All Articles - SQL Authority with Pinal Dave

SQL SERVER – How to Connect Using NT AUTHORITY \ SYSTEM Account?

February 8, 2016

Command Line, SQL Server, SQL Server Security

Sometimes it is needed to connect to SQL Server using System account. Don’t literally ask me if this is a valid scenario in first place. Someone just pinged to say – they want to do it. I was personally not sure why, but they had their own internal requirement to do the same. Let us learn about in this blog post about how to connect using NT AUTHORITY \ SYSTEM Account?

It is not possible to provide windows credential in SSMS and they are always grayed out. My exploration is always to keep trying to find a solution to such typical use cases. I was able to find that PSExec can be used to achieve this. I am a big fan of some of the tools from sysinternals. These are handy and quite small footprint of the servers. One of the tools I have day-in day-out is ZoomIt while doing presentations.

Interview Question of the Week #057 – What is GO Statement in SQL SERVER?

February 7, 2016

Pinal Dave

SQL Interview Questions and Answers

SQL Scripts, SQL Server

GO is not a Transact-SQL statement; it is often used in T-SQL code. Go causes all statements from the beginning of the script or the last GO statement (whichever is closer) to be compiled into one execution plan and sent to the server independent of any other batches. SQL Server utilities interpret GO as a signal that they should send the current batch of Transact-SQL statements to an instance of SQL Server. The current batch of statements is composed of all statements entered since the last GO, or since the start of the ad hoc session or script if this is the first GO.

MySQL – How to Generate Random Number

February 6, 2016

Pinal Dave

SQL Tips and Tricks

MySQL, SQL Random

In MySQL, UUID() function returns Universal Unique Identifier that generates 36 characters long value which is 5 part hexadecimal numbers. If you want to generate random password, you can make use of this function which generate random number.

Returns the string 85aeb064-8f73-11e5-85ef-02fcc4101968 (Note that this is random, when you execute you will get different value). As the total length is 36, you can make use of the result to get a random password with any length.

SQL SERVER – Install Error – The /UIMode setting cannot be used in conjunction with /Q or /QS

February 5, 2016

Pinal Dave

SQL Tips and Tricks

SQL Error Messages, SQL Server

Doing repetitive tasks is something everyone hates. I am sure many of us have resorted to ingenious techniques to figure out doing the task efficiently. There is no standard tool or technique that everyone uses. Recently I was asked to install a SQL instance with same configuration on 10 servers. Who would like to log in to all those servers, run setup.exe and go through the same setup wizard? Luckily, the SQL Server setup allows to create a configuration file. The very thought of extracting it as configuration is something that made me jump out of my seat. Let us learn about Install Error – The /UIMode setting cannot be used in conjunction with /Q or /QS.

SQL SERVER – SSIS – Get Started with the For Loop Container – Notes from the Field #113

February 4, 2016

Pinal Dave

SQL Tips and Tricks

Notes from the Field, SQL Server, SSIS

[Notes from Pinal]: SSIS is very well explored subject, however, there are so many interesting elements when we read, we learn something new. A similar concept has been Get Started with the For Loop Container.

Linchpin People are database coaches and wellness experts for a data driven world. In this 113th episode of the Notes from the Fields series database expert Tim Mitchell (partner at Linchpin People) shares very interesting conversation related to how to get started with the FOR LOOP Container.

All Articles inmemory-optimistic-concurrency-01-600x339

SQL SERVER InMemory OLTP: Understanding Optimistic Multi-Version Concurrency Concepts

February 3, 2016

Pinal Dave

SQL Performance

In-Memory OLTP, SQL Scripts, SQL Server

InMemory is an awesome concept and I have been fortunate to learn about the same from my friends in the industry over blogs. It holds deep concepts and is sometimes tough to understand how the building blocks come together. I am not the only one doing the exploration, but a number of you also do and pass those learnings to me via your interesting questions. Thanks to each one of you who take a moment to ask me some of these questions that shake the fundamentals and make my understanding stronger. In the same lines, one of the readers wrote back to me after reading the MSDN on InMemory OLTP, what does the concepts of Optimistic multi-version concurrency really mean. On first thought, it looks simple, but the question was very loaded.

SQL SERVER – dbForge Object Search for SQL Server

February 2, 2016

Pinal Dave

SQL

Devart, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Utility

SSMS is a nice tool for database developers. However, it is far from being ideal, and this is because some routine operations in SSMS are extremely inconvenient to perform. Let us learn about dbForge Object Search for SQL Server.

Very often, developers face the challenge of searching a database for all occurrences of an object, column, variable, or search simultaneously all the objects, in which a search value occurs. If you happen to solve a similar problem, then you must know that this problem is not the most trivial and Ctrl + F will not help here.

SQL SERVER 2016 – IF EXISTS Function on SQL Azure Databases and More

February 1, 2016

Pinal Dave

SQL Tips and Tricks

SQL Azure, SQL Function, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Server 2016

The experimentation of working with the next release of SQL Server is always fun and when I wrote the blog T-SQL Enhancement “Drop if Exists” clause, lesser did I know such capabilities are already existing with Azure SQL DB. When I was presenting at one of the local user groups, I told most of the capabilities come to Cloud first, get test and the very reason that it scales without problem on cloud gives one the confidence that it would work in our enterprise. One of the attendees asked, has all features first introduced to cloud only? Let us learn about IF EXISTS Function on SQL Azure Databases and More.

Interview Question of the Week #056 – How to fix Installation Failure – Rule “Setup account privileges” Failed in SQL Server

January 31, 2016

Pinal Dave

SQL, SQL Interview Questions and Answers, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks

MySQL, SQL Error Messages

Sometimes in the interviews I observe that users are able to answer all the theoretical questions correct but when it is about doing practical they fail. A while ago, when I was helping a large organization with interview, suddenly their DBA reported that one of their server has installation error.…

All Articles script-upgrade-02-1-600x333

SQL SERVER – Script level upgrade for database ‘master’ failed because upgrade step ‘sqlagent100_msdb_upgrade.sql’

January 30, 2016

Pinal Dave

SQL

SQL Error Messages, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Upgrade, System Database

I do apply patches to my SQL instances as and when they are released by Microsoft. This is important because I always feel keeping the bits up-to-date is essential because I don’t want to get infected as I travel quite a bit. Since I play a lot with my SQL Server, there are more chances that things are going to break sooner than your production server. Here is one such incident. Let us learn about how to fix script level upgrade.