Scripts

Technical Article

Generate views to correct the column collation on a target DB's tables automatically

You find you are querying a vendor supported database where you're not allowed to make any collation changes, and which has a weird collation setup: default DB collation that matches your server and other databases all character related columns are explicitly a different collation that does not match your DB or server collation Rather than […]

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2019-07-05 (first published: )

4,428 reads

Technical Article

Audit Users logging in using "sa" or service accounts

Security is probably one of a production DBA's most important tasks and if developers use application or service accounts to run queries in your production environment you need to identify then and prohibit it. I notice some unwanted activity after staring a new job and decided to create a script that notifies me via email when […]

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2019-07-04 (first published: )

2,270 reads

Technical Article

SQL Server System Audit Report

SQL Server System Audit Report Rudy Panigas, 2018-05-25 (first published: 2016-02-02) With every technology, security is in the forefront of the minds of professionals around the world. Ensuring that your SQL Server is secure is the job of every Database Administrator (DBA). The DBA(s) needs to configure the system to minimize the “attack surface” (reducing […]

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2019-04-18

4,106 reads

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Forums

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

By Pablo Echeverria

Comments posted to this topic are about the item The “Successful Login” Dilemma: Why...

Building Your Own Software

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Comments posted to this topic are about the item Building Your Own Software

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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