On Saturday July 23rd, the WVPASS and Greater Wheeling Chapter of AITP joined forces to host the 2nd Annual SQL Saturday in Wheeling, WV. SQLSaturday is a one-day free training event for SQL Server professionals and those wanting to learn about SQL Server brought to you by the local SQL Server community and PASS (Professional [...]

I’ve been conducting quite a few SQL Server health assessments lately so I thought I would write a brief explanation of the importance of “Instant File Initialization” and how I check to see if it’s being used. SQL Server File Initialization The SQL Server storage engine utilizes an initialization process on data and log files. [...]

If you’re like me, you’ve been hearing a lot about Master Data Management lately.  Master Data Management is not an entirely new theory; it goes back to the Master File idea from the days of the mainframe.  The basic concept is to have a single ‘correct’ set of data that the entire company will use. [...]

The very thought of database corruption makes my skin crawl. Unfortunately, it’s something that all Database Administrators will eventually experience and need to correct. I’m not going to discuss how to recover from this lurking problem. Instead, I’m going to give you some simple strategies to ensure you are aware of the issue as soon [...]

Recently I ran into an issue with the infamous “Cannot generate SSPI context.”  I have run into this issue a few times in the past and it is a problem that usually takes a while to find the solution and fix.  This problem does not deal with just SQL Server.  Usually the help of a [...]

When I investigate a new SQL Server instance for the first time, I perform a number of standard checks to get a handle on the current health of the system. One of the checks I like to perform is a VLF count on each transaction log file associated with each database on the system. Right [...]

Transactional replication can sometimes be a tricky high availability option to work with.  Many companies are now using it more and more to offload reporting to a different server.  But as we know, making schema changes to the tables in a publication is something that must be done when the application changes or different business [...]

For any SQL Server DBA who has been in the game longer than the advent of SQL Server 2005, there was one standard place to turn when you wanted to tune your database.  You would turn to the profiler!  If you had some experience with this, and had been burned by getting too small of [...]

Many Database Administrators are aghast when they discover that SQL Server 2005 and above have a default trace that runs 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Most of us are taught early on in our careers that extended tracing is something that should only occur on rare occasions. Before you rush out and [...]

Here is a way to create an SSIS that audits the transfer of data each step of the way. The main transformations used for this are: Row Count The row count was used to validate the number of records Conditional Split Was used to split out rows with a specific Header value. In this case [...]