All Articles - SQL Authority with Pinal Dave

SQL SERVER – How to Find Weak Passwords Using T-SQL?

January 19, 2015

Recently one of my blog reader emailed me below question. Hi Pinal, Need your urgent help. In recent past, we have been attacked by the hacker who was able to get in to our SQL Server via sysadmin account and made big damage to our data. To make sure it…

Interview Question of the Week #003 – How to Write Script for Database Cursor?

January 18, 2015

Pinal Dave

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

Just another day I heard a senior DBA discussing advantages and disadvantages of the cursor. Well, personally I am a firm believer of the set based operations. However, there are few places where cursors are the only solutions. It is quite possible that different experts have different opinion about cursor;…

SQL SERVER – Watching Table Variable Data in TempDB

January 17, 2015

Pinal Dave

SQL, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks

MySQL

I cannot get enough of working with TempDB and the learning never stops. Previously, when I wrote about SQL SERVER – Is tempDB behaving like a Normal DB?, SQL SERVER – Inside Temp Table Object Creation and Difference TempTable and Table Variable – TempTable in Memory a Myth many did…

SQL SERVER – Configuration and Performance of SQL Server is Now Easy to Master

January 16, 2015

Pinal Dave

SQL, SQL Performance, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks

Confio

This is one of the toughest topics to address, and I am always looking at new tools that can help me learn and understand SQL Server better. In many cases, I fall back to MSDN documentation and official statements from the Microsoft site because a lot of R&D generally has…

SQL SERVER – The Easy Functions of SQL Server – Notes from the Field #062

January 15, 2015

Pinal Dave

SQL, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks

Notes from the Field, SQL DateTime

[Note from Pinal]: In this episode of the Notes from the Field series database expert Kathi Kellenberger explains about easy and amazing functions of SQL Server. 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…

SQL SERVER – How to Increase Number of Errorlog Files

January 14, 2015

Pinal Dave

SQL, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks

SQL Log

A long back I had written a blog on – SQL SERVER – Recycle Error Log – Create New Log file without Server Restart. Recently one of my blog reader emailed me with this question: Hi Pinal, In our SQL Server, we are logging successful logins to ERRORLOG and due…

SQL SERVER – Visibility into the Overall Health of Your SQL Server Environment – You Can’t Fix What You Can’t See

January 13, 2015

Pinal Dave

SQL, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks

Dell, SQL Scripts

I am sure most of us have experienced driving a four wheeler. The first time I went behind the wheels, it was an amazing experience. My excitement was multiplied by tension in the face of my father. After a while, I could see a sigh of relief and confidence even…

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SQL SERVER – Finding Tables Created Last Week – DBA Tip Part II

January 12, 2015

Pinal Dave

SQL Tips and Tricks

SQL Server, SQL Table Operation

When I wrote my previous blog post on SQL SERVER – Finding Tables Created Last Week – DBA Tip, lesser did I know something as simple as this can become such an interesting topic of conversation. I have been overwhelmed with the number of emails I have got in the past week to know more about such real life scenarios. Having said that, a number of you also asked are there a much easier way to look at the same inside SQL Server Management Studio.

Interview Question of the Week #002 – Script to Find Byte Size of a Row for All the Tables in Database

January 11, 2015

Pinal Dave

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

In recent times I was part of the interview panel where I was stunned to see that following question was asked to interviewee. I personally believed that this question is no longer relevant as we are in the age where database are capable to handle large amount of data and the…

SQL SERVER – What is the query used in sp_cursorfetch and FETCH API_CURSOR?

January 10, 2015

Pinal Dave

SQL, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks

SQL Cursor

In a recent debugging exercise for performance, one of my friend recently posted a question to me: “When I view activity monitor, under the recent expensive queries and under query column, there I see a “fetch api_cursor0000000000000003”. What is this? How can I know what was running behind this query?…