SQL Server doesn’t have an easy way to take a table backup, so I often use the bcp (Bulk Copy Program) to accomplish the same goal. I’ve mentioned this before, and someone told me when they tried it they couldn’t restore the table – ah the dangers of telling people half the information! I should have mentioned that you need to have a “format file” ...

Periodically I back up the keys within my servers and databases, and when I do, I blog a reminder here. This should be part of your standard backup rotation – the keys should be backed up often enough to have at hand and again when they change. The first key you need to back up is the Service Master Key, which each Instance already has built-in. ...

I read Jeffery Hicks’ article in this month’s Redmond Magazine on a new add-in for Windows PowerShell 2.0. It’s called the PowerShell Pack and it has a some great new features that I plan to put into place on my production systems as soon as I finished learning and testing them. You can download the pack here if you have PowerShell 2.0. I’m ...

Don’t be afraid of that title – I’m not talking about Six Sigma or anything super-formal here. In many organizations, there are more folks in other IT roles than in the Data Professional area. In other words, there are more developers, system administrators and so on than there are the “DBA” role. That means we often have more to do than the ...

I'm unable to sleep tonight so I thought I would push this post out VERY early. When you don't sleep your mind takes interesting turns, which can be a good thing. I was watching a briefing today by a couple of friends as they were talking about various ways to arrange a Windows Server Cluster for SQL Server. I often see an ''active'' node ...

I’m writing a series of articles on how to migrate “departmental” data into SQL Server. I also hold workshops on the entire process – from discovering that the data exists to the modeling process and then how to design the Extract, Transform and Load (ETL) process. Finally I write about (and teach) a few methods on actually moving the data. One ...

Most of us know that there's a lot to learn. I'm teaching a class this morning, and even on the subject where I'm the ''expert'' (that word always makes me nervous!) I still have a lot to learn. To learn, sometimes I take a class, read a book, or carve out a large chunk of time so that I can fully grasp the subject. But since I've been working, I ...

SQL Server has a few mechanisms to reach out to another server (even another server type) and query data from within a Transact-SQL statement. Among them are a set of stored credentials and information (called a Linked Server), a statement that uses a linked server called called OPENQUERY, another called OPENROWSET, and one called OPENDATASOURCE. ...

Whenever you want to know something about SQL Server’s configuration, whether that’s the Instance itself or a database, you have a few options. If you want to know “dynamic” data, such as how much memory or CPU is consumed or what a particular query is doing, you should be using the Dynamic Management Views (DMVs) that you can read about here: ...

Did you know that you already have a Server Master Key (SMK) generated for your system? That’s right – while a Database Master Key (DMK) is generated when you encrypt a certificate or Asymmetric Key with code, the Server Master Key is generated automatically when you start the Instance. So you should back all of those keys up periodically, and ...