All Articles - SQL Authority with Pinal Dave

Interview Question of the Week #035 – Different Ways to Identify the Open Transactions

September 6, 2015

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

Question: What are different ways to identify open transactions in SQL Server? Answer: There are many ways to identify the open transactions. If there are some transactions which were started and not yet committed or rollback, you can use any of these to find them Use DBCC command There is a…

SQL SERVER – How to Enable or Disable All the Triggers on a Table and Database?

September 5, 2015

Pinal Dave

SQL, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks

SQL Scripts, SQL Trigger

Here is the quickest way to disable all the triggers for a table. Please note that when it is about the table, you will have to specify the name of the table. However, when we have to enable or disable trigger on the database or server, we just have to…

SQL SERVER – Configure the Backup Compression Default Server Configuration Option

September 4, 2015

Pinal Dave

SQL, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks

SQL Backup and Restore

When I get a chance to talk to Enterprise customers working with a really smart DBA team, I generally look out for options they use on a daily basis and are often missed in the bigger scheme of things. One such feature of SQL Server Enterprise Edition is the ability…

SQL SERVER – What’s the Difference between ROW_NUMBER, RANK, and DENSE_RANK? – Notes from the Field #096

September 3, 2015

Pinal Dave

SQL, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks

Notes from the Field, SQL Function

[Note from Pinal]: In this episode of the Notes from the Field series database expert Kathi Kellenberger explains about T-SQL Window Functions. Kathi is an amazing instructor, she was the SQL author I have read in my early career. The reason, I love SQL Server because her writing has instigated love for this…

SQL SERVER – FIX – Error: Alter failed for Server ‘Server Name’ in Check Integrity task

September 2, 2015

Pinal Dave

SQL, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks

SQL Error Messages

Recently I was getting ready for an upcoming demo session and found that my maintenance plan for CHECKDB were failing. When I executed manually, I got below error Execution failed. See the maintenance plan and SQL Server Agent job history logs for details. I followed error message and checked the…

SQL SERVER – Transparent Data Encryption and Frequently Asked Questions

September 1, 2015

Pinal Dave

SQL, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks

SQL Server Encryption, SQL Server Security

In the recent past, I have been traveling to Delhi to meet customers and also attend a few conferences which my company has been sponsoring. These travel experiences give me an opportunity to meet folks who read my blog regularly as a face-to-face interaction. Most of these interactions mean I…

SQL SERVER – SPID is KILLED/ROLLBACK state. What to Do Next?

August 31, 2015

Pinal Dave

SQL Tips and Tricks

SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Server Security

I always recall my fun days after talking to my friends and blog readers. Recently killed/rollback discussion came back when my close DBA friend called me for help. Our discussion was worth blogging.

Interview Question of the Week #034 – What is the Difference Between Distinct and Group By

August 30, 2015

Pinal Dave

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

Question: What is the difference between DISTINCT and GROUP BY? Answer: A DISTINCT and GROUP BY usually generate the same query plan, so performance should be the same across both query constructs. GROUP BY should be used to apply aggregate operators to each group. If all you need is to remove…

SQL SERVER – Remove All Characters From a String Using T-SQL

August 29, 2015

Pinal Dave

SQL, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks

In this post, How to Remove All Characters From a String Using T-SQL? we have seen How to Remove All Characters From a String Using T-SQL. But it only removes characters from the string. What if the string has some other special characters? Here is the method that handles this SET NOCOUNT ON…

SQL SERVER – Different Methods to Extract Scale Part From Decimal Number

August 28, 2015

Pinal Dave

SQL, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks

SQL Function

One of my blog readers asked me “Is there a way to extract only the number after the decimal point?”. For example, in decimal number 45.90, 45 is the precision and 90 is the scale value. There are several methods to get this done Let us create this dataset CREATE…