Scripts

Technical Article

Identify Primary Key Violation Prior to Insert (Updated)

This script allows for testing if rows will cause a primary key violations prior to inserting the data.  Offending rows are stored in a table so they can be used in subsequent queries or used to debug bad data issues. This updated version adds a timestamp to the duplicates table so that identifying when the […]

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2003-10-28

1,844 reads

Technical Article

SQL Server Error Log Manager

Provides a method to regularly recycle the sql server error logs based on a given file size.  If the current log file is larger than that size, then the current log is closed and a new log created.This proc takes one parameter, @MaxFileSize, which is the target file size.  This parameter defaults to 10 MB. […]

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2003-10-27

929 reads

Technical Article

User tables documentation - HTML format

It creates documentation for all user tables in a specific database. A server name/ database name was added on the top of the HTML file also a column datatype field was added to the HTML file. Now the @strHTML can have 8000 chars, before only 4000 - still for tables with a lot of columns […]

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2003-10-27

668 reads

Technical Article

compare table counts in two databases

Sound like old hat ... but this procedure accepts the two database names as input parameters; therefore, it must dynamically generate the SQL and use Exec(@command) to execute it.   It also reports on tables that exist in one database but not the other ...  Finally, it uses count(*) to provide more accuracy than using sysindex […]

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2003-10-24

317 reads

Technical Article

sp_toptables

Are you managing big databases with a lot of tables like SAP as I'm?Do you use sp_spaceused, as I'm?Do you want to know your n biggest tables as I'm?Then don't search any longer.I'm using this script every day for may maintenance jobs.I generates, like sp_spaceused, out of sysindexes the n biggest tables without any cursor, […]

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2003-10-20

310 reads

Technical Article

XML Encode UDF

I routinely need to retrieve and package query result sets in an XML package.  The built in functions supported by SQL Server 2000 are effective, but are often more of a pain than a help.  This routine can be used in a simple select statement to XML encode the contents of a column during the […]

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2003-10-14

251 reads

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Managing Incidents and Fighting Fires

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Backing Up a DMK

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The Quiet Part

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Question of the Day

Backing Up a DMK

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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