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SQL SERVER – User Defined Audit with SQL Server

Talk to any financial institution or bank they will be super paranoid when it comes to security and auditing policies applied to their organizations. In a recent session to one of our customers, I had to enter their premises and I had to go through some screening. From the entrance, car parking, reception, elevators and everywhere there was someone asking us for some information. The more I think about it, the more frustrated I become. After returning home, I thought through the complete incident with my family. I was pleasantly surprised the calmness at which they were talking to me about an audit process.

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SQL SERVER – FIX: ERROR : Msg 3136, Level 16, State 1 – This differential backup cannot be restored because the database has not been restored to the correct earlier state

During my recent visit to customer site for a session on backups, they asked me to find the cause of the error while restoring a differential backup. Though this seemed to be completely an admin related topic and I had gone for some other session, I took the challenge head-on.…
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SQL SERVER – FIX: ERROR : Msg 3023, Level 16, State 2 – Backup, file manipulation operations (such as ALTER DATABASE ADD FILE) and encryption changes on a database must be serialized

Errors are the best way to learn how SQL Server works and as DBA’s we are bound to see many of them from time to time. One of the primary functions of a DBA would include creating backups and most importantly trying to automate the same using jobs and maintenance…
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