Interview Question of the Week #062 – How to Find Table Without Clustered Index (Heap)?

Question: How to Find Table Without Clustered Index (heap)?

Answer: In SQL Server, when we create a primary key it automatically creates clustered index on the table, unless we explicitly mentioned not to create one. Due to this reason, the most of the table where there is a primary key, there are good chances it is also a clustered index key.

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Interview Question of the Week #061 – How to Retrieve SQL Server Configuration?

I have observed this question in the interview question few days ago. I had a fun time to see candidates failing to answer this question. The most common answer candidate gave us was that they will right click on the server and see the properties. Well, that option will not give all the details which actual question intended. Let us see the question:

Question: What is the best way to see all the options set for your SQL Server programmatically?

Answer:

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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 – 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 – 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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