The set identity_insert command in SQL Server, as the name implies, allows the user to insert explicit values into the identity column of a table. Now, someone might wonder, “why on Earth would somebody want to do that?!” Oh well, you know, there is always a good reason! 🙂 I can…
What is the IDENTITY_CACHE Option in SQL Server? The IDENTITY_CACHE option, is a new database scoped configuration option in SQL Server 2017 and Azure SQL Database. This option is set to ON by default. The concept of identity caching in SQL Server is that the Database Engine stores in cache…
SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) for some time now, is not included in the SQL Server media. Instead, it is being provided as a standalone free program which can be downloaded from Microsoft’s website. The decoupling between SSMS and SQL Server Installation Media This is a good thing and…
Sometimes, when working with T-SQL scripts, you might want to skip the message “(N row(s) affected)” message. This article explains how to suppress the “N Row(s) Affected” output message in SQL Server. Explanation You get this message when you execute T-SQL statements or stored procedures that they affect rows.…
Row-Level Security (RLS) is one of the top features in SQL Server 2016. With RLS you can control access to rows in a table based on the characteristics of the user executing a query. The access restriction logic is located in the database tier and access restrictions are always applied,…
This article discusses the behavior of the BCP utility when extracting data from SQL Server tables to files and more specifically to CSV files. Example: Description Imagine that you have the below table: As you can see, records 2 and 3 contain null values. Then you export the table contents…
There are many scenarios in the DBMSs world where you might need to use a linked server between two different SQL Server instances in order to execute direct queries between them. However, the majority of T-SQL auto-complete tools have difficulties to list the objects (i.e. tables) of the linked server’s database.…
The Model database in SQL Server is used as the template for all the user databases that are created on a SQL Serve instance. Most of the times we do not modify the Model database however there are cases where it might come in handy. For example consider the following scenario:…
Good evening (or good morning) friends all around the globe! Wherever you are, whatever you do, wishing you a nice rest of the day (or night!) 🙂 It’s been more than a month since my last article but here’s a tip: I’m working on something really, really massive…and yes, it…
A few weeks ago I posted an article on how to import and export unstructured data in SQL Server 2005 by using the “image” data type. In this article I will show how you can manipulate unstructured data in SQL Server 2008 or later by using the FILESTREAM feature. FILESTREAM…
Importing and exporting unstructured data from a database is a common practice, especially in large applications. SQL Server 2008 introduced the FILESTREAM feature that allows storing unstructured data (i.e. music, video, documents, etc.) onto the NTFS file system and manipulating it via the Database Engine. SQL Server 2012 introduced FileTables which is…
Scenario: You have a fixed-length table column for which you want to add leading characters. Example: In this scenario we have column “ID” which is a varchar field of length 10 and we want to add leading zeros so that its values always have 10 characters. –Create Development/Test Database CREATE DATABASE…
Earlier this month, on the 22nd, another Cyprus .NET User Group event took place. The event featured two hourly topics dedicated to the Microsoft Cloud and its services. The first topic was on Windows Azure for Developers and the second on Windows Azure SQL Database, formerly SQL Azure. The event…
We live in a Data World. I cannot tell you whether this is a good or a bad thing but I can tell you for sure that this is a fact. Everything works based on data. In the enterprise, this data needs to be stored into powerful, scalable and robust…
Yeah, I know, who would ever want to do that (!) but the purpose of this post is not to illustrate how you can actually get all the records from all tables in all user databases (even though it shows how to do it) but rather to provide an example…