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:
SQL SERVER – Starting Up Database – Why Multiple Times in Errorlog?
Fixing error messages is something which keeps me energized because there is something challenging that is put in front of me. I know these can be frustrating times working on errors, but they also make you learn more about the product and make you better. My day life includes creating demo’s for sessions and learning new techniques that will enhance my knowledge. One of the days I started my machine and immediately connected to my SSMS environment to just see that it was taking unusually longer than expected time to get the instance up and ready. Let us see blog post about Starting Up Database.
My instinct was to scan through the ERRORLOG, I found the below series of messages.
SQL SERVER – Updating Data into ColumnStore Index with SQL Server 2012
Off late I have been writing tons of content working with SQL Server 2016. Some of the cool capabilities was to introduce the ability to update a ColumnStore index. This was also covered in the SQL SERVER 2016: Updating Non-Clustered ColumnStore Index Enhancement earlier. One of the readers asked me an interesting question about being inside SQL Server 2012 and they wanted to write / update their data on the ColumnStore enabled system and what was the process for them. The email started saying they were getting the following error.
SQL SERVER – View Dependencies on SQL Server: Hard & Soft Way
As an independent database consultant, I often face a challenge when analyzing the performance of SQL Server instances, which I see for the first time in my life. In many cases, this may seem a difficult task, because in order to fix something you must first understand the database structure. A great many of the companies do not document their database. And even if documentation exists, it is rarely updated. As a result, we have the following situation – documentation is either obsolete, or does not reflect the actual state of things. Let understand SQL SERVER – View Dependencies.
SQL SERVER – Huge Transaction Log (LDF) for Database in Availability Group
One of my blog readers posted on Facebook asked following question about Huge Transaction Log:
Hi Pinal,
We are using AlwaysOn availability group for our production database. The database is fairly large in size as its around 260 GB. The database transaction log file grows around 2.5gb every day. Over the weekend the DBA team noticed that the Log file for this database bloated up to around 230 GB and then seems to hold steady. While troubleshooting I noted an error that the rebuild Index failed due to “Availability_Replica”. Here is the error which we saw in ERRORLOG
SQL SERVER – JSON Support for Transmitting Data for SQL Server 2016 – Notes from the Field #114
[Note from Pinal]: In this episode of the Notes from the Field series database expert Kathi Kellenberger explains about JSON Support for Transmitting Data for SQL Server 2016. Kathi is an amazing instructor, she was the SQL author I have read in my early career. The reason, I love SQL Server because her writing has instigated love for this technology in me. Today she brings a relatively interesting topic for database experts. Read the experience of SQL SERVER – JSON from Kathi in her own words.
SQL SERVER 2016: Creating Simple Temporal Table
Temporal tables are a new feature that was introduced in SQL Server 2016. A temporal table gives application developers to view the state of data at a point in time. Temporal tables can also be used for logging purposes if required. I wanted to explore how this feature can be used. The documentation has been interesting and I went ahead in trying out how this can be enabled.
One of the most used use case for this feature would be to find the data values in a past date. This can now be easily configured in SQL Server 2016. Let us go ahead and create a database for use and then create a table with the Temporal history database created by default / automatically.