Category Archives for "SQL Administration"

Move Data from SQL Server to Azure Blob Storage with Incremental Changes – Part 1

By Ginger Daniel | Azure , Cloud , SQL Administration , SQL Development , SQL Server

One of many options for Reporting and Power BI is to use Azure Blob Storage to access source data.  Most of the documentation available online demonstrates moving data from SQL Server to an Azure Database, however my client needed data to land in Azure Blob Storage as a csv file, and needed incremental changes to […]

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Backup and Restore Databases with CHECKSUM and VERIFYONLY

By Lori Brown | Backup and Restore , SQL Administration , SQL Maintenance , SQL Server

I found out that I have been missing something from our regular database backups that I had no idea that I should have been using all along.  I know about verifying your backup file and have incorporated into our standard maintenance routines one that will periodically test backups by restoring using VERIFYONLY.  However, I totally […]

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Use DDL Triggers to get Instance and Database Change Notifications

By Lori Brown | Helpful Scripts , SQL Administration , SQL Server

I have been working on some improvements to some of the regular ways we monitor for important changes.  We always have to be on the lookout for unexpected changes being made in the SQL instances that we monitor since often times we are not the only team who has sysadmin access to the instance.  We […]

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And Now a Couple of Job Queries

By Lori Brown | Helpful Scripts , Jobs , SQL Administration , SQL Server

Hooray!!  We finally have our 70-764 and 70-765 certification exams done and can turn our attention back to blogging more regularly.  Those exams were pretty tough mostly because there was a lot of information that had to be memorized since there are always aspects of SQL that we don’t regularly use and there is no […]

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Find Out Which Databases Have Multiple Files

By Lori Brown | Helpful Scripts , Miscellaneous , SQL Administration , SQL Maintenance , SQL Server

This might be kind of basic but since I am working on a comprehensive script to discover things that a DBA really needs to know about, I made a couple of queries that will produce a list of the databases that have multiple files along with the locations of the physical files.  One query finds […]

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Failed In-Place Upgrade – Missing Backup Directory

By Lori Brown | Installation , SQL Administration , SQL Server , Upgrade

I was recently performing an in-place upgrade of SQL 2008 R2 to SQL 2014 on one of my client’s servers.  I have done a ton of successful and uneventful in-place upgrades and was surprised when the upgrade failed with the error message:  “Failed to create a new folder ‘X:\SQLBackups’. The specified path is invalid (for […]

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Finding Table Defaults, Primary and Unique Keys and Foreign Keys with sp_helpconstraint

By Lori Brown | Dependencies , Object Information , SQL Administration , SQL Development , SQL Server

A little while back I wrote a post going over sp_help in a beginning effort to find table dependency information.  https://www.sqlrx.com/using-sp_help-to-find-object-dependencies/.  That expanded to reviewing sys.dm_sql_referenced_entities & sys.dm_sql_referenced_entities  (https://www.sqlrx.com/finding_things_sql_that_reference_a_table/ & https://www.sqlrx.com/how-to-find-the-objects-and-columns-a-stored-procedure-or-view-uses/ ) and sys.sql_expression_dependencies (https://www.sqlrx.com/using-sys-sql_expression_dependencies-as-a-single-source-to-find-referenced-and-referencing-objects/  ) Now I want to loop back just a bit and expand on more information that is found in sp_help […]

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Using sys.sql_expression_dependencies as a Single Source to Find Referenced and Referencing Objects

By Lori Brown | Dependencies , Object Information , SQL Administration , SQL Development , SQL Server

I thought I would continue to expand on ways to view dependencies.  This post will give you an alternate way to find things referencing tables and finding things that are referenced by a stored procedure or view after my previous posts on the subject.  See these (https://www.sqlrx.com/finding_things_sql_that_reference_a_table/ & https://www.sqlrx.com/how-to-find-the-objects-and-columns-a-stored-procedure-or-view-uses/ ) A different way to find […]

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Find the Last Time Databases or Logs were Restored

By Lori Brown | Backup and Restore , Helpful Scripts , Log Shipping , SQL Administration , SQL Maintenance , SQL Server

I have a client that uses a lot of disconnected log shipping on a few servers.  They do this because they want to have a copy of their database that is actually hosted by software vendors for reporting purposes.  So, disconnected log shipping it is!  We pull down files that have been FTP’d to the […]

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