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• Planning my Louisville SQL Saturday Presentation

  So it is Tuesday night, just a few days until my presentation entitled What Counts For A DBA and I am still not completely sure exactly what is going to go on. In fact, I don’t exactly plan to know what is going on until the presentation is over.  Read More... Posted Tuesday, October 25, 2011 10:47 PM by drsql | 0 Comments Filed under: T-SQL, Speaking

• Denali Enhancement–Duplicate Key Error Message

  When I was editing my chapter on implementing a database, I noticed a really nice improvement in the error message I had from the previous edition of the book. Instead of just telling me that there was a value in my modification statement that duplicated Read More... Posted Thursday, July 14, 2011 1:12 AM by drsql | 6 Comments Filed under: T-SQL, Constraints, Denali

• disallow results from triggers

  A setting that I noticed a while back when looking at sys.configurations was disallow results from triggers.   Triggers are one of my favorite subjects, and you will find a lot of good uses of them in my book (triggers are also well named, as poor Read More... Posted Saturday, June 06, 2009 10:38 PM by drsql | 1 Comments Filed under: T-SQL, SQL Techniques, Best Practices, Development, Tips

• Granting rights to all objects in a database

  File this under the “I can’t believe there is still stuff that I keep learning about SQL Server 2005!” though thankfully most things I find I learn are things I wouldn’t be all that likely to use. I was asked today how I felt about using the syntax: GRANT Read More... Posted Friday, March 13, 2009 12:38 AM by drsql | 10 Comments Filed under: T-SQL, Security, Tips

• 2008: Declaring and instantiating a value

  Ok, I admit it. Sometimes the least important things are the most fun. As I try to get my blog back up and kicking again after a few months of holiday fun coupled with some dreary personal life things (a death in the family and lots of sickness/busyness, Read More... Posted Saturday, March 01, 2008 7:40 PM by drsql | 18 Comments Filed under: SQL Server, T-SQL

• 2008: Rebuilding a Heap

  In 2005, rebuilding a table that was a heap (no clustered index) wasn't easy. You could copy it to a different table, or you could add a clustered index and then drop it. In 2008, this is a far easier thing to do. They have added to the ALTER TABLE command Read More... Posted Tuesday, February 26, 2008 11:10 PM by drsql | 7 Comments Filed under: SQL Server, T-SQL, Dynamic Management Objects

• Changing the owner of a database

  Tonight, as I was creating my sample database for my chapter on implementing the database, I learned something new, that existed in 2005. I had always used sp_changedbowner to change the owner of a database, but I was reading in another section about Read More... Posted Wednesday, December 05, 2007 12:06 AM by drsql | 3 Comments Filed under: SQL Server, T-SQL

• sys.dm_db_index_operational_stats

  This object provides very useful stats on how many times an index has been used, locked, waited on, etc. An index in this context can mean several things: a clustered index, heap, index, or a partition of either of these. The grain of the function is Read More... Posted Sunday, August 26, 2007 4:12 PM by drsql | 8 Comments Filed under: SQL Server, T-SQL, Dynamic Management Objects

• sys.dm_exec_query_optimizer_info

  Information about how queries have been optimized since the server has been restarted. Note that counters are only affected when there is some sort of optimization event, not on every query. (reference: http://sqlserver-qa.net/blogs/perftune/archive/2007/05/11/get-statistics-on-query-plan-optimizer-execution.aspx Read More... Posted Monday, August 06, 2007 8:40 PM by drsql | 3 Comments Filed under: SQL Server, T-SQL, Dynamic Management Objects

• sys.dm_io_virtual_file_stats

  Excellent dmv that shows, for each file that SQL Server uses for the databases, stats on how frequently the file has been used by the database. This is one of the primary dynamic management views I use almost daily (well, not usually when I am on vacation, Read More... Posted Friday, July 27, 2007 9:26 PM by drsql | 14 Comments Filed under: SQL Server, T-SQL, Dynamic Management Objects

• sys.dm_db_index_usage_stats

  This object gives statistics on how an index has been used to resolve queries. Most importantly it tells you the number of times a query was used to find a single row ( user_seeks ), a range of values, or to resolve a non-unique query ( user_scans ), Read More... Posted Sunday, July 22, 2007 10:45 PM by drsql | 15 Comments Filed under: SQL Server, T-SQL, Dynamic Management Objects

• sys.dm_db_file_space_usage

  Give space usage of objects in tempdb (most likely this will be extended to more than just tempdb in a future edition of SQL Server.) Can be used to see how and why space is being used in Tempdb, on a file by file basis. Type: View Data: temporal, reflects Read More... Posted Saturday, July 14, 2007 3:35 PM by drsql | 4 Comments Filed under: SQL Server, T-SQL, Dynamic Management Objects

• sys.dm_db_partition_stats

  For the current database, gives you space oriented statistics for each partition of indexes (even if you only have one partion), like row count, page counts, etc. Resembles the sysindexes in previous versions of SQL Server, with more information. Type: Read More... Posted Wednesday, July 11, 2007 9:41 PM by drsql | 7 Comments Filed under: SQL Server, T-SQL, Dynamic Management Objects

• Blogging the DMV's

  Well, I am working on a project that is going to be a book on dynamic management views (and functions, but DMF is an interesting acronym, and objects, as in DMO, has a well known other meaning. What I will post will be one object in the following format: Read More... Posted Tuesday, July 10, 2007 12:14 AM by drsql | 4 Comments Filed under: SQL Server, T-SQL, Dynamic Management Objects

• Getting the difference between two sets of like data

  A question came up on the forums the other day that a person wanted to compare two tables of data. Doing this is pretty easy using several techniques: Using EXCEPT Using NOT EXISTS Using a FULL OUTER JOIN First two sample tables which represent two sets Read More... Posted Thursday, February 08, 2007 9:59 PM by drsql | 3 Comments Filed under: SQL Server, T-SQL