Interview Question of the Week #060 – What is the Difference Between EXCEPT Keyword and NOT IN?

Earlier this week, I had the opportunity to take many different interviews. Most of the DBA and Developers update their resume with various versions of the SQL Server. It seems like everybody had written SQL Server 2005 as one of their expertise. At this point of time, I remembered keyword EXCEPT which was introduced in SQL Server 2005 but not many people know about it. After interviewing, I realized that even after 11 years of release of SQL Server 2005 still most of the people do not know about EXCEPT keyword.

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SQL SERVER – AlwaysOn Availability Group Stuck in Resolving State For Long time

What is resolving state in SQL Server AlwaysOn?

When there is an availability group, the replica would be either in primary state or secondary state – when its online in failover cluster manager. Resolving is an intermediate state when the transition is happening from primary to secondary or vice versa. If due to some reason the transition is not successful, it goes to “resolving” state. In this state, the database is not accessible.

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SQL SERVER – 2016 – Check Value as JSON With ISJSON()

I have been wanting to write about the various operators that govern to use JSON and my first shot has been with: SQL SERVER – Getting started and creating JSON using SQL Server 2016. That was like a primer and as I see the subsequent releases of SQL Server 2016 CTP’s, I see more capabilities have been added to this. One of the most important tasks to do is to access the value that is represented in a JSON document. In this blog, let me talk about one of the most important function that can be used to validate / address if the document entered in JSON or not with the help of ISJSON().

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SQL SERVER – Boosting User Experience with Analysis Services Perspectives – Notes from the Field #116

[Note from Pinal]: This is a new episode of Notes from the Field series. When I was new to SSAS it took me quite a while to understand the various terminology of SSAS. The reason for the same was, I was from networking background and not familiar with many of the analytical terms. I am sure if you are not familiar with SSAS the very first line of this blog “Analysis Services Perspectives are a feature that enable the designer to control which portions of the data model are exposed to the users.” may be confusing. It is alright if you are not familiar with the concept, the goal of this blog post is to understand what is perspective and how it helps user experience.

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SQL SERVER – How to Start SQL Server Service Without tempdb?

Before I start explaining the situation, I got into while experimenting with the SQL Server instance on my machine, let me air a word of caution – Please DONOT try this on your production environments. Unless you want to grab unwanted attention from your seniors, this is not something I would want you to ever experiment. In a recent configuration change on my local instance, I was facing an unique issue as I was standing in front of an audience for a SQL Server based session. Rarely does it happen that I get into Murphy’s law of demo not working in front of an audience because I carry multiple backups. Interestingly, this time when I tried to connect to the SQL Server using SSMS, it just refused to connect. I was completely taken aback and what happened after that is a different story about how to start SQL Server Service.

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SQL SERVER – Scripting Tip: PowerShell to Identify Last Bootup Time

I know I have been fortunate to write back-to-back on topics around SQL Server. I get a number of you do take time in writing down to me over emails, comments and even sometimes over Skype pings. I see every such mail as an opportunity to learn something from you for sure. One of my friends from the networking team pinged me to check if I knew a query about the last bootup time he had:

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