A puzzle with TEXT columns: UNION ALL works fine, but UNION produces error. Can you tell why? The hint is in how UNION removes duplicates.
SQL Server emergency? Email pinal@sqlauthority.com with URGENT in the subject line.
SQL SERVER – Slow Filestream Data Cleanup. What Should We Do?
Slow Filestream Data Cleanup can follow deletion when files are still ineligible for garbage collection. One customer was running out of space.
SQL SERVER – Historical SSMS Vulnerability Assessment and Current Availability
SQL Vulnerability Assessment was available in older SSMS releases. My walkthrough used SSMS 17.4 with SQL Server 2012 or later.
Restart Azure SQL Database: What Works and What Doesn’t
You can’t restart Azure SQL Database the way you restart SQL Server, because Microsoft runs the service. This post shows what to do instead: find and end the blocking session, scale the database, or trigger a failover. It tests the blocking query on a demo database and explains why a stack dump is not a restart.
How to List Queries With Memory Grant and Execution Plan? – Interview Question of the Week #154
A workshop customer suspected one of their queries used too much memory. Here is the script I gave them to list running queries with Memory Grant and plan.
SQL SERVER – Account Added Automatically in SQL Server Used by SharePoint
A departed user’s account kept being added automatically to SharePoint database roles. How to catch who adds it, and from where, on SQL Server 2025.
SQL SERVER – xp_cmdshell and Net Use ERROR: The Local Device Name is Already in Use
Mapping a share with net use through xp_cmdshell, I hit “The local device name is already in use”. Here is what causes this error and how to solve it.
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