Quick post today. Recently I was helping a co-worker write a trigger. Basically there is a table of servers that’s maintained as part of the server creation/decommission process. There is a trigger on the table that is part of an automated process that looks at a flag in the table and does some work if…
Tag: Maintenance
5 Tips for Friday: Preparing for the Holidays
With the holiday season upon us for much of the world, I find myself thinking of ways to ensure that we have a quiet season outside of the office. Nobody wants to spend a family get-together fixing problems at work. I know most of you know what I mean. It’s a DBA’s lot in life…
Closing all of the connections to a database
Doing a database restore may not be the most common task a database professional will ever do, but it’s a lot more frequent than you might think. Operational restores are not exactly uncommon for example. Now, when you are doing a recovery like this, what is common is that there are people in the database.…
Why shouldn’t I shrink my database data file?
A while back I did a post about why you shouldn’t shrink your data file. This one is going to be similar in some ways, different in others. TL;DR: It’s pretty pointless and will almost certainly cause performance issues. Let’s start by asking why you might want to shrink your data file. It’s too big…
Podcast with SQL Data Partners on Patching Best Practices
Recently, I joined Carlos L Chacon (site|@CarlosLChacon), Steve Stedman (blog|@SqlEmt), and the rest of the SQL Data Partners Podcast team for their podcast show and the episode went live earlier this month. We talked about best practice and the reality of patching SQL Server. Check out the podcast to get my take on keeping up…
I’m the new DBA, and I’m locking down development servers
Many times, I’ve started with a company as one of their first, if not the first DBA. They’ve acquired enough servers now, with enough data moving around, that they just can’t continue as they are. There’s no shortage of developers to can write stored procedures or SSIS packages, or to write a new page for…
5 Tips for Friday: Transaction Log
For this week’s 5 Tips for Friday, I want to talk about some best practices for the transaction log. The transaction log in SQL Server is a critical component of a database, and it can affect performance and recoverability of the database. It warrants special care and maintenance. Back it up often: The goal with…
Distinguish backup file names or pay the price!
SQL instances shouldn’t do this So far, no one has found exercise to be beneficial to servers. Purposeless repetitive motion may be good for human muscles, but your SQL Server instance experiences no gain for the pain. Here’s a good example: taking useless backups. (“Did she say useless backups? I’ve never heard
SQL maintenance is a lifecycle, not an event!
You’ve heard me talk about this many times, in so many different ways, but it’s worth repeating: SQL maintenance lifecycles are important. People who disagree, disagree because they spend too much time firefighting and don’t have time to really think about it. Don’t know anything about SQL maintenance lifecycles? Let’s
Integrity Checks are Useless*
Integrity checks have become more and more important over the years, as companies store more and more data. This data is absolutely critical, so when corruption happens, it can break a company. But in all but the smallest shops, running any kind of integrity check is all but completely useless.