A Fine Slice Of SQL Server
Even the most experienced database professionals are known to feel a little anxious when peering into an unfamiliar database. Hopefully, they inspect to see how the data is normalized and how the various tables are combined to answer complex queries. Entity Relationship Maps (ERM) provide a visual overview of how tables are related and can document the structure of the data.
Read on to see how you can do this with the DBeaver database access client.
Leave a CommentIn this blog post, we will audit the dbatools command Test-DbaLastBackup. I will test, review, and evaluate the script based on a series of identical steps. Our goal is to provide insights, warnings, and recommendations to help you use this script effectively and safely. Test-DbaLastBackup is a powerful tool to automate the validation of a backup. Backup testing should be a regular part of SQL Server maintenance and this command works well in automating this task.
Click through for a dive into the cmdlet. I’m a big fan of this cmdlet because it drastically simplifies the process of ensuring that your backups are good.
Leave a CommentReza Rad has something up his sleeve:
To tidy up your Power BI solution, there are some options, and one of them is hiding fields from the report view. This option, although simple, has a significant impact on making your Power BI solution very tidy and clean and easier to maintain. However, you might wonder what are fields that have to be hidden in Power BI? In this article, I will explain how to hide a field in report view, and then what are fields which are a good candidate for this option. If you like to learn more about Power BI. Read Power BI book from Rookie to Rock Star.
The very short answer is, hide things that business users won’t (or shouldn’t) care about. Reza gives much more guidance on the topic.
Based on the comments section, this appears to be a re-post from several years ago, but still worth reading because the content is evergreen.
Leave a CommentTom Collins doesn’t need drive letters:
I have some SQL Servers and the file system is organised with mount points. SQL Server is configured to distribute the system files , data , transaction log and tempdb files on those mountpints. As these are Production systems – the DBA does not have permanent access to the Disak Manager without a request for elevated privileges. But they do have privileges to execute administration type of queries.
Do you have a query that allows the DBA to excute a query to determine the Total Size , Available Size and Space Free on the mountpoints
Read on for the answer, as well as a link to an older article from Tom on the topic.
Leave a CommentJeff Horner doesn’t need permanence:
One of the simplest yet most impactful performance optimizations for SQL Server is relocating the tempdb system database to a fast, dedicated disk—especially if that disk is temporary or ephemeral. This is a common practice in cloud environments and high-performance database systems where tempdb churn is high and doesn’t require persistence across reboots.
Click through for more information on how this can work well for you, as well as how to do it safely and things to keep in mind. One thing I would add is, I vaguely recall that on Azure at least, the temporary D: drive might not be mapped at startup, and it may take a few seconds after startup for the mapping to occur. Thus, it may be a good idea to have the SQL Server service start on a delay to ensure that you don’t run into an issue due to task ordering on startup.
Leave a CommentLast week, I asked y’all how frequently you ran your full backups, corruption checks, index maintenance, and stats updates. The results after over 1,000 responses:
Click through for the results and some of Brent’s thoughts.
Leave a CommentKevin Wilkie doesn’t want to spend that extra money:
Now that we’ve loaded our Costs Dashboard with all sorts of goodness, let’s take it a step further and make it even more useful. The goal: track unused warehouses to help manage spend and reduce clutter.
Read on to see how you can do this.
Leave a CommentJon Vöge comes continues looking at Power BI writeback:
This blog has previously covered the basics of native Microsoft Fabric / Power BI write-back with Translytical Task Flows.
In my first post on the subject, we created a simple Comment/Annotation solution, allowing the user to input free text comments on Data Points directly in Power BI.
However, Translytical Task Flows do not only support Free Text as an input type for the users of your reports. All of the new & updated Power BI Slicer visuals work with Translytical Task Flows, and we can use List and Button slicers for users to add categorical data to our task flows too.
Read on to see these other options in action.
Leave a CommentKellyn Gorman continues a series on PostgreSQL for Oracle DBAs:
As an Oracle DBA venturing into the world of PostgreSQL, one of the most important areas to get comfortable with is performance tuning. While Oracle’s Cost-Based Optimizer (CBO) is a well-known powerhouse that many DBAs have learned to both respect and wrestle with, PostgreSQL offers its own sophisticated query planner that behaves differently. Understanding these differences is key to becoming proficient with PostgreSQL as we step into tuning.
Read on to gain an overview of what options are available on the PostgreSQL side and how they differ from what’s available in Oracle.
Leave a CommentI’ve written previously about auditing or cracking SQL Server login passwords either online (inside the instance itself) or offline (exporting the hashes and using a specialized cracking tool).
Last week, Microsoft’s Pieter Vanhove published a blog post that covers What’s new in SQL Server 2025 security.
This is one of the few instances in which I’d prefer things be slower in the database.
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