Initially, I thought I would have to use sqlcmd because I’m on a Mac and don’t have SSMS. It turns out Azure Data Studio has a nifty way to import data from flat files – yay! SQL Server Import Extension You will need the SQL…
Category: Azure
With reports hitting the transactional databases, we were encountering performance issues. We needed to choose a path forward that would lighten the load on the prod database servers and be supportable and modern. Options We Explored Here’s a quick description of the options we explored:…
Yes, you still need to do some work to maintain indexes in Azure SQL Database. This post will walk you through setting up statistic updates and index maintenance using Terraform. Thanks to Tracy Boggiano for her directions for setting up the runbooks. If you want…
I found myself in a situation where I needed to modify temporal tables. We do this outside business hours because we don’t want clients changing data while versioning is off. Who wants to wait until off-hours to run scripts if you could devise a way…
A coworker recently introduced me to the SQL Server Schema Compare extension in Azure Data Studio. It has come in handy since we don’t have any paid-for tools, so it has been a great help to have this extension installed. I will show you how…
First, thank you to Guy in a Cube for a great licensing/cost video. My company is exploring what data warehousing technology to use in Azure. I needed to learn more about the licensing and costs associated with Microsoft Fabric. This is all stuff you can…
This all started because I wanted to follow Tracy’s directions on setting up Ola for index maintenance in Runbooks. I couldn’t set up the automation account permissions unless I was logged in with Azure Active Directory – Univeral with MFA. When I Googled, I didn’t…
Information security and privacy are key in today’s data-driven world. Sensitive data needs to be protected from unauthorized access. With column masking in SQL Server and Azure SQL, you can conceal sensitive data, allowing only authorized users to see it. Understanding Column Masking Column masking…
Database maintenance is crucial for the health and performance of any database system, including those in Azure. Without regular maintenance, databases can become slow, unstable, and prone to crashes and other errors. Maintenance tasks such as index optimization and statistics updates ensure query processing happens…
I was working on two publisher contracts at the same time. I highly recommend never doing that. One is done, though, and it’s officially published as of September 2022. Check out my database auditing book published with Apress! https://www.amazon.com/Practical-Database-Auditing-Microsoft-Server/dp/1484286332 More to come (hopefully soon) on…