Author: nigelDBA

Looking out for… Parallelism

Looking out for… Parallelism

While closely monitoring a query that I was running, I observed some strange behaviour by another query. This other query quickly beat mine in terms of Pages read, which is fine, no competition. It went on to exceed it 4 x. The thing that stuck out was the “Degree of Parallelism” that it used –…

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Options for deleting large amounts of data

Options for deleting large amounts of data

Recently, I had a situation where a lot of data needed to be deleted. This was caused by a Monitoring system which was incorrectly configured. When Monitoring, you should Monitor just the information that you need, but no more. In this case, far too much information was being monitored and recorded, causing the Database that…

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Power BI – my Introduction

Power BI – my Introduction

I’ve recently been getting more familiar with Power BI, thanks to an excellent on-site training course delivered by Stuart and Alison from Burning Suit training. It was great to be supported by my employer with some on-site training, especially in a product that holds so much potential. Power BI has been of interest to me…

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SQL Server Connection Problems – a Checklist

SQL Server Connection Problems – a Checklist

This Checklist came about after installing additional SQL Server Instances on existing Servers and finding that a bit of additional work was required before Users could access. It’s equally valid for default installations of SQL Server. Allow remote connections to this server This is the suggestion that most “helpful” users provide when they report that…

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I want to be a Snowflake DBA

I want to be a Snowflake DBA

  There’s a lot of talk at the moment about how Cloud services will rapidly replace “On Premises” SQL Server. Snowflake, one of the major players in the Data Warehouse space offers just this, with the promise of “no requirement for a DBA”. Surely a tempting proposal, but should this be a concern for us?…

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Multi-Server Scripting – Powershell, SQLCMD and Scripts that write Scripts

Multi-Server Scripting – Powershell, SQLCMD and Scripts that write Scripts

I received a request for help today from a friend (let’s call him “Dave”). Dave was looking for a better way to deploy projects across a large number of Databases spread over multiple Servers. My initial response suggested looking at scripting – either using SQLCMD or Powershell. Alternatively, there are tools such as Redgate’s “MultiScript”…

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SQL Server Configuration Manager

SQL Server Configuration Manager

A few thoughts on SQL Server Configuration Manager. As a DBA, I use it lot. Knowing a little more about it can be handy for others too. If you want to know what SQL Instances are installed on a Server, their Startup parameters and whether they are running at the moment, you can open SQL…

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