Recently I faced with necessity of generating meaningful SQL data for testing purposes. During my search for a proper application for the task, I found out that Devart, a recognized developer of database solutions, released dbForge Data Generator for SQL Server, a GUI tool for fast generation of meaningful SQL data for development and testing purposes.
Interview Question of the Week #028 – Few SQL Best Practices
Just last week, I moderated a SQL Server interview and I heard very interesting conversation. Question – What are the best practices are you following for SQL Server? When I heard this question – I thought candidate will answer many different things, but he was stunned and had nothing much to…
Read MorePowerShell: How to Find Logical and Physical Processors on SQL Server?
Working on PowerShell scripts have been an interesting journey. I have written a couple of posts before on using WMI events. Was pondering on this thought and this blog is inspired by combining using of WMI with PowerShell. So what are we trying to solve? When SQL Server changed its…
Read MoreSQL SERVER – Puzzle – DISTINCT Values in NVARCHAR
The technique used in this blog is explained in earlier blog SQL SERVER – Creating Dataset Using VALUES Clause Without Creating Table. To read more about Collation and Unicode refer to MSDN. This topic in general is very deep and complicated sometimes that you get to learn something every single…
Read MoreSQL SERVER – Enhancing Reference Data in Master Data Services – Notes from the Field #089
[Note from Pinal]: This is a 89th episode of Notes from the Field series. Master Data Services is one of the most important, but a very little explored feature of SQL Server. If you have been reading this blog, when it is about BI, I always take help from LinchPin People who are…
Read MoreSQL SERVER – Process ID X was killed by hostname ABC, host process ID Y
Errorlogs are an awesome place to learn something new every time. It springs up with some new errors which you might have not seen ever. I am a big believer of the fact that one needs to monitor and take a look at the logs from time to time. It…
Read MoreSQL SERVER – Querying Performance Counters from SQL Server
Troubleshooting SQL Server is something almost every single DBA has to go through in their lifespan. It sounds simple and often we are clueless on where to start. Here is a scenario, you have been told that SQL Server is slow or unresponsive. Now you need to troubleshoot and figure…
Read MoreSQL SERVER – How to Change Server Name?
In recent past, I have renamed my VM and wanted to make sure that everything is fine. This renaming process is also needed for changing the server names called inside of SQL Server too. So I searched to know various places from where we can get host name and SQL Server name. Let us learn in this table how to change server name? Finally, I formed this query which can gather same details from various sources: