Joining the Friends of Redgate program 🎉
I’m super excited to announce that today I was notified that I will be joining the Friends of Redgate program! 🎉💃🎊
Blocking with OBJECT_NAME()
As a DBA, you probably use the OBJECT_NAME() function quite a bit. I know I do. If you aren’t familiar with it, you can read the documentation if you want, but it’s a pretty straightforward function that converts object IDs into object names. I ran … [Read More]
What the heck is the dbcreator role?
Microsoft docs defines the dbcreator role as: Members of the dbcreator fixed server role can create, alter, drop, and restore any database. But what specific permissions are actually included in that role? If we scroll down in the docs just a little, we’ll see a … [Read More]
Testing as another user…without their password
As a DBA or SQL Developer, you’ve surely encountered a scenario where something worked for you, but not for another user. DBAs usually are part of the sysadmin role, or have a collection of powerful permissions. If I run code as myself, I will never … [Read More]
I hate sp_estimate_data_compression_savings
If you’re working with compressed indexes, SQL Server provides a system stored procedure to help test the space savings of implementing data compression: sp_estimate_data_compression_savings. Starting in SQL Server 2019, it can even be used to estimate savings with columnstore. I really don’t like sp_estimate_data_compression_savings. In … [Read More]
Changing a column from int to bigint, without downtime
Changing a column from int to bigint has gotten a lot easier since I started working on SQL Server back at the turn of the century. SQL Server 2016 introduced the ability to do ALTER TABLE…ALTER COLUMN as an online operation using the WITH (ONLINE=ON) … [Read More]
How to create date buckets in T-SQL
I was fiddling around with some data, looking at making a quick aging report. I probably should have reached for Power BI Desktop, but sometimes I can be stubborn, and I wanted to get my T-SQL to work–if nothing else to figure out how to … [Read More]
How does a database RESTORE affect plan cache?
If you restore a database, what does that do to the plan cache? Well, let’s start by looking at the documentation for RESTORE. (Emphasis mine) Restoring a database clears the plan cache for the instance of SQL Server. Clearing the plan cache causes a recompilation … [Read More]
What the heck is Accelerated Database Recovery?
Last week, I wrote about the SQL Server Version Store. The week before, I looked at crash recovery. Let’s look next at a new feature in SQL Server 2019, where these two features intersect: Accelerated Database Recovery. What is it? Accelerated Database Recovery(ADR) is a … [Read More]
What the heck is the SQL Server Version Store?
Maybe you’ve read about the Read Committed Snapshot (RCSI) or Snapshot Isolation levels. Or maybe you were trying to figure out the difference between the two snapshot isolation levels. Perhaps you’ve looked into read-only secondary replicas in your Availability Group, or even had some problems … [Read More]