, its execution plan, as well as some useful execution data are placed into the plan cache for future use. This information is a treasure trove of metrics that can allow some very useful insight into your server’s performance and resource consumption - Ed Pollack shares some useful queries to start utilizing it.
There was an announcement last week that SQL Server can run on Linux. And it's coming next year.
Virtual Chapter meeting, Mar 16, 12pm EST. Documentation is mostly overlooked and only comes up when a problem arises. What if you'd have a tool or method to generate documentation for all your database servers? In this session, Sander Stad will show you show how easy it is to use PowerShell to retrieve information from your servers. He'll detail what can be used to document your servers, how to retrieve the information and what should be documented. In the end you no longer have an excuse not to document your servers.
Erin Stellato (@erinstellato) looks into sparse columns in SQL Server – the changes to space requirements and the impact on the write portion of your workload.
You can still do Database Lifecycle Management (DLM) workflows in the hosted version of Team foundation Server (TFS) in Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) . If you are doing your database development in SSMS, you can use a mix of tools to set up the functionality in VSTS. Jason Crease demonstrates how to build and deploy a simple database into the test environment using SQL CI, SQL Source Control, Octopus Deploy, tSQLt, SQL Cop and SQL Release, all with the minimum of hassle and effort.
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...
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An architecture scenario Imagine separate Sales, Finance, Shared Data, and Executive Analytics workspaces. Sales...
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Backing Up a DMK
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Comments posted to this topic are about the item BIT_COUNT in SQL Server
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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