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Featured Contents

Question of the Day

Adjusting DOP based on Feedback

The Voice of the DBA

Daily Coping Tip

Discover the joy in the simple things in life

I also have a thread at SQLServerCentral dealing with coping mechanisms and resources. Feel free to participate.

For many of you out there working in a new way, I'm including a thought of the day on how to cope in this challenging time from The Action for Happiness Coping Calendar. My items will be on my blog, feel free to share yours.

How Important is Zero Downtime?

As I work with more and more customers at Redgate, I see some interesting trends. During the pandemic (and prior), we got a lot of questions on zero downtime and how to achieve database DevOps without causing problems. Those are always interesting discussions, and I find many people want magical solutions without having to change the way they work.

The last year, however, has had more people looking to implement database DevOps and speed up their development, but not a lot of questions or demands for zero downtime during these deployments. I find that interesting as the world depends more and more on computer systems, and the customer base for many organizations may demand access to the systems at any hour of the day or night.

However, it doesn't seem that as many people are concerned about small moments of downtime. Does this mean that more organizations aren't measuring uptime anymore? Perhaps the interruptions caused by software deployments aren't being counted? Or maybe the application software has gotten better at hiding blips in database access. Perhaps feature flags are catching on as a standard practice, so database deployments are less troublesome.

I'm not sure what has changed, but it has been noticeable by me that the importance of making changes without downtime has not been a requirement from many customers. Is that the case for many of you reading this? Are you less concerned about downtime? I think one nice thing about the move to the cloud is it's a little less stable, and perhaps that has lowered some of the expectations of our management. Since it's out of our control, maybe we shouldn't be too concerned about the need for retries, either automatic or a customer pressing a button again.

Let us know today if you feel pressure to get closer to zero downtime, either in your everyday management of databases or during deployments. Or maybe tell us if you've gotten so good at your job that no one every notices when you do make changes.

Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Join the debate, and respond to today's editorial on the forums

Featured Contents

How to Connect SQL Server and Create C# Objects for Data Management

cmarix from SQLServerCentral

Learn about how you can work with your SQL Server data from C#. A good basic tutorial for beginning C# developers.

SQL Server, Oracle and PostgreSQL Database Security Roles, Schemas, Grants, Privileges and Owners - Part II

Additional Articles from MSSQLTips.com

This article covers the concepts of roles, schemas, grants, privileges, and owners and the similarities and differences in SQL Server, Oracle, and PostgreSQL.

Thought Leadership resource page

Additional Articles from Redgate

Find the latest insights on digital modernization and the role of the database in it in our new resource page. With articles and webinars from Redgate leaders and friends of Redgate.

From the SQL Server Central Blogs - Finding guidance

Diligentdba 46159 from Mala's Data Blog

We all need guidance as we make our way through our careers and our lives. Some people are blessed with the right folks who can offer that by way...

From the SQL Server Central Blogs - Creativity in Technology

hellosqlkitty from SQLKitty

I was planning to write a blog post on how you can find ways to be creative in any technical pursuit. Then, I found out from a friend that...

SQL Server 2022 Revealed: A Hybrid Data Platform Powered by Security, Performance, and Availability

Additional Articles from SQLServerCentral

Know how to use the new capabilities and cloud integrations in SQL Server 2022. This book covers the many innovative integrations with the Azure Cloud that make SQL Server 2022 the most cloud-connected edition ever. The book covers cutting-edge features such as the blockchain-based Ledger for creating a tamper-evident record of changes to data over time that you can rely on to be correct and reliable.

Question of the Day

Today's question (by Steve Jones - SSC Editor):
	Adjusting DOP based on Feedback
In SQL Server 2022, there is an intelligent query processing feature that adjusts DOP based on feedback. When this feature works, how does it adjust DOP for queries?
Think you know the answer? Click here, and find out if you are right.

Yesterday's Question of the Day (by Steve Jones - SSC Editor)

Cloud Diagrams

Can I create database diagrams in an Azure SQL Database or an Azure SQL Managed Instance?

Answer: Yes

Explanation: Yes, you can create database diagrams in Azure SQL Databases and Managed Instance. Ref: Create a New Database Diagram - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/ssms/visual-db-tools/create-a-new-database-diagram-visual-database-tools?view=sql-server-ver16

Discuss this question and answer on the forums

Database Pros Who Need Your Help

Here's a few of the new posts today on the forums. To see more, visit the forums.

SQL Server 2017 - Administration

optimize for adhoc workload setting - Hi Experts, What is 'optimize for ad hoc workloads' do mean in short? I hae read it as it minimizes plan cache bloating. Do we really need to set this settig? What is the benefit we get if we set 'optimize for ad hoc workloads' = 1. How to verify if we really have to […]

Performance comparision - Hi All, We are trying to compare UAT performance vs Prod performance. The UAT is having much better performance. Production: We have this one big database with 2.5TB. Its 3 node Alwayson setup. Two synchronous replica in one region and one asynchronous replica in a different geographical reason. Prod has 30 databases. 16 CPUs 256 […]

Performance issues after migration - Hi all, We installed SQL 2017 standard edition. Taken the 2008r2 server database backup and restored into new 2017 server. Didn’t change the compatibility level. Same memory allocated as 2008r2 and did the update stats but seeing performance issues.

Alwayson SQL Agent Job must be executed only on PRIMARY - Hi All, We have an SQL 2017 Always on AG in our environment. We have few update stats job which we wanted to run only on PRIMARY replica. we create the jobs on both replicas but it should execute only on PRIMARY replica. For that, we are trying to use this logic. Not sure, why […]

Development - SQL Server 2014

TVF - Table Variable - Query takes 52 minutes........... - Hello. We have inherited a system and some code and this has been flagged as a performance issue. In fact the query times out and never completes and running it in SSMS shows it took 52 minutes to complete. We have pretty much narrowed the issue down to the use of a TVF, and the […]

SQL 2012 - General

Bcp queryout issue - Hi all, I am running the following query in SQL, trying to export some data to a csv file, with header. When I try to execute it from SQL server, it exports only the header and not the row data as well. When I print it and execute it from cmd, the file contains the […]

SQL Server 2019 - Administration

Azure SQL - Restore to lower enviornment - Hello! Backups are automated for Azure SQL Prod environment, we can do point-in-time recovery if anything happens with the database in the same environment. But, how can we restore the production database\bacpac to lower environment without having to take manual bacpac? What can be done to monthly refresh lower environment from automated production bacpac? Thanks. […]

Cluster failed over, now we see critical errors but DBs are all "Synchronized" - Our cluster failed over from Server1 to Server2 during a patching reboot. So now Server2 is Primary and Server1 is Secondary. I'm not 100% familiar with Availability groups and replicas, so am looking for some help to resolve the issue In SSMS -> Server -> Databases on both Server1 and Server2, all DBs are showing […]

SQL Server 2019 - Development

SSIS Connection Manager Error - Hi Everyone I am working on a SSIS package. There are multiple steps in the SSIS package design so I created 5 different SSIS packages - one for each step. Now, I want to put them all in one SSIS package. I created a new master SSIS and intend to copy and paste all the […]

Indexing Tables - Hi everyone I need to construct indexes for two tables. Table 1 - 30 Fields There are about 8 fields that are used in various SP where these fields are used for sorting and joining tables Table 2 - 7 Fields There are 3 fields that are used in various SP where these fields are […]

Records Are Not Sorted by Date - Hi everyone I am working on a SSIS package that converts a table into CSV file. I need the CSV records to be sorted by date. I have 7 other tables and they are working as expected except for 1. I am not sure why the records are not sorted by date. I was getting […]

SQL Server 2005 Integration Services

SSIS connection manager password update - Hello, I have 3 SSIS packages having connection manager defined with a userA. These 3 packages executes via a SQL server job. I need to change the password of userA in all the 3 packages. Do I need to do it manually by opening the package first in Visual studio & updating the password in […]

SQL Server Newbies

Suggestion Req for Best SQL Courses - Hello this is Gulshan Negi I am a Software Developer, well I'm looking for SQL courses that are designed for advanced users whereas I already have a basic understanding and good commands of SQL. I'm looking to master SQL and would like to find courses that will help me improve my skills in areas such […]

Third Party Products

Anyone else HOT with how Red-Gate rolled out SQLHISTORY? - If you recently upgrade SQL Prompt to a recent version that has SQL History you were in for a rude surprise. RG (Red-Gate) didn't simply add a new feature named SQL History to SQL Prompt, they replaced the Tab History feature with SQL History and it is a really bad feature. The RG user forums […]

SQL Server 2022 - Development

SQL Server RLS Database Users and Login User Permission - Please suggest practice on SQL Server RLS On the database level, defined users with different permission policy e.g **DB_User1, DB_User2, DB_User3, DB_User4 ** When I create login User DB_User_manager How to specify that that use it can EXECUTE AS only DB_User3, DB_User4 and not DB_User1, DB_User2. Or if it is not possible, what is a […]

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