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Category: Administration

Flushing Change Tracking Internal Tables

Published 2016-10-20 by Kevin Feasel

Amit Banerjee mentions a new stored procedure for change tracking cleanup:

In SQL Server 2014 Service Pack 2 and above, we provided a new Stored Procedure, sp_flush_CT_internal_table_on_demand, to assist with Change Tracking cleanup. KB3173157 has more details. This stored procedure accepts a table name as parameter and will attempt to cleanup records from the corresponding change tracking internal table.  During the course of the deletion, it will print some verbose in the output window about the progress of deletion.

If automated change tracking cleanup works well enough for you, there’s no change; but if you’re struggling with that cleanup, this procedure might help.

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Who Is Active Update

Published 2016-10-19 by Kevin Feasel

Adam Machanic has an update to sp_whoisactive:

Four and a half years have flown by since I released sp_whoisactive version 11.11.

It’s been a pretty solid and stable release, but a few bug reports and requests have trickled in. I’ve been thinking about sp_whoisactive v.Next — a version that will take advantage of some newer SQL Server DMVs and maybe programmability features, but in the meantime I decided to clear out the backlog on the current version.

Given that I have three keyboard shortcuts dedicated to sp_whoisactive, you know I’m excited.  Adam also has a new domain for the product.

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Containerized SQL Server 2016 Express Edition

Published 2016-10-17 by Kevin Feasel

The SQL Server team announces a Docker image for SQL Server 2016 Express Edition:

SQL Server 2016 in a Windows container would be ideal when you want to:

  1. Quickly create and start a set of SQL Server instances for development or testing.

  2. Maximize density in test or production environments, especially in microservice architectures.

  3. Isolate and control applications in a multi-tenant infrastructure.

Works on Windows only.  Given that SQL Server on Linux is going to be a thing, I could see general release through Docker there as well, but we’ll see.

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Threads Need Memory Too

Published 2016-10-17 by Kevin Feasel

Arun Sirpal notices a bug with fn_dump_dblog():

Using this command creates more threads and hidden schedulers (these will only go after a restart). Depending on what version of SQL Server you are on and what Service Pack you may or may not have this issue. It was fixed in SQL 2012 SP2 onwards. So be on the cautious side when running these sorts of commands.

Also I noticed Memory bloat for the sqlservr.exe. Nothing else was running on this server, just my fn_dump_dblog script.  Threads need memory too.

It’s good advice.  Undocumented functions are probably more likely than documented functions to contain bugs.

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SSISDB Maintenance

Published 2016-10-14 by Kevin Feasel

Jesse Seymour shows how to trim the SSIS catalog size:

The options we are interested in are OPERATION_CLEANUP_ENABLED and RETENTION_WINDOW.  By default, RETENTION_WINDOW is 365. and OPERATION_CLEANUP_ENABLED is TRUE.

Since we want to set our retention window to 10 days, we need to update RETENTION_WINDOW to 10.  We could do this with a simple update statement, but Microsoft provides us with a stored procedure that will do that for us.  The benefit of the stored procedure over the UPDATE statement is that a vendor-provided stored procedure will typically encapsulate any additional steps required.

I do not at all like the idea of running SHRINKDATABASE and definitely wouldn’t have that plus a backup in the deletion loop, but if you get caught in a nasty situation with SSISDB, this can serve as the starting point for digging yourself out.

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Linked Server To Access

Published 2016-10-14 by Kevin Feasel

Jana Sattainathan walks through issues with setting up a linked server connection to an Access database:

Normally, it is easy enough to setup a Linked Server on SQL Server to other data sources. Problems are usually caused by one of the usual culprits that have to be addressed

  • SQL Logins simply do not work well when trying to do this type of setup

  • The Windows login has to have permissions to the file (on a drive or network share)

  • The appropriate drivers have to be setup (64 bit / 32 bit)

Read on for a few different errors and their solutions.

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Syncing Logins Between AG Replicas

Published 2016-10-13 by Kevin Feasel

Daniel Hutmacher has a new series on Availability Group synchronization, starting with logins:

You’ll need a linked server from your secondary replica to the primary replica. This linked server should feature the absolute bare-minimum of permissions, preferably with only the “be made using the login’s current security context” selected.

The account running the procedure (or the mapped login in the linked server) will need SELECT access to the following DMVs on the remote (primary) server:

  • master.sys.server_principals

  • master.sys.sql_logins

  • master.sys.server_role_members

  • master.sys.server_permissions

The code itself is a download from Daniel’s website; go check it out.

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Attaching Databases With CDC Enabled

Published 2016-10-12 by Kevin Feasel

Amit Banerjee notes an issue with detaching a database with Change Data Capture enabled and moving it to a new version of SQL Server:

When you detach a database with Change Data Capture enabled on SQL Server 2014 and below and attach it to a SQL Server 2016 instance, you could run into the error mentioned below while execute Change Data Capture (CDC) related procedures.

Error:

Msg 22832, Level 16, State 1, Procedure sp_cdc_enable_table_internal, Line 639 [Batch Start Line 0]

Could not update the metadata that indicates table [<schema name>].[<object name>] is enabled for Change Data Capture. The failure occurred when executing the command ‘insert into [cdc].[captured_columns]’. The error returned was 213: ‘Column name or number of supplied values does not match table definition.’. Use the action and error to determine the cause of the failure and resubmit the request.

Read on to learn more, including how to fix the issue.

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Test Restores

Published 2016-10-12 by Kevin Feasel

Steve Jones implores you to test those database backups by restoring them somewhere:

What do you do? Hopefully you recognize the issue and can fix the issue. Maybe more importantly, you have a backup of the missing certificate.

Most people don’t deal with encryption, but you never know when your backup job might start failing, perhaps writing to a damaged file that appears to work (if you write as a device) but really isn’t capturing the backup file. Perhaps you don’t know that your backups are being written to a location and deleted a day later, but the process that is supposed to copy them to tape or a remote file share is broken.

Any number of things can happen. The point is that you want to be sure that you are actually getting useable backup files.

That means testing restores.

Read the whole thing.

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