SQL Server is one of the world’s leading data platforms. It is a mature platform, full of features that enable you to store, organize, retrieve and transform your data into useful business insights and knowledge. Like in all Database Management Systems, in order for your SQL Server instances to operate…
Each SQL Server version has a specific native compatibility level, as a way to distinguish it from other SQL Server versions. The compatibility level is used internally in SQL Server for many operations. For example, if you try to restore a database backup taken on SQL Server 2017 with native…
In some cases, while trying to add a database to a SQL Server availability group using the wizard in SQL Server Management Studio, you might get some warnings or errors. There is a chance that these warnings/errors won’t let you continue and add the database. For example, a possible warning…
The SQL Server Browser Service listens on incoming connections for SQL Server services on SQL Server machines and provides information about SQL Server instances installed on the machine. This article discusses about the SQL Server Browser Service and UDP Port 1434, as well as what its use means throughout a…
Among its plethora of available and useful settings, SQL Server has a setting that is called “Maximum number of concurrent connections“. This setting by default is set to 0 (zero), which means “unlimited” concurrent connections and it is generally advised not to change it. In case you changed this setting…
DBAs play a major role in the everyday operation of any organization that uses databases. However, the term “healthy database” is often misinterpreted. In the databases world, a healthy database is not just a database that is online and is not corrupted. A healthy database, and consequently an RDBMS instance,…
Patching SQL Server is an ongoing process. Service packs and cumulative updates are being regularly released, in order to apply possible bug fixes as well as provide additional functionality. This article, suggests a procedure for how to patch a standalone SQL Server instance. First Patch SQL Server on the TEST…
If you are trying to add a new node to an existing SQL Server failover cluster and you are getting the error message “There is no SQL Server failover cluster available to join“, then you follow the below procedure for resolving the issue. Procedure for Resolving the “There is…
Encrypting a SQL Server database backup is necessary in many cases, especially when the database has sensitive data. SQL Server provides an easy way to encrypt database backups. Let’s further examine this functionality with a step-by-step example. In this example, we are going to backup a SQL Server 2014 database,…
There are many cases where a DBA needs to perform a task against all databases in a SQL Server instance. In order to avoid the process of just changing a part of the statement or switching to the target database and executing the T-SQL statement each time, there are some…
This article discusses how to patch a SQL Server Failover Cluster. Patching SQL Server is one of the main administrative tasks in the DBA’s life. However, patching SQL Server is a procedure that needs to be planned, tested, and performed very carefully. Below you can find a suggested methodology…
SQL Server is the world’s most powerful data platform and it is constantly evolving. From release to release significant new features are added. Besides the features and functionality, one of the typical question DBAs have is which are the Operating System requirements for each version and edition of SQL Server.…
TempDB system database plays a major role when it comes to performance in SQL Server. TempDB is available to all users connected to a SQL Server instance and it is used to hold local or global temporary tables, temporary stored procedures, table variables and cursors. The Importance of the…
In this article, I am publishing a stored procedure (DBStats) I have recently written and which given a database name as an input parameter it returns the below basic information: TotalTables TotalViews TotalSPs TotalFunctions TotalDMLTriggers TotalDBSize (MB) LogSize (MB) List of all tables with their number of columns Sample…
Software is evolving and certainly SQL Server is not an exception to the rule. Every few years we need to upgrade our databases in order to run on a newer version of SQL Server and take advantage of significant new features that will enhance the operations of our organization. However,…
