All Articles - SQL Authority with Pinal Dave

SQL SERVER – Filtering CPU Bound Execution Plans with Extended Events

November 14, 2014

Let me take a tour to what are we talking here from a scenario point of view. Prior to SQL Server 2012, tracing the execution plan is an all or nothing approach. In profiler, if we select execution plan, we will get every occurrence of every execution plan for all…

SQL SERVER – Validation Rules: Code or Database? – Notes from the Field #054

November 13, 2014

Pinal Dave

SQL, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks

BIML, Notes from the Field, SQL Server Security

[Note from Pinal]: This is a 54th episode of Notes from the Field series. Where do we blame for a mistake or error in the system? Well, developer blames DBA and DBA blame developers. Sometimes there is no solution to the catch 22 situation. I have been there and I…

SQL SERVER – FIX – Msg 4864, Level 16, State 1 – Bulk load data conversion error

November 13, 2014

Pinal Dave

SQL, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks

SQL Error Messages

Working with SQL Server is such rewarding and most of the times, I get a chance to revisit and explore more into some of these errors. Long time ago, I had written a blog post to read data from CSV/text file and insert into SQL Server Table using BULK INSERT…

SQL SERVER – What is Hypothetical Indexes?

November 12, 2014

Pinal Dave

SQL, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks

SQL Index

If you ever thought this is some sort of trick to bring you to the blog, well you are wrong. This infact is something worth a look and interesting thing to know. Before I start to explain you the finer details, let me tell you that this is NOT a…

SQL SERVER – FIX – Error: One or more files do not match the primary file of the database

November 11, 2014

Pinal Dave

SQL, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks

SQL Error Messages

Writing about SQL Server for close to 8 years, almost every single day means I get a lot of questions from people on a daily basis. Though I try to answer as many as possible (via email, blog, twitter and Facebook), I get many interesting questions. There are a variety…

SQL SERVER – Take the Quiz for a chance to win a Quadcopter Drone

November 10, 2014

Pinal Dave

SQL, SQL Puzzle, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks

It has been a long time since we ran quiz. So let us get ready for a quiz. The quiz has two parts. You have to get both the parts correct to win Quadcopter with Camera (we will call it drone). We will be giving away a total of 2…

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

November 10, 2014

Pinal Dave

SQL, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks

SQL Backup and Restore

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.…

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

November 9, 2014

Pinal Dave

SQL, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks

SQL Backup and Restore, SQL Error Messages

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…

SQL SERVER – Fix – Error 5058, Level 16, State 1 – Option cannot be set in database

November 8, 2014

Pinal Dave

SQL, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks

SQL Error Messages

Of late I have been writing about errors quite a bit because I seem to have been digging these from my email archives based on interaction with multiple DBA’s over the past 6-7 years. These are interesting conversations that have become blog posts for your reference. I feel these error…

SQL SERVER – Performance Counter Missing: How to Get Them Back?

November 7, 2014

Pinal Dave

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

Of the thousands of mails I receive every day about SQL Server problems, I was recently pinged by a friend who reported a weird problem. He started with a simple question. He said that he wants to monitor SQL Server Performance counters for complete day to send a report back…